Google Collaboration Software
Posted in All Posts, Freebies, Software on June 6th, 2008 by Eoin – Be the first to commentFor those of us that watch the news blogs you will have seen that Google has announced a Premier version of their online collaboration tools.
If you already have a gmail account you get a free version of the applications and will have probably seen links to them at the top of your gmail account. Basically you get access to a Calender, Google Talk, Spreadsheets, Documents, Photos and Easy Web Design. The main software, spreadsheets and docs, are like excel and word with the idea being that you can share and update your documents with other gmail account holders.
The apps are all pretty good and I’d say a great idea to have all your documents online so you can access them from any computer – All you need is an internet connection.
With the recent announcement of the Premier Edition of these tools I had another look at them. There is still a free version but the Premier Edition costs $50 or around £27 per person per year. I kinda thought to myself – if there is a free version why would anyone want to spend $50 for the Premier stuff!
When I read Google’s introduction pages it got me thinking. This actually is a pretty good deal for any business. When you think on the costs involved in setting up computers and software for even a small team, the costs are pretty high. You have to look at things like servers and software etc. Using Google Apps you could do away with that. As long as you have computers and an internet connection, each person in your organisation can log in and use the software. If you apply for the Premier Edition you even get your own domain attached to gmail – so anything@yourdomain.com goes to your gmail account and google are offering 99.9% uptime and support telephone numbers.
So all in all I’d say it is a great budget option for any individual or any business – especially a small start up business – to get software at rock bottom prices. For the most part the free version that comes with a gmail account would do just fine however for $50 per person per year to get domain, admin tools, support etc it’s certainly not going to break the computer budget and is worth looking into.
To get the free version all you need to do is sign up for a gmail account at www.gmail.com
