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Office Live Workspace to be out by year-end
According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to release the final version of Office Live Workspace by the end of 2008. The Google Docs competitor, which was launched as a beta in December of 2007, has been downloaded by over a million users.Office Live Workspace is NOT a web-based version of Office. Instead, it is something of an Office-add-on (though you can use it on a computer that does not have Office installed). You can upload Office documents (Word, Excel and Powerpoint files) to Office Live Workspace and then access them from another computer (so it is a virtual flash drive of sorts) or grant permission for other users to access your documents. They can then edit and upload versions and share new documents with you.
Live documents cannot be edited directly in OLW, though you can create "web notes" which are similar to Google Docs documents and spreadsheets or "web lists" -- that as of right now don't do calculations. You can also comment on an Office file, so even if you don't have access to Word to immediately edit a document, you can comment on what changes need to be made.
I have an Office Live Workspace account, but I have to admit, it has received little use. It isn't so much that Google Docs is that much better -- the spreadsheet and forms options are, the word processing is about the same -- it is just more ubiquitous and has become a more streamlined part of my workflow.
If you have a Windows Live ID (nee Passport), you can use that to sign-up or sing into the Office Live Workspace beta. It is aimed at Windows users, but works fine on a Mac running Safari (and works with Mac formatted Office documents).
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsjfjbSep 3rd 2008 6:10PM
nobody talks about an OpenOffice Live...
( ticking ticking ticking )
that was just an idea, like Office Live...
Back to you, Houston.
Roger that, Roger.
proeeSep 3rd 2008 7:39PM
Office what?
RyanSep 3rd 2008 10:33PM
Yeah I've had an account there for ages too and have pretty much never used it after my first poke-around on the site. There's stacks of sites that can be my virtual flash drive (MyBloop, Gmail Drive, etc) but I find myself using Google Docs a fair bit more often as it is a much better web-app. I think it's too late for MS personally - get over the fact that you missed this boat and invent something else that's new and revolutionary that we'll all want to use (besides Windows 7)
Eric J.Sep 4th 2008 12:31AM
This looks basically like a free SharePoint-lite. Get used to it - it'll probably be what the next version of Windows looks like.
QuikboySep 4th 2008 2:06AM
I think the problem is that OLW is just too simple. I mean by the way the article describes it, Microsoft already has a similar and more robust service : Live SkyDrive.
It does almost exactly the same thing with any Office docs : upload, ability to share then download. They just need to enabled peer editing and it'd be the same exact thing. Though SkyDrive offers other storage solutions too. OLW is really too simple.
Microsoft needs to find better ways of integrating Office with the web, than a simple site to upload/share/edit thing.
Christina WarrenSep 4th 2008 10:49AM
I agree with you 100%. I understand they don't want to create an online or webified version of Office - and honestly, I don't know how many people would really want to use that - I know I wouldn't; they still need something else.
What would be awesome would be if OLW was actually better integrated with Office itself. If from Office 2007 or Office 2008 (Mac) you could immediately connect to OLW, edit a file in Office and submit your changes as a new version and also, from a document window in Office, decide to put it on OLW and designate who could see it, then we might have something. Integrate the app with the web service -- by Microsoft's own admission, they don't see this as a substitute but an adjunct, so integrate the two. If I could have access to all my the shared docs online from within Word and share stuff back, I would NOT use Google Docs, I'd use OLW. But if I have to use a web app, I'm going to use the better web app.
For all I know, that could be part of the bigger plan, but something like that is going to be necessary if it ever catches on beyond the try-and-see users.
benNov 19th 2008 9:52PM
came across this article while reading the one on zoho, for me i used a recently launched software Hibernater, allows me to save and resume my work easily on any computer, not bad.