business - More on the office software

Today I have been playing with a few applications for office software. I write about that more often, since that gets much more attention than my stuff about China :-). Tim Wieringa suggested I should have a look at Basecamp, an application he is using himself. But it is really focused on project management, gets good review there, but that seems to limited for our purposes.
Then I had as promised a go at Collanos.
Franco Dal Molin, founder and CEO of the company, already popped up in my comments and announces that he will bring out a Chinese language version of his application in a matter of weeks.
I'm still trying to convince my colleagues to download the 45 MB of software that comes along with this free service and especially the high usage of their CPU they think might be a problem. So, real testing can only happen when they are also convinced, but what I have seen up to now looks good. It allows you to use the standard Microsoft Office software on your own computer, and that might convince in the end also my - in terms of using new gadgets - more conservative accountant and business manager.
Unlike the Google services it is hosted on your own computer and uses p2p technology to link up with others. I have just been telling everybody how much I like to have my stuff on the Google-servers, since I expect them to crash less often than my hard drive. What is used through Collano is automatically shared by the others, so restoring that part would be rather easy. Perhaps I should rely for the rest on Google.