Let's face it, a lot of the technology we use is very frustrating. I know many people who use PCs at work who for various reasons would rather be able to use Apple computers. I've even met a few people who are forced to use Apple kit and who much prefer PCs. The fact is, unless you're the IT director of your own business with an unlimited budget, chances are your digital life is a compromise. We end up investing in the tech that works for the IT department, the boss, or our suppliers. But indulge me: what would you use if you could use anything? Lotus Notes? Quill pens? A Palm Pilot that you lost ten years ago but never found an adequate replacement for? And what would get rid of if the powers that be would let you?

For me, the application I would most love to replace is Microsoft Outlook. It just sucks. You can tell it thinks of everything as an e-mail message, which is why its Tasks and Notes are so meh, and it has a mean-spirited, bare-bones feel that seems completely out of date. There's no question that it works and gets the job done, sort of: but it seems to do even the things it does well with so little style or grace. It's even more galling to be stuck with Outlook now there is such a tempting array of new free and open-source online applications which store your data in the cloud, which you can access from anywhere, and which aren't locked down by those tedious corporate IT policies.

I've recently tried abandoning Outlook for the sunny uplands of Google's online personal productivity applications, and I've been surprised by the results. First the good news. For mail, I've been using Gmail, and it is great, as you would expect. However, the adverts and other screen bling that you can ignore when it's your back-up e-mail account are more annoying than you'd think when it's your primary screen for facing the day. However, the basic principle that you archive everything, and keep your inbox empty is a very solid one, and covers up a multitude of other sins. I though I'd miss having an offline e-mail client, but it turns out I'm pretty much always online if I'm at a computer.

Google calendar is also great. It's fine for the simple things I need it to do, and the information in it is easy to share to those so inclined, although frankly I'd rather share my toothbrush. The weak puppy here is Google's contacts management, which is an element within Gmail which feels seriously underdeveloped. Outlook's contacts management is the only bit I really miss. I've always liked Plaxo's contact management, which is free in its basic form, and you can sync it one-way with Gmail (Gmail sends new contacts to Plaxo), so that's my work-around for now, but this is clearly a bit of a chink in Google's desktop armour.

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For writing, I've been using Google documents, and it's great – it's very convenient to be able to send someone a link to an online document, especially a very long one. However, despite my head being firmly convinced that my data belongs in the clouds, my heart just doesn't feel quite right scribbling into a browser window. So for when I absolutely positively have to be able to delete the document by accident on my very own hard drive, I've been using the latest release of OpenOffice, with its excellent Writer word processor.

Writer is now indistinguishable from Word in terms of what most people need, and so no one should ever buy a copy of Word, that preposterous piece of bloatware, ever again. Well, that's what I'd like to write. Except the very first document I wrote in Writer and sent to someone was formatted in such a way that they couldn't open it, despite being camouflaged as a Word formatted file. This means I'm reduced to sending around files in the lowest common denominator text format, which annoys me for reasons that I don't understand. I still don't think anyone should pay for Word again, and Writer is great, but it’s irritating that it makes it slightly harder to exchange documents with those still suffering under Word's heavy yoke.

For Instant Messaging, there's Pidgin, which does everything I want it to do, and makes it easy to connect to lots of different instant messaging networks. It also means I can get rid of Yahoo! Instant Messenger as my primary chat client. Perhaps it's getting old, but there's something about Yahoo's cheerful yellow good times marketing colours that just annoys me now, so it's great to get it off my desktop.

I've stuck with PCs because over the years I've given Steve Jobs far too much of my money, although I can't promise that in two weeks I won't be drunk dialling the Apple store and ordering an a 3G iPhone and iMac. The main reason I'd do that, other than the confusion and delight brought on by fine wine, is that there is something satisfying about applications that work together properly, and Outlook, for all its ugliness and bare functional disappointments, does neatly integrate adding a contact, creating an appointment, and sending someone an e-mail. I'm pretty sure I could get such an integrated application experience from Apple, and look much more stylish doing it. That feeling of software that is pleasingly integrated is about the only thing I miss in my new hand-rolled application suite.

However, the thing about my little experiment that really gives me pause is that the applications I've mentioned, along with Google Reader for browsing the web, and Google Bookmarks for recording where I've been, and Google Maps and Google Earth for working out where I'd like to go in the real world – well, they're all pretty good and they're all absolutely free. The amount of computing power and decent productivity software that’s out there at virtually no cost to the user is staggering, and of course explains quite why the software business is in such turmoil.

How about you? Are you groaning in your Microsoft shackles, or trapped inside an Apple nightmare? Have you escaped to the Penguin-infested waters of Linux land? Let me know what your dream personal productivity set-up is in the comments below.

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Michael Parsons helped to launch The Industry Standard magazine, and was the launch Editor of CNET.co.uk

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