Smart Tech for Small Biz

Buzzword: New Hosted Word Processor

Joining Google Docs and the Zoho Suite and ThinkFree Boundless and who knows who else tomorrow is Buzzword from Adobe. Does the world need another online word processor? Doesn't everybody love paying a few hundred extra dollars for Microsoft Office on every new computer? Yes, and no.

Officially still in beta, as is Google Docs for that matter, Buzzword seems like the next generation of online word processor, with a sleek, modern look and some nice touches. Or perhaps I should say “buzzword” since they seem to put it in lower case letters all the time. Since I expected it to be BuzzWord, I guess they surprised me slightly.

There are several handy touches, such as the ability to import documents in the most popular handful of formats (DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, and ODT) and export them in those formats and also PDF. If you use this, you'll never have to pay extra for a PDF file converter again, although Adobe has offered a free PDF online converter for years.

Sharing and collaborating on documents isn't a one-click operation but does work more easily than e-mailing around. You can even set security levels, so some users can see but not edit an existing document.

Performance isn't as fast as your own computer, but it's been reliable and consistent for me. I haven't had the lag time I sometimes have when witing on a Gmail message.

Try it, it 's free. If you like it, great, you have an online word processor with a pretty decent interface.

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