Zoho Writer combats Google Docs with Google Gears to support offline editing

I've been using Google Docs for the past few weeks on one of my other writing projects and found it to be great for basic word processing tasks. Aside from missing advanced features that I don't particularly need, the largest drawback of Google Docs is that you need connectivity to use it. No web access equals no Google Docs usage. Luckily, I have WiFi in all of my devices and of course, can fall back to my high-speed wireless USB modem. For that reason, I really never considered another online document editor until just this morning when I read that Zoho Writer has enabled offline document editing.

Here's the ironic kicker: Zoho is using Google Gears for the offline usage. Obviously, if you don't have Google Gears installed, you won't have the offline editing and document synchronization features of Zoho Writer. I've had Gears installed on several mobile devices since it hit the web and it's worked without fail with Google Reader. If you were looking to try a web-based document editor, now might be the time to check Zoho for this capability alone. The question now is: how long before we see Google counter with the addition of Gears to Google Docs?

Update: just for clarification on system requirements, I should note the following. Gears works on XP & Vista with IE 6 or better and Firefox 1.5 or better. On the Mac you'll need Firefox 1.5 or better; Safari is not currently supported. Linux has the same Firefox requirement.