IF YOU USE Micro¬soft Office, you'll want to sign up for Office Live Work¬space. Currently in beta, the free service provides online file-storage, document- sharing, and desktop¬presentation
features, and finally gives Microsoft a challenger to the likes of Google Docs and Zoho. Unlike those two excellent productivity
suites, Workspace doesn't offer Web¬based applications;
instead, you edit files omine using the desktop versions of Office XP, 200f' or 2007. You install a free, downloadable plug-in, which installs a toolbar in your desktop ap¬plications. The toolbar al¬lows you to save new files to the Workspace site, add files already saved on your hard drive to the site, or open and edit documents previ- ously stored online. The site supports both Internet Ex¬plorer and Firefox, but the Firefox version lacks a useful ActiveX-enabled button that opens a stored file in the appropriate Office applica¬tion with a single click.

The easy tie-in to online storage (500MB for the beta) brings welcome back¬up and anywhere-access advantages. You can use the service to store your work documents and then access them from your home com¬puter, for example. In addi¬tion, you can share either single documents or collec¬tions of documents called workspaces with anyone (though users will have to be logged in to the service to edit files), and you can create online event or task lists that you can then sync with Outlook. If you're on a computer without Office, you can still preview files on the site or create simple, rich-text notes.

Because you create and edit Workspace-stored files in Office locally, you need an Internet connection only to open a file from Workspace and save the file back there. Your changes will save to the online copy when you're connected, but changes you make to the online version do not automatically syn¬chronize with any locally stored version (if you have one). This arrange¬ment means that you could end up with two-or more-ver¬sions of a document with the same name. Google Docs and Zoho allow you to both edit and save files online, which eliminates this poten¬tial problem.

Workspace also throws in a niCe bonus feature called SharedView; Microsoft informally calls it "LiveMeeting Lite." Through SharedView you can easily invite another Workspace user to view your desktop or even take control.

Though Office Live Work¬space greatly extends the usability and convenience of Microsoft Office, it's clearly still a beta. Most of the site wouldn't display on one of my test machines, and on the same system, SharedView didn't func¬tion. Microsoft was unable to figure out the cause of the problem.

Workspace makes Micro¬soft's suite more useful. Using it is a no-brainer if you've already sprung for Office. But if you haven't, you can find what you need in Google Docs or Zoho.


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