I've been looking at Microsoft Office Live - currently in BETA. There are three offerings:
- Live Basics gives you everything you need to run a basic web site and manage email (2GB storage) for a limited number of mailboxes using your own domain name, including free hosting and domain registration! I wonder how they manage to do this? The service is free after the beta so Microsoft are effectively paying your domain registration fees! The domain is registered under your own name and you can keep it if you cancel the Office Live service, although you have to pay the ongoing fees of course. A great offer. I guess they are banking on the fact they will get enough return from those who upgrade to one of the following.
- Live Collaboration doesn't give you the above, but it does give you a good suite of online collaboration tools, including workspaces (shared documents) to and on-demand business applications (PIM tools, and employee, customer, project and sales and marketing tools). Starts at $29.95 after the Beta.
- Live Essentials gives you all of the above including larger capacities for the web and email hosting and offline email integration with Outlook or Outlook Express.
As I mentioned in a previous post I'm trying to get as much data off my hardware as possible* so this looks like an interesting toolset, especially if it integrates well with Office. Critics will of course raise the issue of having your data held bya third party. Of course many large companies do this already anyway. Perhaps in the future we will see companies who act like banks for our personal data, hopefully with a similar if not higher guarantee of stability and trustworthiness than the financial equivalent.
Both Live Collaboration and Live Essentials are free during the BETA so give them a try while it lasts. (Note the service is only available to US residents so you will need a US address to register!)
*Thanks to Ian Wilson for the link to online PC/desktop service DesktopTwo. This is a nicely done service but it really struck me how key having wide choice of applications is.
