I have already told you in a past post that I replaced Microsoft's Visio with Gliffy. What I am going to do here is give you the reasons why.

First - Gliffy is Free to use forever (with restrictions - like only 5 public documents). So, once you try it and find out that it works just like Visio, but better because of easy collaboration and access from any computer, you will probably want to subscribe at $30 a year. Compare that to Visio at $259.95 for Standard 2007 ($559.95 for Professional 2007). For the price of Standard 2007, you could use Gliffy for over 8 years and always have the latest version - no upgrades required, they're included and automatic!
 

Now let's talk about the interface. The first image below is Microsoft's Visio (click to view larger image). It has excellent usability arrived at over multiple versions over many years. The second image below is Gliffy (click to view larger image). You will notice a similar interface, but Gliffy adds easy collaboration as the real bonus. While you can be in the Web 2.0 application together, to see changes - you have to refresh. I am hoping they improve that in 2008.

I have been using Gliffy for over a year now. In that time, I had my laptop pc (Sony Vaio) die. I replaced it with the cheapest MacBook Apple makes - remember because I am nearly 100% Web-based (with the exception of Mac OS X, Adobe Acrobat and Skype), I don't need a lot of horsepower to run these applications. Two months ago, however, my hard drive had to be

replaced. Well - I never worried about the documents I had created on Gliffy. They were never stored locally. Another huge benefit of Web 2.0 over traditional desktop applications.

I hope this encourages you to adopt another Web-based program - stay tuned, I'll keep reviewing more of them.