Chris WiegmanSaaS services have their place but this week has, once again, reminded me why I still prefer local software for things where I can still use it.
Our internet service improved when we switched from Xfinity to Frontier a few months ago but this is Florida so it is still subject to outages. When it does go out I find I can occasionally tether to my T-Mobile service but service at the house is, at best, spotty so I can’t always do much with it even when I can connect.
This week I’ve been working on some documentation for work and drafting in Pages instead of Google Docs on my work computer. I started doing it that way because my work Google Drive folder is a mess but an internet outage quickly confirmed that it was the right approach anyway. Rather than having to stop work when the net went out, something that seems to happen even with “offline mode” in Google Docs, I just kept working and didn’t even notice the outage for a good 20 minutes.
Now that’s a win to me.
Sure there are advantages to SaaS products but so much of what I really need to do doesn’t benefit from them. For those times I’m very grateful for local software and the fact that I’ve tried to keep using it first, even in 2023.