[Mercury_22]

Microsoft Corp. rolled out a limited beta of its Live Office Workspace file-sharing and collaboration service today but will not open it to all comers for at least several weeks, and perhaps months.
The service, which lets users post Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as PDF files to an online storage space, then share them with others, will be available to those who preregistered in October, said Eric Gilmore, the senior product manager for Microsoft Office.

"At the start of the beta, we'll have a private beta period," Gilmore said. "We'll somewhat restrict how many can come on in the next weeks and months until we open it for a public beta." People who preregistered will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis, Gilmore said, so those who signed up immediately after the service's Oct. 1 announcement will be among the first group given access.

Unlike the efforts of rivals such as Google Inc. that are taking shots at Microsoft's Office with online applications, Live Office Workspace is designed for storing and sharing documents, not creating them.

Full story ComputerWorld

You can download Office Live Workspace Update for Windows Vista Here

The Office Live Workspace Update installs three Windows Vista updates (KB945435, KB945145, KB933860) and one Office 2007 update to ensure optimal performance on Windows Vista when using Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with Office Live Workspace. The update improves the performance of opening and saving Workspace documents from these Office programs. In some cases, the update also resolves problems with "Open from Office Live" and "Save to Office Live" functions of the Office Live Add-in. This update is only needed for computers running Windows Vista.

This post has been edited by Mercury_22: 10 December 2007 - 12:20 PM