Trading the Desktop for the Cloud: Day 2
The second day of this experiment of using online tools to repalce the desktop showed a couple of weak links but still no major problems.
The most pronounced (but still minor) problem came when I tried to open an email attachment using an online viewer. I use Open IT Online a Firefox plug-in that allows you to view documents with Google Docs, Zoho, or ThinkFree. Google Docs does not appear to work as an option when the Google Toolbar is installed but one file I tried to view, a simple comma separated file, wouldn't open in either Zoho or Thinkfree. I could simply save the file to disk and then upload to Google Docs but I'd rather do that in one step, not several. As I said, this is minor but it shows that working online isn't as seamless as it is on the desktop. I'm not sure where the problem lies but Open IT Online looks like a promising tool and I'm sticking with it, I just need to run down this minor problem.
On another front, I've decided to try Box.net to store files. The service provides 1GB of storage for free and you can purchase more.
The post on Day 1 is available here.
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