Free Online Wordprocessors

So, if you are tuned into the tech news these days, you must have heard that Google bought Writely. It's one of the online, free wordprocessors out there right now. I say one of many, because I know of at least two others (I'm sure there are more). AjaxWrite and Zoho Writer.

I got curious. Do they really compete with Microsoft's Word? Sure the cost is great (can't beat free) but what about the features?

After briefly checking out the interface and creating test documents, I have to say that they are sadly unmatched. And for now, I am going to shell out money to buy Microsoft Word. They have the most limited, basic functions. Meaning you can type, change fonts to bold, italics, various styles of fonts, change justifications, insert graphs, tables, etc. But guess what? Not single one of them has the ability to insert a footnote!!??

In my book, without the footnote function, you can forget about using it (well, as a lawyer, I am pretty biased that the footnote function is an essential, if not basic, wordprocessing feature).

I have to acknowledge, though, that several features that seem better are (1) that these online wordprocessors (except Ajax Write) allows multiple users to change the same document and (2) they can save to different type of documents -- pdf, doc, rtf, etc. I don't think Word allows you to save as pdf in most cases.

Until the features improve, though (footnotes!), I'm probably going to sit by and watch which one ends up winning in the free, online wordprocessing arena.