I get asked this a lot and frankly it’s an awfully hard question to answer. It’s like saying “How much do shoes cost?” Well, what kind of shoe? What is the brand and how much do you want to spend on shoes? You could be an athlete who needs proper fitness shoes or you may as well not get any shoes at all.
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Aah Google, she is an old friend of mine and we go waaay back. I’m not even jealous that my husband is her slave – She has even saved me from disaster on a couple of occassions! Most people only use Google to either search the World Wide Web, or they use Gmail and Gtalk, but Google offers SO much more FREE products that can help designers, or almsot any business.
I don’t just own an @gmail email address, nor do I actually really use it. I actually use Google as a backup to my professional mailboxes. Google has a lovely option under ‘Settings’ for adding your POP/IMAP mailboxes. Like most mail programs, you just need your email details and voila, in comes your mail. Now I still use my main mailbox on my Mac, but Google is recieving my mail as well. It doesn’t automatically download attachments when you log into Gmail, so you can relax about your bandwidth and downloading multiple huge emails. Now if one day my main mailbox decides to explode and I loose everything, I have an entire backup in Gmail. To date, I have mails from 2007 and I am only using 7% of Google’s limit. Lovely.
Google Docs are probably my second most used Google product. For designers who really can’t pay for Microsoft Office just to open a client’s text for their website, Google Docs really rocks. It is compatible with ALL formats from Office (.docx, .xlsx and even .ppt) as well as others, such as PDFs and JPEGs. Better still, once you open documents in Google Docs, it stores a copy online.
I also use some templates from Google Docs to manage my budgets, create invoices and quotes, among a hundred other things. Again, the best thing about it is everything is stored online. No need to stress about lost documents when your precious PC kicks the bucket.
Another great online tool from Google Products. I store all my important dates, meetings and reminders in Google Calendar. Again, everything is stored online and is safe. My calendar can be private or public, it can be incorporated into a hundred apps, including iPhone and Blackberry, and it can email you reminders.
The best thing about all these Google Products is, because they’re online, they can be accessed from anywhere that has an Internet connection. I can check my mail and calendar from anywhere in the world, without my computer. I can resend invoices urgently from my phone and update meetings at the push of a button.
There are tons of Google Products out there in addition to my above mentioned favourites. I’d love to hear what else you use and how Google Products help your productivity.
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