ajaxWrite Ain't Right

I came across the latest Michael Robertson project (of MP3.com and Lindows/Linspire fame) and was intrigued: ajaxWrite. He introduced it on his blog stating:

What if there was alternative for Microsoft Word that would install and open in 6 seconds, read and write Microsoft Word .doc files and run on Macintosh, Microsoft Windows or Linux computers? And oh yeah, it was FREE so consumers didn't have to pay $499 for Microsoft Office. I'm excited to announce that day is here.

That's definitely news. Considering all the alternatives Microsoft Word has withstood all challengers over the years. Granted it's not a fair fight since Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopolist but regardless Word still stands as the benchmark word-processor application.

My initial impressions: this is a very basic beta. I don't want to judge it too harshly but Robertson is not ready to back up his claims. First, the site doesn't seem to have adequate bandwidth so the 6 second launch is way off the mark. In my few attempts at launching the program, it takes several minutes to load up over a very fast link (90 Mb). The ping times averaged over 100 ms whereas pings to Google and Hotmail were averaging 7 ms and 2 ms respectively. Unfortunately the sluggishness makes it hard to objectively compare this to a desktop application like Word.

Opening Word documents was therefore a little painful... In my tests they rendered ok although not exactly as I expected. More complex documents (with lots of formatting and tables) didn't successfully complete although I suspect this to be a bandwidth problem again.

I also note that Mr. Robertson's comparison to Office is disingenuous. As ajaxWrite is only a word processor, it would more closely compare to the standalone version of Word which retails for $229. I'm sure there's a suite of applications in the works, but it'd be nice to see a more honest comparison.

In the end, I think there's room for improvement but the premise is faulty. Desktop software might be considered "bloated" but there are distinct advantages. For the same reason most people prefer Outlook over the certainly capable OWA, I've yet to see a browser-based application that properly and fully replicates the desktop experience.

That said this has some promise for casual word processor users. Unfortunately most of those users probably find programs such as WordPad just as acceptable...