Sunday, June 29, 2008

iGoogle and Google Desktop

I cannot understand why anyone would want Google Desktop if he can have iGoogle. I must be missing something. Google Desktop has to be installed and personalized on your computer, whereas iGoogle is akin to having your own personalized login webpage. Both give you the same ability to install or remove the Google gadgets, so what gives? With my iGoogle set up, I can go to any computer, log in to my account, and see all the apps I have installed, including Gmail, Calendar, Google docs, weather, Pick of the Day pictures, news feeds, etc.

If you have not tried either, I suggest you give iGoogle a go. You'll be surprised what you have missed out. While you are at it, switch to Firefox browser. Oh yeah, sign up for the Foxmarks bookmark synchronizer too. Download OpenOffice as well. Er.... maybe you can now drop Microsoft a note to say you won't need them anymore. Yes, if you do all of the above, you may be ready to switch to Linux and not feel any great loss.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are still so drawbacks of being Microsoft-free. OpenOffice is good but its still very young. Spellchecks are very slow and sometimes doesn't pick up errors. It has no grammer-check either (not that MSWord grammer-check is worth the space it occupies). Also, since most people are still using MSWord, OpenOffice Writer users will still experience non-compatibility. This includes not being able to open files, allignment of contents (ecspecially true of files containing graphs and tables), to a small degree, text recognition and dot points go haywire; all of which I have experienced (when converting OpenOffice to Microsoft and vice-versa).

Other than that, for the average user, mom&pops and school kiddies, Microsoft Office can be buried without a second thought.