Office Live Workspace, here is a beta that I’ve been struggling to love for some time now…
The offering is part of Microsoft’s answer to the gauntlet thrown down by Google Apps. And, if you have been watching the wires for the past couple of weeks, Microsoft has a brought forth a number of offerings geared towards subverting Google’s direct challenge to their cash cow Office + Exchange. So, if anyone is interested in looking at this service, MS just opened up the private beta to the public: Link.
In concept, Office Live Workspace brings forth some really good ideas around generalized collaboration and online (err… Internet) storage of content. In practice, the solution is actually pretty usable, runs fairly well, and looks pretty.
So… what is my problem? Well, in my humble opinion (and I know why), MS didn’t go far enough in taking the Office experience online. Here, I’m referring to the fact that to “edit” content on an Office Live Workspace you need to use a locally installed Office application. In other words, you still need to have Office installed on your machine.
Dang! MS was so close to making something that would have been really cool. But, because I still need to purchase and “install” a copy of Office my ability to edit content anywhere at any time becomes severely limited, thus reducing the usefulness of Workspaces.
Hopefully… things will change!
