Recently I have been experimenting with cloud-based solutions for using Microsoft Office with my Mac, PC, and iPad.
This past week I downloaded the
OnLive Desktop App to my iPad. The OnLive Desktop App provides users with a Windows 7 experience on the iPad. With this free application users are able to use Office 2010 Word, Excel, PowerPoint along with a handful of other apps like Paint and Notepad. After you sign in to your OnLive account you are taken to a virtual Windows 7 screen. From there you can start a new Office document from scratch or you can access any documents that you have uploaded to your OnLive account. You can access your account through a web browser and upload documents to your account from either a PC or a Mac. All your files are seamlessly synced to the OnLive servers and your free account gives you 2GB of storage.
Another great cloud-based solution for using Microsoft Office products is
CloudOn. CloudOn is very similar to OnLive Desktop in what it has to offer. One difference is that CloudOn uses a
DropBox account to sync your files to the cloud. CloudOn provides you with the same amount of online storage as OnLive since a free DropBox account gives you 2GB of space. Since I have DropBox already installed on my local machine I find it very easy to have my documents ready to use with CloudOn without having to log in to another account to upload docs. DropBox can also be easily accesed from a web browser.
The look and feel of the two programs is very different. CloudOn is more of streamed version of Microsoft Office while OnLive Desktop gives you the virtual feel of working in the Windows environment. CloudOn only offers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint where OnLive Desktop has some additional Microsoft Programs. Try out both and see which one works for you.
