On April 8, 2008, I shared my opinion with you that Zoho was the Number One online office productivity suite. This rating was a result of ease of use and the inclusion of base productivity applications.

If you and/or your organization needs installed office productivity software, the costs range from $0 (OpenOffice) to $499 (Microsoft Office.) There isn’t much, if any, functionality differences for the higher price. We’ve spent the past week installing and using the packages listed below and are making a recommendation for OpenOffice and WordPerfect Mail. Your total cost per install is $59. If you don’t need a desktop email client, then your out of pocket cost is $0.

One of the reasons we chose OpenOffice is for its inclusion in the Portable Apps suite which we will discuss in greater detail later this week. The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Sun Microsystems, who also sells Star Office.

OpenOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, graphics editor, and database. It runs not only on Windows platforms, but also on Mac OSX, and Linux.

If you need a desktop email client, we’re recommending WordPerfect Mail. It has great features for organizing your inbox, has outstanding spam protection, and easily accommodates mailing lists, distribution lists, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news feeds. The only drawback is that it runs only on Windows-based computers. If you need an email client for other platforms, we suggest Evolution.

Let us know what you think of these recommendations. We’d also like to know what office productivity suites you use and why.

As I continue the look at Web 2.0-inspired tools, I saw a quote in an IBM sales brochure on Web 2.0 that is very appropriate for this review:

Business trends come and go but innovation never goes out of style.

Google, Microsoft, Zoho, and ThinkFree Corp are re-inventing the productivity suite. Moving from the traditional software installation to an online hosted suite, these companies are forging ahead in the collaborative workforce arena.

My definition of a “productivity suite” is that it must contain a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation program. Icing on the cake includes: database, calendar and task list, email client, instant communications, and a means for collaboration.

I’ve had the opportunity to review four online productivity suites in the past month. I’ll present highlights from my findings below. I’m not affiliated with any of these organizations nor am I receiving any compensation for my opinion.

Number One– Zoho
Rating: 3.2
Strengths: Ease of setup, base productivity applications
Weaknesses: Lack of calendar/task list functionality

Number Two– Google Apps
Rating: 2.8
Strengths: Calendar/task list/email client integration
Weaknesses: Set-up challenges

Number Three– Office Live
Rating: 2.2
Strengths: Ease of setup
Weaknesses: Need to download word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation files to properly edit

Number Four– ThinkFree
Rating: 1.7
Strengths: Ease of setup, base productivity applications
Weaknesses: Calendar/task list/email client integration

I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter so that you can receive additional details about our research as well as advance notice of upcoming reports. In April’s newsletter, we’ll publish detailed findings about online productivity suites.