A few weeks ago we posted about Writely and a few other free web-based Word processors. AjaxWrite is another similar free service, one that looks especially similar to Microsoft Word. It loads in 6 seconds, opens Microsoft Word and Works, Word Perfect, Open Office, and Star Office documents, it also supports embedded graphics, tables, and footnotes. And it operates quite speedily. Really, why would anyone bother spending money on a word processor anymore? Our prediction is that within a few months this freebie service, and similar services will either get bought up or disappear once the big software companies realize they’re in trouble.

I’m not much of a fan of Microsoft Word, but unfortunately it’s one of those necessary evils that you just can’t live with out. There are plenty of software alternatives that you can purchase and even download for free, but our latest favorite Word Processor doesn’t require a download or even an installation. Writely is a free online word processor that allows you to read and write .RTF and .DOC ( Microsoft Word documents), and save them as PDFs. Writely works on Internet Explorer 5.5 and up, and most versions of Firefox and Mozilla. Aside from having most of the basic word processor capabilities, you can also use Writely to post to your Blog. Or you can have Writely email your document to a select group of people, and they’ll receive an email with a password giving them access to your document. So what’s the catch? No internet connection, means having no word processor, and the slower your internet connection is, the slower Writely will respond. But who can complain when it’s free!

We also discovered FlySuite.com which offers a similar free word
processor but requires downloading a Java applet. Even more impressive
is that FlySuite offers FreeCalc – a free Spreadsheet program.

Still not satisfied? You might also want to check out Writeboard.com. yet another free word web-based word processor, and Num Sum, which allows you to paste Excel data to its web-based worksheet.