I don’t like Google Docs. I don’t like Microsoft Office Live either. But I do like OpenOffice. A lot. Wondering if there was any means of using the OO suite online, I did some searching and found that yes, there is a way. It’s done thru Ulteo’s web site.

After signing up for a free account with Ulteo you’re greeted with this:

Ulteo is actually a lot more than just OpenOffice, but being that’s what I was interested in I clicked the Start now! button for OO.

On the next screen you get this:

You choose the app in the OO suite you’d like to launch. I wanted Writer (the OO word processing app), so I waited a few seconds for the Java load to complete and clicked the green Launch OpenOffice.org NOW! button.

Once inside, yes this is a real true-blue OO Writer app - 100% Java loaded. This is not a web page thing pretending to be an online document editor.

Said honestly this is cool. My only complaint is that the Java is a bit wonky at times, however this is a true Writer app. Considering how large it is it loads up quick.

For those wondering, yes you can store stuff online via this site. They offer a free 1GB of space to anyone who has an account. For docs and so on that’s not bad.

You might want to try this for yourself - especially if you wanted to see OpenOffice in action without actually installing it.