Stop! Web Time!

[andrewducker]

EDIT: The Web is _anything in a browser_. If it's not in a browser then it's not the web. If you use a chat client that's browser-based, then that counts. If you use one that's a program, then it doesn't.

[Poll #1657175]

The reason I'm curious is Google's pushing of the Chrome laptops - which are designed to be web only. I know that a lot of my time is spent on the web nowadays, but I'm curious as to what percentage most people spend on it.

(Non-web usages of the computer are either playing non-web games (Dragon Age and Super Meat Boy this week) and watching videos - although that's mostly on Julie's PC, as it's in the bedroom.)

The second question is because there was a big battle over MS Office versus OpenOffice, and I realised that I don't really use Office at home since I stopped sending letters. I still have it (the joy of a brother who works for Microsoft), but I can't see me using it.

Comments

[innerbrat]

Do you mean time as in 'work hours' or just in general time? I always have a chat window open, even if I'm mostly using Writer, Photoshop or watching a video.

[andrewducker]

Work? I'm asking about home computer usage...

(as in, if you happen to work from home then discount that time, I'm only interested in personal usage for the purposes of this)

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I use Office quite a bit (but then my laptop is my work machine too) but I rarely use Word except that Outlook invokes it for email composition.

I could never see me using anything other than a decent PC though - too much gaming and other file-dependent stuff rather that purely web-based, even outside work.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Also, did you mean "web" or "internet", because the likes of Spotify, VPNs and Trillian mean I'm online almost all day but not necessarily using a browser.

[andrewducker]

Web. i.e. not using an app.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

OpenOffice has changed its name AGAIN, apparently. More drama with Oracle or whoever.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

It has?
http://why.openoffice.org/

Nothing about it (that I can see) on the Open Office website.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

I don't play games, but Office, Eclipse and Photoshop are musts for me.

Even the creator of Gmail (who is no longer with Google) has said that he'd be very surprised if ChromeOS lasts a year. Most obvious thing would be for it to be absorbed into Android - which, in my opinion, would make for a very compelling platform.

I'm really enjoying the web store in my desktop version of Chrome though. Tweetdeck in particular is refreshing.

[andrewducker]

What's different about Tweetdeck in Chrome?

I'd also expect Chrome and Android to merge in some way. If Android supported being in something with a keyboard I'd be very happy.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

When you say 'on the web', does that include time with chat programs like Jabber and AIM? Because I've got those running constantly, regardless of whatever else I'm doing -- like, right now, writing a paper. But if you're asking how much time I spend staring specifically at Firefox or Chrome, that's a different question.

If I could compose/format a paper in GoogleDocs and be confident that it would arrive in my professor's inbox looking just the way I want it to, I'd do it. But I haven't yet been impressed at the transition from one to the other.

[andrewducker]

"Web" is _purely_ the web. If it's a program then it's not on the web.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I'd never be able to replace my machine with a Chrome OS alike device, mostly as the non-internet time is spent using DTP software. As is effortlessly proven by the system in place at my work, running this sort of software over a network is an excuse for terrible pain - moreso if it were over the internet.

Then again, I am a unique case in that respect.

[andrewducker]

Considering the people who use Photoshop, or video editing tools, I'd say not unique at all :->

[simont]

I pretty much don't use Word or its ilk – WYSIWYG word processors in the traditional sense – but not because I don't have the occasional need to send letters to people like HMRC or the council. I just use TeX in those situations, because I needed to know it anyway for larger jobs and there seemed no point learning another totally different system too.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I can see Google's point. At home I pretty much only use the PC for web or for gaming. Even at work, 99% of the time I only use office programs or a web browser. If we didn't have Microsoft Office installed as standard, and used an office suite that worked in a browser (such as Google Docs), there would be very little I, or any of the other folk that work here, would do that wouldn't run in a browser.

I haven't used any office software at home for years. A few months ago I actually had to send a letter, but used PC2Paper.com which for 65p printed out my letter and posted it without me having to worry about finding a stamp of a postbox.

[andrewducker]

Oooh, Pc2Paper looks useful!

[naath.livejournal.com]

I use my computer for non-web things but I'm usually flipping between stuff; not focussing on one thing exclusively. I usually have my web-browser open, even if I'm playing a game or writing a letter or something.

I almost never use word processors, if I want to write a document I'll normally do it in LaTeX in a text editor; I do use a spreadsheet for my personal accounting though (Open Office for me, MS Office doesn't run on Linux...).

[kmusser]

I'm self-employed so home vs work usage often gets blurred. I do use MS Office at home regularly for non-work stuff though. I also have a browser window almost always open even if I'm not actively using it.

[broin.livejournal.com]

That's not an easy question.

I use OpenOffice and Google Docs a _lot_, but much of my writing/editing requires layout software so can't be entirely online. And I'll almost always have a browser window open for definitions, spell checks, grammar quibbles, etc. Sometimes I'll be corresponding with a writer, so that's Gmail or Talk. Some of my writing is on personal wikis before I drag it into layout/word processing. And then some of it is blogged. I keep very, very little locally - any big files go to Dropbox.

If I'm not working on stuff like that, I'm busy with Reader, forums or blogs. I stream a lot of tv. With some movies or tv shows I might well be writing or lightly reading at the same time.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I chose 70% as a rough estimate, but the replies from innerbrat and marrog apply to me too.
Also, if I were (as I hope one day to be) self-employed rather than working from an office, I'd use a feed-reader app and email client rather than Google Reader and Gmail, at which point my use of a web browser would drop to maybe 2% rather than 70%

[andrewducker]

I actually really like Google Reader. I'm not sure what a local reader would give me that it doesn't.

I'll be sticking with Thunderbird though.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

I answered under the assumptions of:
* Discounting my work PC, even though I do a number of non-work webby things from it (such as writing this answer :P )
* Discounting any work-from-home on my home PC
* Counting time in a web browser pointed at my local web server, which would (and does) work just as well without a physical internet connection (A lot of my leisure time is spent developing a webapp at the moment, so I test it in a browser pointed at http://localhost:3000/ ...)
* Discounting the very frequent "mail checks" that I do by glancing at the tab titles of my always-open web browser while I'm doing something else

I don't have the issue that some other commenters have of "I'm doing lots of things at once" - I don't do much IM, don't listen to web music, and I only use Skype while I'm also playing Starcraft II.

Given all that, the largeish categories my time divides into:
* Reading (web)mail, chatting with friends via the ToothyChat Ajax client, reading LJ and links from it, etc - yes
* Developing the webapp in text editor and command line - no
* Developing the webapp in localhost browser - yes
* Playing games - mostly no, but yes for flash games
* Watching video - mostly no
* Research on the web - yes
Probably adds up to about 70%.

[andrewducker]

See, that's the kind of analysis I like!

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Normally my answer would be "100%", as I always always have a browser window open. However, right at the moment half my computer time is at placement, where I'm using my netbook offline. It's weird.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

I decided that plugging the laptop into the plasma TV to watch torrented TV doesn't count as 'at my personal computer'.

I have MS Office at home because it is fairly cheap, and the price is worth my sanity - using something that is similar to but different from Excel (which I use 70% of my time at work) is awful. My most common use for MS Word is adding style tags to txt files before converting to epub. Most common use for MS Excel is roleplaying related.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

I'm such a weirdo that I type up all the recipes I ever use in a Word document, and I type my grocery list in Excel so that I can calculate cost per 100g or per 100ml of things more easily.

[matgb]

Sometimes, I spend a lot of time at the computer playing games. Especially when certain people point me at a 10p DL of a game I quite like.

But mostly, I spend 90%+ of my time on the laptop online. FWIW, mostly when I'm reading Docs and similar, they get emailed to me, so they get opened in Google Docs.

I read spreadsheets in OO, but that's because I tend to want to do weird sutff and the screen on the netbook is too small to use Google Docs effectively.

90% of the stuff I don't use the web for I could use the web for, or live without. I wouldn't want to, mind, but I could easily.

If I were buying a spare laptop, or one to travel with designed to be online pretty much the whole time, then ChromeOS would be something I'd consider if it was cheap.

[wychwood]

I don't use Open Office Writer or similar more than a handful of times a year, but I do frequently use gedit to type things up in. I don't know if that counts under your schema - it's something I definitely prefer to use a desktop-based programme for rather than over the internet, but it's not a full-blown word processor.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

I use gedit for drafting things and then they go on the web. Gedit is also pretty much the only non-web think I use on my netbook.

[andrewducker]

You're the second person to have mentioned Gedit. I use Textpad at work for similar things, because we have a site license, and I don't need anything more complex. Sometimes text-editors are exactly what you need.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

How should I budget my time if I'm browsing the web with my computer and playing music at the same time with a non web application?

[martling.livejournal.com]

I am assuming you will accept vim as a "word processor" since I use it for everything most people would use Word or its ilk for.

[andrewducker]

If you're using it to write letters, it counts :->

[martling.livejournal.com]

I would be interested in seeing how this differed if you split things up into "consumption" and "production" activities.

For me, if I am creating anything of almost any sort, be it email, chat messages, code, images, documents or whatever, then I'm doing so using non-web applications.

On the other hand, if I'm just reading or watching stuff, then these days that's almost entirely on the web for me, although I do an increasing amount of it through a local RSS reader (which is a bit of a grey area, since it essentially incorporates a browser).

[andrewducker]

Yeah - that sounds about right.

Although I use Google Reader, and don't miss anything from the RSS apps I used to use. I prefer Thunderbird to the GMail interface though.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

The performance issue with local apps vs web apps could I assume be mostly solved by having your own local server for any web apps that would be too slow through the internet. Which would solve security issues too. Assuming ChromeOS will allow this, of course... You'd be back to maintaining your own software though. (One of the things web-apps make redundant.)

I have to say, I prefer tabs to windows. My ideal would be a tabbed browser that allows split views.

[andrewducker]

Chrome is just the minimum OS necessary to host the Chrome browser - so you can go to any website with it.

What do you mean by split views?