Microsoft is launching a free workspace for users to share and access documents online. On the surface, it sounds great especially for students or office workers that travel frequently. It has a storage space for 1000+ documents and other online collaboration features such as editing and commenting.
The Office Live Workspace looks like a real competitor to Google's Docs, except when you get to the part about editing. The catch is that editing documents requires Microsoft Office to be installed. Everything else will probably work without Office installed, but an online workspace sans editing features isn't really a workplace since you can't work on your documents.
This requirement doesn't hit you at first and the Office Live Workspace FAQ doesn't state it either. The only hint of this is from the front page of the Office Live Workspace site, where it clearly states "Works with Microsoft Office". Maybe they should have appended "only" to the header.
[Source: Storing Files on the Internet, Microsoft Style @ New York Times]
Monday, October 01, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)