We recently shared our experiences regarding our quest for the online spreadsheet collaboration tool that best suited our needs. Not long after we stated that eXpresso won our business, I received an email from Microsoft promoting their new Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta. The free workspace looked intriguing, so we decided to sign up and see how it compared to eXpresso. Once I completed the quick registration and entered the site, I immediately noticed the similarity in appearance between Live Workspace and eXpresso. Not especially surprising since eXpresso uses Microsoft Web Component controls on their site, but I perceived it to be a good sign.
Although the user interface looks close to eXpresso, the similarities stop there. Interestingly enough, eXpresso makes better use of Microsoft Office products than Microsoft’s Live Workspace does. Once the spreadsheet is uploaded, eXpresso allows the user to edit and save it directly from the website or by using the Excel Add-in. Live Workspace allows you to edit Notes, Lists, Task Lists, Contacts, and Events from their site, which is convenient – but Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents have to be downloaded in order to be edited. That means if you want to change punctuation on one sentence, you have to download the document, edit the sentence, and then re-upload into Live Workplace.
In order to share a document with a colleague, you send them an email through Live Workplace that provides them with a link. This link allows the person to view the document in limited form – after they sign up for an account – and then download it in order to make edits or see full formatting. Doesn’t it seem easier just to e-mail the darn thing?
The tool would work well as an online storage for an individual’s Microsoft documents, but as a collaboration tool it lacks the convenience factor that eXpresso possesses. The features offered by Microsoft Office Live Workplace beta will continue to evolve as it comes closer to fully launching, but in the meantime, we are still very happy that we chose eXpresso.
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