nan | 楠木

The public beta is open today. Sign up here with any Windows Live ID. For easier use you’ll need to download and install an Office add-in, which is available for Office versions XP to 2007.

Is this big Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs?

Well, it’s hard to say now – not the least because personally I’ve been unable to save and open documents from Workspace (I was able to at first, but then I did some modifications to my Live ID account and now it’s not functioning – don’t know if those two things are related or it’s just the server getting overloaded).

Anyhow, it’s easy to see the appeal of Workspace – for serious Office users who want to access documents from multiple computers as well as (more importantly, to some) collaborate with colleagues, this is the product they’ve been waiting for. The killer function is the full integration with Office – you don’t need to open a browser to open your online documents, just do it from your Word directly. Don’t know if or when MS will allow Google to develop a similar add-in for Google Docs.