I’ve become a big fan of Google Docs and Spreadsheets. In particular, because I can realize the collaboration potential. Several classes have required me to work with many people and compose papers and memo’s. Writing in a group setting becomes substantially easier when there is a tool to share your collaborative efforts. Unfortunately for me, I have not been able to convince others that this is an effective tool – and so we send, re-send, and re-re-send copies of Documents and Spreadsheets between each other.
This is a big feature that the new version of OSX is going to include – and needless to say, I can’t wait. It is too bad that many people are so adverse to Mac’s that they excluded themselves for possibly easier ways of working through issues. I’ve found my Mac very convenient for what I want to do with it. Since switching in July, I have had very few problems in terms of conflicting software – but there are some that I have found annoying.
First, getting streaming online video is sometimes a pain. This is because Microsoft has captured one of the video formats and does not release an updated player for OSX operating system (in some attempt to keep people on PC). While there are some tricks around this (old versions of Windows Media Player and Flip4Mac), they will fail for more sophisticated things like streaming NCAA games. Second, there is not a large “temp” directory that gets cleaned out every week or so, so that when I open attachments from Thunderbird – I end up with a lot of clutter on my desktop. I have not found a solution to this yet, but there is bound to be one. The third problem, really isn’t a problem with Macs, but is more a problem with Mozilla. Mozilla doesn’t feature a decent Java plugin, so I end up having to switch to Safari in order to run certain java applications. The fourth and final problem is that Debate and Forensics tabulation software are all Windows based.
All in all, many of these problems aren’t severe – just annoying. Don’t misunderstand me, I do love my Mac (now that I boosted its memory).
There is one additional feature of Google Docs thought that I like – it allowed me to write this post without having to login to WordPress.
