Email Organization for Greater Productivity

There are two major free Office Suite Zoho Office (zoho.com) and Google Documents (docs.google.com) that I am aware of.  Both are competent suites but they have limited functionality. Google Documents includes a word Processor, spreadsheet and presentation application.  Zoho has the same as well as a number of other applications including an organizer, invoices, and CRM. The office applications are free but some of their other applications are subscription based.

Having worked extensively with the Google Applications, my general feeling is that it is good for basic word processing and spreadsheets, but if you are interested in slightly more sophisticated formatting, you will be disappointed.   Google Does not allow you to create columns, and embedded table formatting is quite limited. 

I’ve looked at Zoho as well, and tried some basic formatting on it as well and came to the same conclusion. While the tables have more formatting options, it also doesn’t support columns. Overall, I think that Zoho has better features than google, and its worth a look.

While I don’t do the most sophisticated formatting on my documents, I do like to have a certain level of features,  and I don’t feel that either of these free suites will suite meet my needs. If you choose to use them for your primary office application make sure that they will do what you need before you throw away your PC based software. I think I’ll stick with OpenOffice for now.

If you know of any other suites, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Microsoft Office is known as the premier Office Suite application, it has hundreds of really cool features–that you will never use. So, why pay for Mercedes when all you need is Chevy? Below are three applications that may meet your needs, and best of all, they are all free.

OpenOffice. Open Office is a full featured office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, database, and drawing application. I terms of features its nearly on par with Microsoft’s offerings. Its about 80% compatible with Microsoft Office so you can read and create documents that can be shared. Open office is pretty easy to learn if you are familiar with Office 2003. I use Open Office and I have yet to come across a situation where I couldn’t read document from a Microsoft app or save a compatible one.

I live and die by my email. I check it constantly when I’m on the computer, and I can check it on demand on my Blackberry. Frequently I find that I need be reminded of repeating tasks, and other special activities. While most calendaring tools offer pop up windows to remind you of a task, I tend to close them a to get them out of the way, and then forget all about them. On the other hand a reminder email is there until I delete it, nagging me until I get the task done.

One tool, that I use,  that offers automated reminder emails is backpack www.backpackit.con from 37Signals. You can setup one-time and repeating reminders. However its real purpose is to be a basic todo list. If you currently use a legal pad (I used to) to keep you todo’s, this tool is an easy transition to a web based list. You can list your todo’s, and categorize them in sections. You can also add note elements to the page. The todo list doesn’t have the advanced features of some lists like due dates, categories, filters, and sorting, but  if you don’t use them there’s no point in having them. (Any time I get a more advanced system I spend a lot of time setting it and then ignore most of the features–a big waste of time.)

The free version includes the todo list, notes , and reminders. There are various paid version as well that include the addition of file storage, and message boards, and a calendar.  All the versions support multiple users so you can share lists/and notes for group projects. If you dig into this application, you will see that it has a lot of cool features beyond the limited description I have given here, and and a quick look may be well worth your time.