I'm surprised that I have not see this anywhere in the docs, faqs or elsewhere I looked.
I've recently become a big fan of one online app that uses Gears (Zoho busines suite) and I am attempting to sell this as a replacement to Microsoft Office to my VP of IT. Within the "disadvantages" or the "against" points, there is obviously online availability, data privacy and other concerns. But there is one thing that Zoho and other Gears applications do *not* do and that is the basics of any application in use today on a computer: File Associations. Let's say I'm using Zoho (or Google Docs for that matter) as my main Document editor. I received Word documents everyday from candidates that want a job with me, and I need to open those files. What user will want to save the document from their email, floppy, website or USB key, then open the application, select "import", then "browse" to get to the file in order to open it? None! No one wants this sort of long, complicated method of opening files when right now, all they are doing is simply double-clicking on the Word file from their explorer, or from Outlook, or from an in-house application like the one we use for resume storing/applicant database. I would strongly suggest that Google gets on this case as soon as possible - to offer file associations with an online application from the Windows Explorer window in order for users to easily open their current files with the new application without hassle. And if that's already possible... Document it! Cheers, Eric-Sebastien Lachance
