For the last 4 years I’ve shied away from any web-based applications. I stopped using webmail and setup my own email server, calender reminder system, etc. I wanted everything done in one place and doing it myself seemed like the only way.I got a Gmail account a long time ago, more out of interest in reserving my name. It looked more appealing than the other web-based offers but still not enough to make me switch.

But, something clicked when Google Calendar was released. It was cool, flashy, but exceptionally usable. It suddenly seemed like I really could have everything in one place without compromises. I’ve now switched to using Gmail as my email client (still masking as my personal domain email address) and calendar solution. 3 months have gone by and I still enjoy it.

Today I tried out the newly beta-released Google Spreadsheets for the first time and was equally impressed. I had actually been trying out other web-based spreadsheets for a while but nothing seemed great. Some had good functionality but felt very clunky to use, others had no features.

Google Spreadsheets has a VERY nice interface. It feels almost like it’s not a web-based application. It doesn’t have charting yet but I’m sure that’s in the works and I am definitely going to start using this for my non-charting spreadsheets.