Say Goodbye to Desktop Software? Online Apps Make Headway,

Remotely hosted web applications have been around for some time, but as the software gets refined and broadband access improves, web apps like ThinkFree.com may give your desktop office suite a run for the money.

One web offering that stands out is ThinkFree Online, and the price is the best yet – free! The service allows you to create, collaborate on and store your documents and files with a generous 30 GB of storage space.

The company is a subsidiary of Haansoft Corporation, a Korean computer software company based in Seoul. ThinkFree was founded in 1999 as a java-based office developing company. The ThinkFree Office, a desktop alternative to Microsoft Office was first released in 2000. It has had a couple of updates since then and the current 3.0 version is designed to be almost indistinguishable from Microsoft Office.

ThinkFree Office 3.0 is one of the few alternative programs to fully support Microsoft’s latest format from Office 2007 so that you can open files without risk of corrupting the layout or content. Business users will like the fact that there is no need to spend money or time training employees as the interface operates just like Microsoft Office. ThinkFree products use the same file formats across operating systems so they can be opened whether the user is on Windows, Linux or Mac machines. Best of all, ThinkFree Office 3.0 costs only $49.95 for an individual license while the cheapest form of Microsoft Office (the Home and Student Edition) costs three times as much.

In 2005, ThinkFree released its first online service and has continued to improve and add to the service ever since. You can now store up to 30 gb of documents on ThinkFree’s servers so you or your collaborators can access your documents any time and from any where. If you already have the desktop version of the software, the online application is ideal for being able to access the documents that you worked on from your home computer.

ThinkFree isn’t quite up to taking over Microsoft’s market share, though. Microsoft Office does have some advanced features that aren’t available with ThinkFree products. For the average user, though, it will be the perfect office suite as it has the three mainly used programs – word processor, spreadsheet application and presentation application. The online ThinkFree also offers a handy beta tool called Note which is a blog editor and should prove popular.

Being java based, ThinkFree does tend to be a bit slower in response than other programs of this nature. It also only will only open one document at a time so it’s more difficult to work back and forth when needed. There is one feature that I didn’t expect in this type of software and that is the ability to export as PDF. There is also a very handy file conversion tool within the online office suite which also can be very useful.

All in all, ThinkFree Office online is one of the best applications of its kind. The interface is easy to grasp and navigate so there isn’t a sharp learning curve for new users. Since it works in most operating environments, you are not limited to collaborating only with users of the same operating system. Used in conjunction with the low-cost desktop version, anyone can work away from home and not worry about backups because of the large storage capacity.