GAIN - Google Documents

While I am most proficient with Microsoft Word when it comes to word processors, I am becoming more and more convinced that Google Docs is a better service.  While both are incredibly similar in most aspects, there are some minor advantages that Google Docs has over Word, and a few things that Documents just does better.

The ability to share and collaboratively edit a document on Google Docs is a great tool.  For school purposes, for example, students in a group project can easily get online and contribute to their part of a project without having to get together to work on it all at once.  And while Microsoft Word does now include this option, it is definitely clunky when compared to the Documents version of the same service.  One of my finals during my senior year of college was done in this manner, and it was very efficient and convenient.

One of the biggest things that always bothered me about Word was how annoyingly difficult it is to add pictures and images to a document.  Google Documents has made this process easier in that, unlike Word, one doesn't have to know the ins and outs of the program just to be able to put a picture in the exact spot they want to.  Word has an awkward interface when it comes to formatting and arranging the pictures in the document, and I've seen plenty of people get frustrated just trying to perform this simple action without warping their document's text all over the page.

Another benefit of Documents?  It's free.  Instead of handing Microsoft an entire week's paycheck just to be able to use Word, Google Documents is sitting right there, waiting to be used by anyone and everyone for the cost of nothing.  And if that isn't enough to convince most people to use Docs, I don't know what is.