Microsoft Office Live Workspace: Overview

Microsoft Office Live Workspace (MOLW) is one of Microsoft’s many cloud-based services. Microsoft describes the service thusly:

Save your documents to the Web—for free!

Access files from anywhere

• View documents from almost any computer with a Web browser
• No more flash drives—files are there when and where you need them
• Password-protected document sharing; you control who views and edits 
• Simplified online collaboration; everyone works from the same documents

Work with programs you know

• Save over 1,000 Microsoft Office documents in one online place
• Manage documents in one convenient place
• Open and save files from familiar programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook

According to the FAQ, MOLW requires no downloads, works with Internet Explorer and Firefox, works with many document types (including non-Microsoft-Office files), allows sharing of documents with up to 100 other people, and integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 to allow direct saving of documents from local applications into the cloud. And at least for now, it’s free!

One major drawback: your storage is limited to 500 MB. So it’s really not realistic for anything but the smallest business to use it as a central repository. In theory, each user could set up his or her own OLW; that way a 10-person company would have up to 5 GB of storage. But each person would be responsible for sharing out his or her own files with all the other employees, and I think that would get a little unwieldy.

In future posts, I’ll go through the process of setting up a MOLW account and kick the tires.