Monday, January 26, 2009

Google Docs

This is not an advertisement.
It's just a short story of how today's services can be used in order to perform some daily tasks for free.

So, here's an example.
We have:
  • Document in M$ Word format, created elsewhere
  • Laptop with Linux installed on it
  • OpenOffice on linux which does not open correctly the M$ Word document (styles are shifted and paragraphs are misplaced with text
  • Need to port this document to PDF in order to e-mail as CV.
Instead of installing Word application on the virtualized XP, we can do much simpler thing:
  • Just forward an e-mail with document attached to the specific email address which is found in the Google Docs setup page, on Upload tab.
  • Log into Google Docs.
  • Open the document (it is already imported - Google has imported all the attachments as separate pages.)
  • And from menu select Save-As PDF File
  • That's all - you can now dl it!
So, economy is completely understood. How much does Microsoft Word license cost?