Get 10GB free on Google Drive with Quickoffice
(MoneyWatch) Quickoffice is one of the oldest mobile office productivity suites around -- it was an alternative to Microsoft Office on devices like the Palm and Pocket PC more than a decade ago, and later made the move to more modern devices like iOS and Android. Recently though, Google purchased the suite and now offers it for free. This week, the deal is even sweeter.
If you install Quickoffice for iOS or Android, Google will give you an additional 10GB of space on your Google Drive account for free. It's not a forever deal like Dropbox is fond of doing, though; this is 10GB for 2 years. After that, you'll revert to your usual free or paid storage space.
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Don't be confused. Quickoffice is not the same thing as Google Docs -- Google Docs is an online suite of productivity tools, while Quickoffice is an app that works offline as well. And Quickoffice offers superb compatibility with Microsoft Office files, which is no doubt the reason that Google bought the suite to begin with.
Unfortunately, offering both Google Docs and Quickoffice creates a convoluted set of apps that are confusing to use. For example, if you try to open a Google Doc from Google Drive in Quickoffice, you get a message that you can only view the file -- to edit it, you need to open the Google Drive app. Microsoft would be proud. Hopefully, Google will merge these apps and services into a single solution soon.
If you already own a version of Quickoffice from before the Google acquisition, be advised that the app won't be supported in the future and it has some compatibility issues with iOS7 as well. You might want to uninstall it and add the new version in its place. And you'll get 10GB of storage space for your troubles. Note, though, that Google says the extra space will spear in the next few weeks -- you won't get the space instantly.
Photo courtesy Google
