Thing 20: Thinkfree

So, in my last post I described my strong working relationship with googledocs. I wasn't sure that thnkfree would offer me anything further, but in the name of 23Things I gave it a go, and it did have a few nice features: better formatting options, a better dictionary, easier-to-work-with layout view. Basically, every complaint I had for googledocs was dealt with.

There is a big but though, because all these extra features come at a price. And that price is ease-of-use; I found the whole thing incredibly slow and clunky.

Though it's a nice touch to be able to use a pre-exsisting log in (I used my googlemail), the time it takes from the program to load is just too long. A couple of people mentioned it got quicker the more often you used it, but on my fifth use it was still taking a good few minutes to get open, and that's too long for me. When I'm all I'm doing is adding one inspired line before it flitters out of my memory, I need a 3 sec log in, not 3 minutes in which I can forget. I also found it slowed my entire browser down, so wasn't convenient to have open in the background for any great length of time.

For me, and what I'm using it for, googledocs is far superior, as I said previously, it compliments word. Thinkfree would probably be better suited for using *instead*, for doing long indepth work.




I can't comment on the use of these programs for shared work, because I've only ever used them on my own. I am sure there is a lot that can be done with them, and the premise seems strong (I've heard other trainee's mention how they are used in their own libraries, and this sounds great) but I don't have much in the way of glittering insight for them.