No; STOP IT!!!!!

Let me leave work at the office and go home.

If my employer wants me to keep working out of the office let them pay £LOADS for the software for me to do so. You can bet that they won't pay any overtime etc.

Coat 'cos I'm off HOME!

I'll get interested when Google allows you to *never* store your documents online.

No one can convince my that my documents stored "somewhere else" will always be safe, secure, and remain private.

Well, You will probably have that option - by just never connecting to the internet again ;)

So stand-alone word processors have evolved into network based word processors because of the benefits of remote storage; and now they're evolving back into stand-alone word processors because of the benefits of local storage.

Now all we need is for Wikipedia to provide a version on CD, and maybe print, and change the name to Encylopaedia Britannia or something.

That will make it excellent - now build a simple version that'll work on my smartphone too and I'm sold. Documnets editable anywhere but stored on my phone is what I'd like (with optional backup)

Google docs clips into Open Office nicely and swaps between one and the other quite nicely if you don't have much data to swap.

It is boarlicks if you do though. Fughe tit!

"On an airplane, on the shuttle commuting to work, or at home when my cable modem goes down, I want to work on my documents." Errr, no, I don't. I want to work on my docs when I'm sat at my desk, at the computer provided to me by the people who pay my wages. As soon as I leave the premises, the work stays there.

This is like that moron who suggested that movie-buyers are more interested in Flash-based media because people want to carry 4 or 5 movies in their wallet (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/28/thx_scientist_favours_flash/) - actually, no I don't because WHO'S GOT TIME TO WATCH 4 MOVIES?

Paris because these are the kind of ideas she'd come up with.

"Now all we need is for Wikipedia to provide a version on CD"

They already do

Bring it on.

I'm over crashing hardware, forgot the power supply, back up drives everywhere and all the associated parlarva.

Been using aps for over a year now, and it is continually improving, im lovin it and gears is the missing cog, errm, as it were.

So its yes for me...

yep, only the circle has gone around a few times at this stage... remember the VAX / MainFrame.

Every few years, the whole idea of all stuff on the server is banded about under a new guise.

When do they ever learn that most (not all!) people want their stuff on their machine for a multiple of reasons. Security, accessibility etc.

Why build an online app only to make it an off-line/online app? Just put a plugin into MS or Open Office that syncs online. A Google version of .Mac as such.

Whats the next re-hash? Set-top boxes are the only thing a household will have?? Music rental will be the only way?? ha

the heart because of its irrelevance... ;-)

Most businesses have not eyed this option because of privacy/security issues. Which is good, as it means that most jobs won't make you work outside the premises, and when they want to, they'll have to pay for the VPN/Remote Office Connectivity for doing that.

I was pretty happy working on my OWN Desktop through the VPN link instead of using some crappy web workaround. Even better, my current job doesn't require me to work after-hours or outside the office. ;)

Some of us do like to take work home, generally because (a) we have no wife/husband/screaming kids to worry about; and/or (b) we actually enjoy our jobs. Many times I've had an idea about a project I'm working on while at home and logged in to work to try it out.

That said, I must say I'm still against this whole SaaS/online apps thing for security and privacy reasons, as well as upgrade issues. That is, with online apps, if the company running the app makes an upgrade you don't like, tough. I for one prefer to have the choice of which version of an app to use; e.g. I still use Word 2K both at home and work, because the later versions are too cluttered, offer no functionality I have any use for, and the latest one isn't backward compatible. Finally, I refuse to buy into a system that denies me the right to pay once and have forever, instead forcing me to pay every time I use it!

For anyone wanting to install and host their own alternative to Google Docs and Zoho Writer (at least the word processor), there's always http://remotewriter.wordpress.com/

It does use Google Gears for online / offline synchronisation, but apart from this is based upon open source code (notably Tiny MCE and wxJavascript, and a whole lot of Javascript code), and offers one very nice feature that Google Gears and Zoho Writer don't: the ability to define your own custom block-level and inline styles.