Office for Mac alternatives: Google Docs

A friend wrote to me about an Office for Mac crash, which wiped out her Entourage email on her MacBook. She asked what I would recommend to avoid such a situation in the future -- perhaps switching to a Dell?

In my opinion, switching to a Windows-based Dell would be a mistake. I use Windows XP on two laptops (Sony and Lenovo) and am constantly frustrated by unexplained Office crashes, long startup times, bad UI design, and problems with OS and software updates. A new Dell might minimize some of these problems (if the reviews of Windows 7 are to be believed) but I am skeptical, based on my past experience with Microsoft products, and the known security problems with Windows in general.

So what's my recommendation to avoid the data loss headaches that my friend experienced? The basic solution involves backing up data regularly. When I was grinding through my grad school thesis, I often used the "email to self" trick on my old iMac (i.e., copies of Word docs and Excel spreadsheets were saved in my Web-based email program) as well as manual backups to DVDs and later an attached external drive. But now better solutions can be found in Google's "cloud," as well as OS X itself. Here's what I told her:

1. If you are using Office for mostly basic functions (simple word processing, spreadsheets, email) switch to Google Docs. This is a super, free Office-like suite which is fine for the basics, backs up regularly and efficiently, and only requires a browser to work. Even if your Mac blows up you'll still have access to the files. You can also set up an "offline sync" which saves copies of your files to your hard drive, which is useful if you are using the laptop on a plane where no Internet access is available. The files are only viewable by you by default, but you can share them with others too (you have to give them permission and they need to have a Google account as well). For email, you can use Gmail to access your entourage email (or just back it up) but the setup may be a little technical. All of this is FREE and works on Macs or PCs with no special software installations (all you need is a browser and a Google account). The main problems with Google Docs is a lack of a "track changes" feature and no advanced formatting options for major projects ...
2. Get an external hard drive and back up all your data on your MacBook automatically, using "Time Machine" (see it in "System Preferences"). An external hardrive should be less than $100, but once you set up the Time Machine, your machine will make backups of your data every hour, if you want, and it's relatively easy to resurrect an old archive if you have a crash with Office or your computer.

Limitations of Google Docs

I use both Google Docs and Time Machine, and really like the functionality and ease-of-use of both applications. Docs is so easy that many people don't even need Google Docs for Dummies to get started. Here's what the Google Docs interface looks like:

The Google Docs interface is clean and simple. That said, Google Doc's Achilles Heel is the password that protects them from other users accessing them. If you don't use a strong password, or someone is able to get their hands on it, your files stored in Google Docs may be at risk from being seen by others or deleted (there are, however, security settings that lessen this risk for enterprise users). 

If Google can figure out a solution to this problem for normal users (as well as the "track features" issue noted above) I predict Google Docs will really start to make some inroads against the MS Office juggernaut.