Google Docs

Google Docs is basically an on-line storage for your documents.  If your documents are stored on-line you do not have to fear losing them if your hard drive crashes.  You can organize and store your documents in folders.  You can create basic documents from scratch. It does all the basics; makes bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images comments, formulas, change the font, etc.

You must have a Google Account. I used my g-mail account and was able to log in right away, which made me happy that I did not have to ccreate a separate name and password to add to my already long list of log-ins and passwords.

Once you are in, you have more than documents to work with. There are also spreadsheets and presentations (power point).  The formatting also looks the same. You click on the same buttons that you would in Word; bold, underline, indent, change font or number format, etc.  It also accepts most popular file formats, DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT and so forth.

I have found what is really helpful, is that you can share your documents with whoever you invite to view them.  Instead of having to stop and e-mail or fax a person a document you can just give them access to your Google Docs.  They can edit or just view your document, spreadsheet or presentation.  It is simple to add a person on; you just enter their e-mail address and it will send them an invitation.  Multiple people can view and edit and it shows you exactly who changed what and when.

You can publish your documents on-line as a web page. Without having to learn how to do web design.  You can publish for the entire world to see or just a few people or un-publish at anytime.  You can also post your document to your blog.

I think for the most part, Google Docs is a positive thing.  Although, since there are computer hackers out there, I would never put private information on this site.  Counselors or doctors would never want to put private confidential information on here either. In this case, I would recommend an external hard drive.