  My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
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Google Docs & SpreadsheetsIf you have a FREE GMail account and an Internet connection, you have access to more free goodies than you can imagine. Did I say FREE? Pay attention now. Google Docs are a great alternative to the (very) expensive Office Suite we have all come to know and love. Instead of spending the extra several hundred dollars to have it on my replacement Vista laptop, I opted to keep the money in my pocket and put my money where my mouth is, and actually use the stuff I am always preaching about.
You can create new documents, save existing documents, upload (send documents from your computer to the google servers), create folders and delete files you already have up there. You can choose to share your files or not. It is entirely up to you. Google Docs works seamlessly with your computer and your web browser. It is very intuitive and easy to understand and use. How many times have YOU needed to be able to create a PDF file? Not all office suites will allow you to create pdf files, but Google Docs will. Everything is online. There is nothing extra to install on your computer. It just works by choosing Save as PDF. It doesn't get any easier (or less expensive) than that, folks! By converting a document to a pdf file, you eliminate the need for anyone to have special software to open or change your file. The original formatting is intact, complete with images, and most everyone has the FREE Acrobat Reader software on their computer. PDF files are a more sophisticated (and polite) way to share documents. You can feel very comfortable opening a pdf file, because it isn't going to be able to carry any dreaded macro viruses.
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Google Docs will open any document Microsoft has to offer, so it doesn't matter if someone sends you a .doc file and they have a newer version than you do. You can open it in Google Docs and save it any way you want. You can leave it on the Google servers and access it on any computer with an Internet connection, or you can choose to save it on your own hard drive. This can really come in handy if you don't feel like dragging your computer around with you all the time, or if you have a computer on its last legs and you are afraid to save anything special on it. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection to get to your google doc files.
If you use GMail, have someone send you a document file. When you view the email, you can see your choices. Of course you can download the file, but you can also choose to open it as a Google document, and save the space on your hard drive. While it is open as a Google document, you can read it, change it, convert it to a pdf file, and save it again if you want to send the corrected one back to the person who sent it to you in the first place.