Documents to Go vs. Quickoffice

[writingmonkey10]

Which one should I get?

I intend to use one of these suites for writing - stories, essays, etc. I also want to be able to sync edited and new documents with relative ease...so which one should I go for?

Thanks.

 

[linsam]

Which one should I get?

I intend to use one of these suites for writing - stories, essays, etc. I also want to be able to sync edited and new documents with relative ease...so which one should I go for?

Thanks.

Good question. I'm wondering the same.

 

[IrishVixen]

Just an FYI--Neither fully supports external keyboards, which I find appalling when even the most basic "notes" apps manage to do so. The delayed typing response in both apps when using an external keyboard is noted in numerous reviews, neither supports the use of the arrow keys, etc.

I do all my writing in either Notebooks for iPad (long stuff) or SoundPaper (quick notes, posts with links, etc.); with Notebooks, I at least have multiple options for getting what I've written off my device. My husband uses Pages with his iPad, and I'd consider that over either of the "Office" apps listed, if only for the keyboard support...but its file management abilities are basically non existent.

Nothing perfect out there so far, unfortunately.

 

[mKTank]

Quickoffice. More features, looks nicer, etc.

 

[Don Kosak]

I actually like Pages better from a "create from scratch" on the iPad standpoint. I save frequently to iWork.Com (1GB for free), and pick up on my Mac or PC. You can save in Word, PDF, or Pages format. Your documents live on the cloud.

All of these solutions suffer from the same basic problems of poor external keyboard support (I bought a bluetooth keyboard with my iPad, but I've ended up typing directly on the glass 90% of the time...). They also suffer from conversion issues with MS Word (as even Microsoft's "open" formats are so convoluted no one seems to be able to fully support them.) Printing, and File Management are also issues.

That said, I'v adapted my workflow. On the iPad, I take lots of notes, roughly compose the document, maybe do a little editing and revision in the evening on the sofa. I save right to the iWork.com cloud. For the final pass I'll grab the document from iWork on my desktop and give it a quick polish. Then I can tweak and edit again back on the iPad as needed.

I'm really hoping that iOS 4.2 (or what ever the operating system update for iPad is called) will fix some of these issues.

I'd like to see these 4 things in the Operating System update: (in order)

#1 External keyboard Arrow Key Support (reaching up to touch the screen to reposition the cursor in spreadsheets or documents is a pain...)

#2 A "rich text editing" control, so that all the third party apps can focus on their app, and the formatting/compatibility/etc instead of writing all the low level stuff like font sizes, bold, italic, and letter spacing from scratch. Really, they already have the code in iWorks for iPad. Make it part of the OS so other text handling apps can benefit from the fast, highly optimized text handling.

#3 Printing. Even a subset of print drivers (postscript?), or a "print to PDF" and spool to your Mac or PC via WiFi would be extremely useful. This should be part of the Operating System, not something each app should implement (or ignore) like they do now.

#4 Better file/folder management in the device. I don't expect the iPad to have a full Unix or PC type file system with rights, and symbolic links, and such... But it would be nice to at least support folders or a tag system for your work. Tagging things "Client X", "Client Y", "Personal" etc, would be a big step forward, especially for folks like me that use the iPad for work.

Let us know what you finally pick, and how you work with it.

 

[ashVID]

Office2HD had a recent update to support external keyboards, I think it lacks the docx and xlsx editing support. I've combed over all these apps, still not happy with any of the editors. I love Goodreader for reviewing docs but you cannot create or edit.



ash =o)

 

[IrishVixen]

Don, the OS already supports the use of Arrow Keys for navigation. I use them all the time when writing in Notebooks for iPad (heck, even in forums typing posts like this one)...it's just that neither Docs to Go nor QuickOffice has chosen to add full keyboard support. I've even read that Docs to Go has no future plans to do so.

I'd like to see one of these apps fully implement styles. From what I've read and seen, even Pages for iPad doesn't do this in a fully compatible way with the desktop version of iWork. That just makes no sense to me.

ashVID--thanks for the heads up on Office2HD. Looks like an app worth keeping an eye on.