This isn’t something I ever thought I’d write, but it’s been an interesting few months in the world of office software. Microsoft’s released a widely-acclaimed upgrade last month, while the free-of-charge OpenOffice.org has seen a surge in demand from consumers and businesses alike. There are, in addition, emerging services – including Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet – that are compatible with existing software packages, and run within a web browser across an internet connection.

A perennial whine from users of Microsoft Office is that it has become bloated with unused features that conspire to slow down their blazing work rate. You can’t really blame Microsoft – if they didn’t develop their software they’d be criticised for lack of innovation – but maybe detractors would prefer Google’s web-based solution, where the features are, by necessity, stripped back to the bare bones. Certainly, for correspondence or a CV, your results with Google will be indistinguishable from Microsoft Word; I’m currently typing this column into a Google Doc, and it’s no more problematic than usual. And, of course, your Google-hosted documents can be accessed from anywhere that has an internet hookup. “As someone who uses multiple computers,” emails Colin McLean, “it allows me to abandon my grotty little USB stick and my stack of CD-Rs.” The other major selling point is the ease of working collaboratively: inviting others to make changes to the same document, with all their revisions saved for reverting back to if necessary.

But there are drawbacks. You’re at the mercy of your internet connection: if it’s slow, the service will feel irritatingly sluggish. If the connection goes down entirely (as it did for me 5 minutes ago, so I’m back using Word again) you won’t be able to access your documents. “I’d also question the wisdom of storing confidental or private data, unencrypted, on a remote server,” writes Andy Burrows. Of course, Google’s service is password protected, but if you forget to log out of a public computer, it could result in the catastrophe of your debut novel being passed off by someone else as their own work.

There are good reasons to seek alternatives to Microsoft Office – not least its price tag (over £300 for the Standard version). But we become entrenched in our computing ways; even Microsoft’s abandonment of the irritating paperclip that offers “help” with writing a letter every time we type “Dear” feels like something of a betrayal. So if you need an “online office solution”, ThinkFree.com offer one so re-assuringly similar to Microsoft Office you might wonder why the lawsuits aren’t flying. But for now, Google Docs feels more like a neat toy than a pretender to the throne.