Microsoft Monday launched the public beta of Office Live Workspace and added a number of features to the service that users can team with the desktop version of Office. Microsoft, back in October 2007, revealed their first step in bringing Microsoft Office online, with the free web-based Office Live Workspace. They have now announced a public beta test for the services, to anyone who wants to give it a shot as an online extension of their desktop office.

Please note that Office Live Workspace is not an online version of Office but a number of services that let users share and store documents online, so it would be much appropriate to call it the online extension of your desktop office. So do not misunderstood online office products offered by Google, Zoho and others that allow users to do word processing and use spreadsheets online for free, the new Microsoft approach simply allows users who already have purchased their MS Office software to make easier use of it online. He! He! No free ride with big brother.

Microsoft Office Live enables users to save more than 1,000 Microsoft Office documents to one place online. With the software, a user or collaborators can access the documents and make changes. As obviously guessed the entire Live Workspace service is built on the back of SharePoint Server, which Microsoft is also offering as a service to enterprise users (Formerly, those services were limited to firms with at least 5,000 users). With Office Live Workspace, documents can be created with Office or any other document editors and then upload to a central repository.

Well in overall, Microsoft Live workspace is impressive evolving service which in time may gain supremacy on online office processing, after all their desktop version rules majority. The online service works smooth on Internet Explorer 6 + or Firefox 2.0 (Couldn’t get it worked on Safari or Opera). The most major and powerful feature of Office Live Workspace that almost knock me of my feet is the Office plug-in (currently available for Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows, others are on the way) that allows users to access and edit documents right from within their desktop office. Once installed, a new "Open from Office Live" entry in the Office menu (for office 2007, not sure where it positioned for office 2003…perhaps File?) provides single-click access for signing in and accessing documents according to workspace. Saved changes to a document get sent back to the Office Live Workspace servers right away and are immediately reflected online, sweet like pie. Office Live Workspaces keeps track of every version of a document, allowing you to use the Web UI to roll back to a previous copy. Now tell me this free service that extends your desktop’s processing to web collaboration, will be admired or not?

Regardless of simple shortcoming like-limited to MS office users only, I certainly think MS live Workspace rock! And in time it will be a real threat to other online collaboration services, well off course if it’s remains free!