Why is Groove on the backburner here?
by Volker Weber
Brian Jepson puts it nicely:
I've found that email kind of sucks. If you've got multiple authors on a document, and there's a lot of editing, it can be difficult to figure out who has the latest version. So this is where tools like Groove come in. My problem with Groove is that it's Windows-only and it requires enough CPU to make it unusable under Virtual PC. Ports of Groove to Linux or Mac OS X don't seem to be planned. So, the only workaround is to "get a cheap Windows PC, install Groove, plug it into your LAN, and go hide it in a closet" and access it with GWS. That's fine until I go on the road and can't access my GWS server.
Well, I don't even think, that is fine. If I want a server, I already have a server. And a better one, I might add.
Comments
Other alternative: use Andy's PopG service, a Thin Client Groove and you can run Groove from any computer (PC, Mac, Unix) with a browser. http://www.popg.co.uk
I am still sceptical about the future of Groove and GN. Too many strategic errors. See the discussion on this site a couple of weeks ago.
I have already commented on that alternative here:
SBC,
no way am I going to run Groove in a virtual machine. And I cannot see that they are going to do a non-Windows version. They would not have the resources or prospective customers to get this going. BillG could give them some money but that will go through the XP chimney. Ashok has suggested I should run an instance as a thin client on PopG. That does even make less sense to me. Even if Groove would be available on Mac OS X there would still be the Linux client missing. Ray has made it perfectly clear in one of his postings that he will not be held back by multi-platform development. So I am not holding my breath here.
