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If you can’t afford Microsoft Office, there is now a couple of choices for you. The most popular choices are StarOffice, Verion 8, and Google Docs.

I use Google Docs for some of my needs. Usually quick and dirty documents where I want to put things online so I can find it later. That is what is so great about Google Docs. Just login using your Google ID / password and you are into your account from any computer.

While Google Docs is not anywhere near to Excel, it does offer some neat features of the out the box. I like their ability to collect data :

…Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically.

Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet. …

All small businesses need simple and reliable tools and for now Google is providing them. Don’t miss out.

Update:  Here is a good post of why Google Docs is a good thing.  You will never have to move your data from one PC to another or send another email to share your documents.  Well… as long as Google stays in business!

Google has recently announced Google Sites and they are continuing their march to cracking the business marketplace beyond just advertising.  They are positioning against Microsoft’s Sharepoint which is interesting.  Sharepoint actually can do much more but for simple things like team projects and internal sites, Google Sites can be appealing especially since it free.

You’re company / school will have to be part of Google Apps in order for you to use it though.  Google Apps has a free edition as well as a paid version.  You can check it out by using the free version first.