In Pictures: The best office apps for your iPad, round 5

In the heated competition for native and cloud-based iOS productivity apps, InfoWorld chooses the winners you should own

By Galen Gruman

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The alternative of cloud-based office editors

An alternative to hosted Office services are Web-based document editors. They require live Internet connection and use their own user interface on mobile devices. But we can't recommend either of the services available.

Google's free Google Drive app provides basic editing of Office files via a Web interface -- emphasis on "basic." You get only basic touchup and formatting capabilities for Word and Excel files (not PowerPoint). Why bother?

The free newcomer AstralPad provides moderate editing capabilities -- more than Google Drive, less than hosted Office -- but is very slow, allows only two open documents, requires manual keyboard activation, and has a confusing interface. It does allow access to Dropbox files and can export PDFs you can then print.

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In Pictures: The best office apps for your iPad, round 5

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