Eugene's observations

Ever had a PC fail at the worst time possible ? Here are a couple of websites that enable people to work online – that is, storing their documents on a centrally managed secure server. You are still able to maintain a copy on your own PC (and this would be a good backup procedure), but especially for someone who travels a lot, it may be easier to be free to use any PC in any country to work on your letters, spreadsheets and presentations. Unlike a laptop PC, online files can’t be dropped, stolen or left in a taxi.

There are two sites that I recommend for this: http://www.thinkfree.com and http://www.zoho.com Both are similar in what they offer, but have different styles so you may find yourself more at home with one than the other. They are both free for most things you are likely to want to do and both are Microsoft Office compatible. The key differences are:

• Thinkfree offers 1GB data storage free, Zoho, 200MB
• Zoho has mail and calendar components that Thinkfree does not have
• Offline editing is possible with Thinkfree by downloading their free desktop program. Zoho offers plugins for Word and Excel

If the mail component of Zoho does not offer all you would like, then Google Apps would allow you to send and receive mail as if from your own domain. Note that I am not recommending Google Docs as Thinkfree and Zoho are better in my opinion.

Another possibility for e-mail would be to use IMAP rather then the more usual POP method of collecting messages. The key difference is that POP messages are usually copied to the local PC then deleted from the server. With IMAP, messages are held on the server and each PC that connects just synchronizes folders, thereby enabling any PC in any country to get a current view of messages.

If you do choose this route then you must be prepared to put a couple of hours in to reviewing the applications and learning how to use them effectively. But if you do I think you may find working easier as you are freed from being tied to a particular computer that may fail at an inopportune time.