It is with a sense of puzzlement and hope that I begin to sort out how the small business of my wife and I will decide what to do with the incredibly exciting possibilities that Google and Microsoft are creating as they continue to lock horns.

Both Anna-Maria and I have been using computers for most of our adult lives. My brother built me a Heath Kit in the early 70's from which I ran a small law practice in Hawaii. I evolved from Autoscribe with its huge disks that had to be swapped out not only for data but to load aspects of program in and out of memory. If I close my eyes I can still hear the humming/banging of the huge Diablo hammer slammer printer.

After a stint with WordPerfect, I finally moved to Word which I used exclusively for decades now. 

Like many in the grip of the Redmond Giant, I struggled with both with operating systems and Office Suites. Some times I gulped down frustration bordering on resentment at the costs and that the software needed the installation of exchange servers or working with expensive services to provide and infrastructure to make our projects truly shareable and synchronized.

And so as Google moved into the cloud and developed apps and most especially Gmail, I made a switch. It was a tremendous relief to know that everything we communicated was backed up and universally accessible. With Desktop making everything on our hard drives and web based email quickly findable. The relief, the unclenching of a tight knot began to loosen.

At this time, the full power of what Microsoft Office products allowed were unnecessary.  I had moved into a semi-retirement where cheffing, a long love, became the focus of my creative and work energies. I was involved in several projects both in cheffing and in Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication where we shared Google Docs and spreadsheets. For this purpose they were fine, even fun.

A few years later, however, I returned to projects--both personal and professional-- requiring more of the program horsepower of my earlier life. And in this Google stuff proved maddeningly deficient.

It was befuddling that a company full of geniuses missed some features that seemed so obviously needed.

Some examples:

I had the need to print some envelopes for some communication that required words on paper. This is something that I had taken as second nature in my Word oriented lifetime, either using the sort of clunky mail app or developing templates with some frills to improve the visual impact. In wanting to honor my internal commitment to using Google products, in the spirit of pugnacity and wanting to be part of the cool new kids on the block, I attempted my first attempt and printing envelopes.  

I could find no way to print envelopes within the online instructions. They did not even have an entry for this simplest of tasks. My shock was palpable. I was certain that I must be missing something. Even with the genius of search, especially when applied to product manuals, I was sometimes surprised how the choices I made for meaning sometimes were not the right word in system. And this was in a product made by the Lords and Ladies of search.

So as was often necessary when the user manual failed me, I ventured into the user community. I discovered that not only was printing an envelope not easily supported but that  there was a fairly long tail of folks who had asked about the feature. 

The solution I finally found required steps that were complex and unmemorable. I did not want to feel like a programmer to print an envelope.

And then it came time to send out a personalized letter to attach to email, something  that Word and Outlook had made pretty easy decades ago. If it can be done in Google Docs and Gmail Contacts, well I sure didn't see how. Frankly, I was pissed and didn't want top find out if there was another clunky patch.

As a chef working in the Imperial system (American pounds, tablespoons, etc.), I wanted to move my recipe spreadsheets in the Google product. No such luck. I know a s a forerm special ed teacher that fractions in spreadsheets are important to developing worksheets.