Microsoft updates Windows Live Workspace
Microsoft sent out an email yesterday announcing the upgrade of Windows Live Workspace. The service is now called Windows Live SkyDrive. You get most of the features of Live Workspace with a few added features.
The upgrade to SkyDrive can be done very quickly if you already have a Windows Live Workspace account. Simply login and the upgrade button is right there. Click on it and it will take you to your new SkyDrive account and move all of your saved work at Workspace to SkyDrive.
It really isn’t a question of whether or not you will move to the new Windows Live SkyDrive but when you will move. If you try to opt out of the move, you can’t. Eventually, Microsoft is going to move you to the new service whether you like it not.
Pluses are that you will get 25GB of online storage free for your documents and pictures that you use in the shared space. You will also be able to interconnect your Office 2010 applications with online apps that are a part of Windows Live SkyDrive.
Negatives are that your Windows Live Add-In that worked with your earlier Office products won’t work in SkyDrive. You have to move up to Office 2010 to get that feature. Next anyone that you share documents with will also need to be on Office 2010. Bummer if you have different versions of windows in different offices or if you have clients or customers that have 2007 and don’t want to spend the money to upgrade.
There are also issues with syncing Outlook tasks, calendar and contacts with the new SkyDrive. It seems that your lists/tasks are saved as Excel files. Not exactly what you want if you are coordinating among several different people.
Another problem is that once you have upgraded, getting to your previous documents could be a problem. The service supposedly works with Mozilla Firefox. Every time I tried to access my previous documents after upgrading, I got an “Unable to connect: Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at auth.bay.livefilestore.com” message. Not cool.
Anyone with Office Small Business Website doesn’t have to worry. Their services will not be affected. They will simply log in as usual. If however, they use both, they will be dealing with two different systems now.
If the benefits don’t outweigh the cost for you, it might be time to explore some of the online share options like Google Documents, Google Calendar or Zoho, which has more features and less hassle.
