Online vs Desktop – Why Your Ministry Should Use Google Apps Over Microsoft Office

Online vs Desktop: Series 1|Part 1

There’s a fight about to break out, and it’s going to be very geeky. (*Insert cheesy Rocky music here) It’s online vs desktop. A clash of the titans. The seasoned veteran and the heavily favored, desktop software; verses the underdog and new kid on the block, Online apps. Each contender has its strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll be looking at them in better detail starting with office solutions.

For the sake of simplicity, I wanted to highlight what I believe to be the two best current solutions out there: Google Apps and Microsoft Office, and why your ministry should consider them.

First up – Google Apps.

Depending on the size of your church or ministry, you may or may not be able to support an IT staff. The smaller the church, the greater the chance your IT guy is also doubling as “pastor”. Google Apps is a great solution for those who want quick and easy access to crucial applications such as email, documents, and calendar scheduling.

Google Apps is an online service, which means that you access the service through your internet browser. You data is not hosted on your computers in the office, but on Google’s servers (Also known as “Cloud computing”).

Besides email, documents, and calendars; Google Apps also include spreadsheets, presentations, instant messaging, intranet websites, video sharing, and groups.

Here are seven reasons why your ministry should use Google Apps over Microsoft Office

1. Price – It’s free. F-R-E-E Compared to Office’s cheapest suite (Home and Student) at $150.  Churches and Non-Profits under 3,000 users qualify for the free Education Edition. This would include helpful migration tools, and 24/7 customer support, both of which are also free. There is also a Premium Edition that is $50 a year and gives you more options (Read about it here), but I believe that the Education Edition will be more than sufficient.

2. Ease of Use – If you’re used to Office, it may be a bit of a learning curve, but after few days of use you should be good to go. Google Apps, email, documents, and calendars have a great user interface with a focus on doing the basics, easily.

3. Compatibility – Google Apps work on any computer with internet access. Windows, Mac, or Linux, if it has a browser, Google Apps will work. No install. No product keys. Ready to go with very little set up. If someone outside your ministry uses Office, Google Apps is completely compatible. You can upload and edit Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), OpenDocument text (.odt), StarOffice text (.sxw), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps), Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx) files, OpenDocument spreadsheets (.ods). You can also upload ANY file to store, share, and download from anywhere else.

4. Syncing Capabilities – Say you’re at the office and you edit a document with Google docs. Go to your home computer, and it’s already updated. The same with everything: email, spreadsheets, calendars. The information is being pulled from Google’s servers no matter what computer you’re on. With your username and password, you can even access your files from any random, internet ready computer. It’s that easy.

5. Email – Google Apps calls their email client: Gmail. (Maybe you’ve heard of it?) I’ve used Gmail as my personal email client for about four years now. I’ve tried other online email clients (Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL) and nothing compares to how awesome Gmail is. I believe it is simply the best email client currently available.

6. Calendar – Compatibility continues on with their Calendar App. Google Calendars sync with both Outlook and iCal. Google Calendars also have a great sharing ability that allows you to share your meetings and events with other staff members as well as see your other staff’s schedule.

7. Documents – Google combines documents (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), and presentation (Powerpoint) into one App called “Docs”. Besides the syncing capabilities (described above), Docs also has a great sharing option when you need to do some collaboration. If you’ve ever tried to work on one document with two computers, you know the frustrations that desktop software can leave you with. You will not be overwhelmed with options, but Docs has a great focus on the basics and are constantly improving and adding more features.

Ps. Despite having Microsoft Word, Docs, is my writing preference including the writing of this post.

Here’s a quick video intro to Google Apps:

This is just the basics of why Google Apps is great, but it’s not perfect. Have you used Google Apps? What are your thoughts? What could be improved?

Next up: Why your ministry should use Microsoft Office over Google Apps.

**Extra Bonus** – I’ll be discussing Office’s upcoming and soon to be released 2010 version, which is a better comparison to Google Apps with their improved sharing abilities and better Outlook interface. I’ve been using Office 2010 for several months now, but more on that later…

[Google Apps]

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