Collaborate on Documents within Microsoft Office
If you're not quite ready to take the plunge into working with Google Docs through your Web browser, you can download the Google Cloud Connect plugin for Microsoft Office, which is now freely available after a long period of testing. This allows more than one person to work on a Microsoft Office file that's been uploaded to somebody's Google Docs space. Any edits made by others are instantly reflected within the document, all within the standard Microsoft Office program window, and you have the added benefit that files are stored in Google's cloud and revisions tracked.
Keir Thomas has been making known his opinion about computing matters since the last century, and more recently has written several best-selling books. You can learn more about him at http://keirthomas.com. His Twitter feed is @keirthomas.