Since my new Macbook* doesn’t have Office installed (and I don’t feel like buying the suite since all I ever use is Word), I decided to check out Writely, which is now Google Documents. Basically, Writely is to Word what Gmail is to Outlook — at least in concept. Writely isn’t quite as cool as Gmail in terms of features (there’s no word processing equivalent to Gmail’s message threading awesomeness) but it still packs quite a wallop.

Not only does it provide a completely browser-based word processing application with all the tools I need (word count, find & replace, track changes, revision comparison) but it also has some wiki features that make it awesome for collaborating. For instance, a friend just sent me her resume to edit, and I was able to make changes in Writely and then instead of emailing it back and forth with her, I could just invite her to work on it with me online.

I can already see where there’s room for improvement (my friend said it borked her resume formating), and the need to be online could be challenging at times, but for the most part, I think this will work just fine.

This now means that I use Google tools for: search, email, calendar, instant messaging, photo editing (although only on my pc), word processing, group management, and probably 10 other things I can’t think of now because they’re so seamlessly integrated into my daily routine. Damnit, Google. You own me.

*Yes, I’m bi-platform now, although honestly I don’t quite get all the Mac idolatry. Yes, this laptop is really pretty and nice in the ways that all new computers are. But, uh, my life hasn’t really changed now that I’m using it in addition to my PC.