Not too long ago IT|Redux was giving everyone a gift of a portable version of ThinkFree on a 1GB USB stick to those who blogged about the whole thing.
I was (pride full on here) one of the first to do so and just the other day I received my 1GB USB stick - just in time for my trip to SAP SAPPHIRE in Atlanta. In fact I am sitting at the Frankfurt airport where the T-Mobile/T-Com Wi-Fi is not working for me so I decided to give the USB stick ago and starting making a presentation about my recent adventures for SAP inside of Second Life.
It's coming along nicely too might add but that is for another blog post later, what I'd like to share is what I've expereince using this offline version so far.
First it's setup on U3 so I first went in and removed some of the applications I have no need of on the USB stick (free'd up some room). Then I realized that it was picking up some setting in my system and was in German (although my whole system is in English) needless to say a hassle I have alot and therefore a qucik change and I had English. What I find to be annonying though is that ThinkFree when I started it, was in German as well - so why did it not pick up the language change from U3 itself? Problem with U3 or ThinkFree or both?
Anyways, once I made that little change I found that somehow or another I had the English keyboard settings instead of the German ones (yes I know I'm complicated) so another quick change and a restart and I was actually ready to go.
Presentation started and will continue as long as my battery lasts then see how sync'ing online works out...
[PAUSE WHILE WORKING]
Presentation is now finished several hours and kilometers later and I have to say I felt like I was working inside of OpenOffice or Microsoft version of a presentation software some features less but all in all a very comfortable feel to it.
[SYNC with Online...]
Hmmm wait there is no snyc, seems I totally misunderstood the whole thing or I'm just too dense to find it. I will have to ask some of the folks this week about and see what I am missing so until then...
4 comments:
Craig,
Sorry, the synchronization feature is coming. The Premium Edition will be in closed beta in the next month. This will offer offline access to the tools and synchronization between offline and online. We are still determining the details of putting the Premium version on a USB.
Thanks,
Jonathan
Won't you be losing some potential great evangelists by taking what I would consider such a "key" feature to put you a step ahead of everyone else and making it only part of the "premium" version?
Maybe. We believe that the key feature that has put us ahead of everyone else so far has been Microsoft compatibility. We have been studying their file formats for the last seven years and probably have the most experience with MS Office outside of Redmond. That with the fact that our office suite has the deepest feature set (granted others have a wider feature set including CRM, email, etc.) has made us the second largest online player in the space.
At this point we are betting that people will be willing to pay a nominal fee ($7 a month) for offline access, syncrhonization, support, and unlimited storage. We will let you know in a few months whether this was a smart move or not;).
Thanks,
Jonathan
I look forward to hearing more Jonathan it will be interesting to watch as this area of the market starts to settle and we see which "features" pull ahead.
The offline access is something that might be worth paying for that is certainly something I would be willing to consider but on the same hand I'm also concerned with how many of these various services I will have to pay a nominal fee for - eventually if those nominal fees continue I might end up looking at solutions like OpenOffice or even eyeOS again in the future.
I've said it before but the next 12 months are going to be very interesting in this space!
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