Going Android at work part 2: The writing life

I’m the editor of a small weekly newspaper and run its website. I do a lot of different things, but what I spend do more than anything else is write and edit text documents.

When I first started working with documents on a Mac (that was what the newspaper where I worked used) I wrote with Corel’s Word Perfect. Opening Office documents required translation software. It was a pain. That was less than 15 years ago.

Today, the same tasks can be performed in many different ways with none or little of the crossover pain of the old days. And there are great options available that are free: from cloud based powerhouses like Google Docs to the LibreOffice. You can do very professional work without paying Microsoft $200. These are good times for those who want an Office alternative.

During this series, I will look at all sorts of different things that make Android work for me, from file browsers to applications to hardware features, but I wanted to begin with the most important part of making an Android tablet for work possible for me: OfficeSuitePro 6.

OfficeSuitePro6 is a much better and richer application than Google’s own Drive for Android. It’s much closer to a traditional office suite — not as powerful as LibreOffice, but very good for composing and editing on or off the cloud. And it does not need the net for power. Also, on Android, OfficeSuitePro has a lot of saving and formatting features Drive for Android does not. Also, Drive, inexplicably, does not have spell check, which makes it a non-starter for me for regular work. And OfficeSuitePro’s handling of spreadsheets, from creation to editing, is far better than Drive.

Why OfficeSuitePro?

There are other suites out there, but OfficeSuitePro comes recommended by people I respect and I was able to get the $14.99 app for 25 cents during one of those mega Android sales. So far, it’s been the best quarter I’ve ever spent.

The first thing that made OfficeSuitePro a good choice was its easy integration of cloud services. In the last year, I moved my office’s basic file exchange to Dropbox. Dropbox was a handy and simple way to collaborate that had no dependency whatsoever on platform. I could easily trade documents to a design team on Macs and editorial staff on Ubuntu machines. We turned to handling our entire editorial flow, from intake to editing to filing for layout, in Dropbox, and because we’re only swapping articles and photos, not state secrets, security is really not a concern.

Within minutes of opening OfficeSuitePro, I synced it to my Dropbox and Google Drive accounts. The syncing capabilities are really as good as you could possibly ask for. You can save documents directly to either service and you can open documents from either, edit them and save, which then pushes the new, edited version right to the cloud. It handles both .doc and .docx files and can save as either. This makes document creation, collaboration and editing with Dropbox as streamlined as it is on a desktop system. I couldn’t do the same with a Chromebook.

Finally, you might be wondering about printing. OfficeSuitePro can print directly to a printer using Google’s Cloud Print, which is ridiculously easy to set up, but does require another computer running Chrome if you don’t have a Cloud Print ready printer. A simple sign in and I was able to print PDFs and documents through my work desktop system right to my office’s networked printer.

It is worth noting that the Asus Infinity ships with Polaris Office, which looks and performs well, but it is not as feature rich as OfficeSuitePro. For one, it does not have the syncing capabilities. It would, however, probably serve a lot of users very well. I’d would recommend OfficeSuitePro, but if $15 is too steep, Polaris Office will probably work.

How’s that keyboard?

Another vital part of using the Asus Infinity for actually doing work is the keyboard dock. I don’t care how good a touch typist you are, nothing beats hardware keys. The Infinity’s dock is a bit small but a huge improvement over the on-screen keyboard.

Over the weekend, I used the keyboard exclusively to work on editing stories. It’s not as sturdy as a notebook keyboard and the keys are cramped, but I found editing was really pretty easy and typing was not difficult. In addition, there are great hardware keys to control, volume, brightness, wifi and settings. You can launch the browser, the menu, search and go home all with hardware keys.

The hardest part of getting used to the keyboard was the shortened right shift key, which you’ll need to retrain your muscle memory to use effectively or risk hitting the up arrow / page up key. The keyboard’s track pad works well but I typically leave it off to keep from popping the pointer all over the screen while I type. Reaching up to touch the screen is really not all that hard, in fact, after a weekend of use, I found myself trying to tap the display of my regular laptop to switch tabs in Chrome. It feels natural.

The only drawback to the keyboard is the size, which, while a great improvement over the on-screen keyboard, and well suited for email and editing (and as a handy stand for watching video), it’s not comfortable enough for composing a 1,000-word piece. Here, however, the dock provides the solution to the problem. I plugged in a wireless Microsoft keyboard nub and the keyboard worked right out of the box. So the keyboard dock is great for portability and allows for keyboard expansion for a real serious writing session. (Interestingly, the Apple Bluetooth keyboard that worked out of the box with the Nexus 7 was not recognized by the Infinity, even though both are built by Asus and both run Jellybean.)

Conclusion

The bottom line is this: If you need to work with a tablet, Android is perfectly capable of handling the document creation, editing and collaboration with the right tools. A good office suite is the best way to do that, and there are many options, none more expensive than $20. Beyond that a tablet like The Asus Infinity with a keyboard dock and USB expansion makes typing more than just possible.

Next: Best way to browse and move files and more.

Anything you’d like to see explored? Leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to cover it.