Zoho Writer -- Online Word Processing

Zoho Writer has an impressive pallet of features. You will need to establish a free account before you can access and use Zoho Writer.

Zoho Writer's icon's were easily understandable. The icons were similiar to the stardard icons that appear on MicroSoft Word 2003. Still, an explanation of each icon, and of the many other features that Zoho Writer brings to the user, would be a useful addition. Zoho sometimes will promote demos, but it mostly does not highlight them, and sometimes they do not seem to be present at all. Tutorials would be nice considering the power of the Zoho suites.

Zoho has a tremendous array of free applications in addition to Zoho Writer -- see: Zoho for its large suite of free productivity and collaboration applications, and for its added suite of free business applications. Zoho even has blogs regarding its many applications -- see Zoho Blogs.

You will need to go online and look for general introductions to Zoho Writer. There do not seem to be any onboard their website. Zoho provides a very powerful set of free tools that are web-based many of which are collaborative. Most of its tools are free, some trigger a fee for business users -- Zoho Creator, some trigger a fee based on the number of users -- Zoho CRM.

Google Docs is less robust than the Zoho suite of products, but it is also easier to use, and Google clearly promotes two brief introductions: one in a slide-show-like format, another as a YouTube video. The video lets you know that Google Docs are collaborative, and that they include a word processing program, a spreadsheet, and a slide presentation application.

Overall, both Zoho and Google Doc prove that high quality, free office and business applications are available at either no cost or at a very small price. They are two good choices for the cost and quality minded consumer.