Not off to a great start.

I was sitting here and work, and there really wassn't any work to do, so I decided to try something out. While looking through stuff I discovered that Microsoft just released the (somewhat) anticipated Office Live site. The idea here is compete with Google Docs by offering their own online document editing web app. This is a sensible move on Microsoft's part, given that Google is stepping on their long controlled office suite territory in a major way. Granted, the Google Docs apps still lack many of the features available in their Office counterparts, but the advantages offered in cloud storage and extensive collaboration make up for a good deal of these. I know that this year alone I have used Google Docs for at least five school projects, all of which I would of used Word for in the past. So how does Office Live compare? Well, things looked good in the beginning. I went to the site and was able to sign in using my Windows Live account. I was very impressed at this point with what seemed to be a very generous offer from Microsoft. I was sure they didn't really want to offer Office services for free, but I figured that they were somewhat forced to by the fact that Google Docs is free and that's who they are competing with. On top of the free access, the user interface looked really nice. The "workspaces" motif was intuitive and appealing, and I liked the fact that they offered several workspace templates, all of which come loaded with template docs for that particular theme. For example, I decided to check the job search workspace and found pretty nice templates for the following:

• cover letter
• informational interview request
• interview preparation notes
• interview thank you letter
• resume
• interview schedule
• job contacts

I also noticed that you could share documents with collaborators and add comments to documents. Impressed so far, I decided to try to create a new document. I clicked on "new", chose to create a Word document, and then the wheels totally came off. As it turns out, you can't actually edit anything online. Instead you go to the site, click on a file and "check it out", meaning that it opens up locally on your machine in Microsoft Office, and when you are done working on it you check it back in. There are at least two flaws here. First of all, while person has a document checked out it is inaccessible to all other collaborators. This I was only mildly annoyed by. After all, even though you technically can simultaneously edit a Google Doc with your collaborators, I don't see too many people actually doing it. The second issue is the big one. You have to actually have Microsoft Office on your computer to do anything. To begin with, this makes the whole thing a little dishonest, because it's not really free to use like they claim. Sure it's free if you already office, but if not you are out of luck. Chalk one up for Google. The next problem, and this is more personal, is that it is totally inaccessible to Linux users (and to Mac users who don't use Office for Mac). And what about Google Docs? Oh yeah, it's totally cross platform...chalk another one up for Google. Once I got over my shock and outrage, I decided to move on with my experiment and try (since I happened to be using a Windows machine at school) to edit a document. The thought hadn't occurred to me yet, but I realized at this point that there was going to be an issue. How was Word going to be able to check out and check in documents, given that they weren't originally designed with that functionality in mind? The solution is appalling. You have to download a plug-in to make it possible. That's right, you have to actually download and install yet another thing from Microsoft for this is to be usable, which is just great since I'm working on a campus machine that I don't have admin rights on. At this point I am ready to call this experiment a total fail. The gist here is that Microsoft is trying to offer me a product that does what Google Docs already does, only it has less features, requires that I already own their expensive office suite, isn't cross platform, and requires I install more stuff. Bang-up job guys.