Thing 18

I explored Google Docs. I was able to copy and paste from an existing Excel spreadsheet into one in Google Docs easily. The whole creation of a spreadsheet was very easy! Here is the link to my Summer Reading 08 shared spreadsheet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pfxzv2pm_FXH2s4seWJ9xWA

I can see several reasons that could make this advantageous over Microsoft Office. Of course the main reason being the sharing aspect. Being able to make a document "shareable" and then "editable" is super! Their tour gave many reasons for sharing rather than e-mailing a document. I will have to give some thought on how I might utilize this online document creator.
Another reason could be cost. Microsoft Office is quite expensive to for the regular public to buy. Maybe this could be used rather than forking out a lot of cash for the Microsoft product.

A disadvantage to using an online document creator would be that they are not as comprehensive as Office. Office has so many options and features. There is no way that these online document sites could compete.

I would say use these for simple, straight-forward documents that you would like to be able to share.