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Have any web-based applications replaced desktop apps for you?

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zridling:
If so, which ones?

Gmail has long replaced my email client, since it's good enough. And Zoho Apps have saved me a small fortune in the past 15 months. I also play a lot of online chess and use online PGN viewers for studying games.



The two great advantages to web-based apps is online storage/backup and hey, it's OS-independent, which means they could care less whether I'm with XP, GNU/Linux, or that other one.

Josh:
I really dont think that online applications will ever, truly, replace desktop based applications. Gmail is nice, but I prefer to have my email stored locally as well as remotely. I cannot do this with gmail unless I use pop, which is a pain in the butt and quite an old/outdated protocol. I love IMAP. If gmail supported it, I would gladly move to it permanently, however, I cannot since IMAP has become quite a necessity to me. As far as other online apps, I still think a more full featured desktop application would be preferrable to an online version which is just ok.

lanux128:
for me, so only Gmail has supplanted the traditional email client, though i do keep Thunderbird around to d/l & archive my Gmail messages once a month.. i sort of *trust* Google with my mails since it is an online behemoth and unlikely go down any soon or in danger of being bought over by another company.. however, tellingly i don't use much of Google Docs because i believe it's too much of hassle to wade through folders in a browser to find a documents..

Deozaan:
Only Gmail for me replacing desktop e-mail client.

Google Docs is kind of handy for sharing documents/having them available wherever I have internet.

app103:
I have actually found myself replacing web-based stuff with some sort of desktop application when I can.

I have switched from using the web-based blogger.com & wordpress editors to Windows Live Writer. (I absolutely LOVE it!)

Sometimes things are a bit of a combo of both, like using yahoo's notepad & calendar with the desktop widget notepad & todo list. I never really had a use for either till I got the widgets. It was too much bother to open the web pages and use it that way, but on my desktop I like it.

Same goes with Pandora.com. I love it, but having the browser window open bugs me, so I use it with OpenPandora.

About the only thing I really have switched to a web-based app is gmail. But just like Josh, I wish there was a way to download it easily to keep a local copy, just as I have it, with all the labels intact for each email. I don't want to have a folder based system for my email any more. It would be great to be able to have some sort of desktop email client specifically made for archiving gmail locally.

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