Part two of the best of the best free word processing options is out! We will be heading towards the computing giant Microsoft and their free, handy, dandy online office suite which is part of the Windows Live applications. I’ve mentioned Windows Live before concerning the SkyDrive. I got to be honest. I wasn’t expecting too much from this web app considering Microsoft has not really pushed its existence too much. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I opened this Web App for the first time. Read on past the break to learn what I found, and I have pretty screen shots too!
I was a little upset on how to find it. I couldn’t find a direct link to Windows Live and instead had to sign into my Hotmail account. This, as it turns out, is where you go. You could also probably sign in to your MSN account.
Once in, this is what you see.
If you notice the top has an Office option. Here you can create a new Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote file. We can look at the other options (and there are more than this believe me) at another time. Go ahead and click New Word document and here is where you end up. It does take a few seconds longer than expected to open, but it’s OK.
When it opens you are welcome to a very familiar face-it looks a lot like Word 2007/2010.
As you can see it looks just like what you would expect Word to look like and finding everything you want to find is s cinch as you navigate through the Home ribbon. However, the other options of Insert and View are not nearly as beefy but they work OK. Take a look at what you get below.
Something that really bugs me, is that I can’t add a ruler to the top and bottom of the document. I would love to see where my margins are and where my tabs are located, but that is no where to found. Also, I wish that I could insert more options instead of just a table, picture, or clipart. It is a bit limiting.
When you click on File you get some good features. You can print, save your file, and share it. When it saves the document it saves it to your SkyDrive account which is handy. If you’re not sure what the SkyDrive account is, take a few minutes to read my earlier post about it here. In short, you will be able to access your document anywhere in the world.
One great feature on the Windows Live is the ability to share the document with others. From File select Share. Windows Live will take you here.
You can select people from your contacts or type in an e-mail address.
In short, this is not a bad choice, but if you have the space on your computer, I’d stick with OpenOffice over this. If you’re on the road and you don’t have your computer and need to pound out a document online, then this may be an OK choice. We will see what Zoho and Google Docs have to offer.
Technology in the Classroom 