Blogging Task 9 – Google Docs vs. Office Live Workspace

Google DOCS:

Documents

• Each document can be up to 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image.
• You can upload documents from any of the following file formats:
  • HTML
  • Plain text (.txt)
  • Microsoft Word
  • .rtf
  • Open Office (.odt)
• You have a combined limit of 5000 documents and presentations and 5000 images.

Spreadsheets

• Each spreadsheet can be up to 256 columns, or up to 200,000 cells, or up to 40 sheets — whichever limit is reached first. There’s no limit on number of rows.
• Each spreadsheet can have up to 20,000 cells with formulas.
• You have a limit of 1000 spreadsheets.
• The limit on spreadsheets open at one time is 11.
• You can import spreadsheets up to approximately 1 Mb in xls, csv, or ods, txt, tsv, tsb format.

Presentations

• Presentations in both .ppt and .pps file formats from your local computer can be up to 10MB in size.
• By entering the URL of a file on the Web, you can upload presentations up to 2MB.
• By emailing in your files, you can upload presentations up to 500K.
• You have a combined limit of 5000 documents and presentations and 5000 images.

Upload/Download Feature:

Can only upload certain file types:

• For spreadsheets: .xls, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tsb
• For documents: .html, plain text (.txt), Microsoft Word, .rtf
• For presentations: .ppt, .pps
• .pdf files

Supported online document creation and editing.

Support only one level of folder tree under “All Folders”.

Office LIVE:

File Types:

Integration capability with Microsoft Office. It also allows you to upload all kinds of files, not only Office document file types. So, in addition, you can upload .PDFs, pictures, or seemingly any kind of file except those on the blocked list, which are blocked to protect users as they are file types Windows sees as executable files.

Sharing

Based on “Workspace” rather than “Folders”.Office Live Workspace allows you to share documents or workspaces with others and mark them as “editors” or “viewers”. You can add a note along with the message. You can also check a box to allow “everyone to view this without signing in,” and/or a box to “send me a copy of the sharing invitation.” Below, a read-only preview of the file is displayed. Files or workspaces can be shared with up to 100 people.

File Sizes

Its allows for individual files as large as 25 MB, no matter what file type it is.

Collaboration

Although its allows for collaboration, but it’s not real-time, online collaboration. Instead, if one user is editing a file, another will be informed the file is “checked out.” When they finish editing and save their changes the document is checked back in for other users to access.

Conclusion

I suggest people who use Microsoft Office suite in their computer using Office Live, since it has the capability to integrate with it, which I think will make things easier. But, it doesn’t mean that I won’t recommend Google Docs to others, since many people not using Microsoft Office suite. I recommend people who do not use MS Office suite to use Google Docs rather than Office Live.