Microsoft is going head to head with Google in Web-based applications with its beta release of Office Live Workspace, which allows users to access and share documents online. But a DigitalJournal.com test found the service came up short.
Digital Journal — The Microsoft-versus-Google battle heated up recently with the beta launch of Office Live Workspace, Microsoft’s latest foray into Web-based applications. Extending Office to include online storage and sharing, this new service lets users organize documents online and work on them from almost any computer. Sounds familiar? Google’s Documents and Spreadsheets has emerged as an extremely popular alternative to Office apps, and for good reason: it’s intuitive, smart and doesn’t require anything more than an email address.
But Microsoft is trying to sway attention back to its products. Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, applauds the launch of Office Live Workspace, saying in a press release: “By combining the rich client experience of Microsoft Office with flexible, intuitive service offerings, we’re providing seamless computing experiences for our 500 million Office users worldwide.”
Available in a private limited beta test since October, Microsoft went public with the beta yesterday. Microsoft added several features to its original app based on user feedback: an activity panel displays the actions of users; email notifications alerts users to changes in documents or workspaces; and multiple documents can be dragged-and-dropped using an ActiveX control, which means the tool is only available in Internet Explorer.
The documents on Live Workspace can be shared and accessed between various people using the new serviceAnd there’s the rub: Microsoft wants to keep you using Microsoft software; to access cool features you’ll need Explorer, and to download a document you’ll need full working versions of Microsoft Office. That’s fine for ardent Office users but anyone using other programs will have a tough time adapting to the new service.
Testing Office Live Workspace
Using Office 2003, DigitalJournal.com staff found the Workspace sign-up process fairly quick, especially for existing Windows Live users. Once inside the program, we added documents from Word or Excel or even .JPEGs. Microsoft servers stored the docs for us to view from any computer at any time, also allowing us to share the docs between friends or co-workers who also have Live Workspace. Sharing was easy, but we could only view the documents online. We couldn’t edit them, unlike the real-time editing that makes Google Docs so innovative.
Workspace does keep track of every version of each document, which could be useful to people who want to see how a doc has changed over the weeks. This gives you the ability to revert a doc back to an older version if one of your edits was unnecessary.
Workspace users can choose various templates to create custom docs, such as a Meeting Notes template
One very useful feature was the activity panel, which let us know all the changes we made to the docs and what we had shared with each other. And we could also make notes using the Comment tool, which also showed up in the activity panel.
Variety is the spice that gives the service some serious appeal. Workspace included many templates, such as grocery lists, meeting notes, party invitations, or even sports team documents to keep track of season schedules and scores. That’s a feature Google Docs is lacking and Microsoft does a good job at giving users a wide range of possible docs to draw from.
But Live Workspace suffers from a crucial flaw: no online editing. While Microsoft promises that feature will likely be added in the coming year, it would be foolish to recommend Workspace over Google Docs if that’s the feature that appeals to you right now.
Also, another drawback is the ability to only share workspaces and not individual documents. Let’s hope that the limitation disappears once the beta tag is taken off and the final public version is released later this year.
We also noted a bug with the system: If you’re using Microsoft Word on a Mac, we constantly encountered an error when trying to upload a doc to the site. We couldn’t do it. A file named “test.doc” could not be recognized during the upload phase and we were given the error “This document failed to upload because the document name contains one or more of the following characters: “#%&*:<>?\~/|. Rename the file and try again.” It’s obviously an error with the way a Mac records a document name, but Microsoft will need to make changes to ensure its service is not platform-sensitive in the future.
Overall, Live Workspace is a good start for Microsoft but it still is going through some growing pains. Google Docs has won this bout, so far, and it will be intriguing to see how Microsoft improves on the beta. Like any heavyweight, Microsoft won’t back down too easily. Microsoft is the standard in most office and home environments, so an online feature will only strengthen a product already ubiquitous.
