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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 10 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4 out of 5 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Not bad, but not yet great."
Pros: Can collaborate on documents, simple to use, speedy.
Cons: File export is to DOC and ODT is not good.
Summary: I have to admit up front that I'm not the biggest fan of online "applications." These services depend too heavily on a constant Internet connection, and are mostly limited in what they can do.
Writely might be useful for people collaborating on a single document, instead of using MS Word or OOo Writer and change-tracking. The tools are a little limited in number and scope, though.
For individual use, I'm not sure I see much point in Writely (or Zoho Writer, or ThinkFree, etc.). For those traveling and using public or other people's computers, maybe? If cost is the only issue, there are free alternatives like OpenOffice that are much more capable and flexible.
I printed a couple of files with Writely, with pretty good results, and the same with the PDF export, but saving files to DOC or ODT format was a different story. Writely makes some funky style sheet choices when exporting, and the files end up with extra blank lines and rather jacked-up paragraph structures at times. Cleaning them up can be a pain.
Writely's still in beta, so maybe things will improve. I've also tried ThinkFree, Zoho Writer, and AjaxWrite, and all of them have their share of problems and limitations, too. (AjaxWrite is a bad joke.) Writely might be the most reliable and predictable of the bunch, but they all seem to have a ways to go before the deliver on their promises.
