Microsoft News Tracker

Today, Microsoft announced a private beta of a subscription service codenamed “Albany” which apparently is intended to reduce the complexity of consumer setup and maintenance of home PCs.

“Albany” is the codename for a new all-in-one subscription service of essential software and services consumers told us were most important to them. We’ve pulled together the productivity tools people need to organize their lives, security to help keep their personal information safe and online services that make it easy for them to keep in touch with friends and family, and folded them all into a single service that also ensures the user’s PC is running the latest security and productivity software.

With just a few clicks, “Albany” subscribers will be able install the whole package, which includes Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, giving them the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for their personal and school projects; Windows Live OneCare to help keep viruses at bay and their computer fast and healthy; and Windows Live Mail, Messenger and Photo Gallery so they can connect and share with others. Albany also installs the Microsoft Office Live Workspace connector on the Microsoft Office toolbar, so users can save documents to their own dedicated online workspace and invite friends and classmates to collaborate and share.

Additionally, with “Albany” consumers get the latest versions of Microsoft Office Home and Student and Windows Live OneCare as they’re released. Combined with ongoing security updates, consumers can have the peace of mind that they have protection from the most recent security threats and that their PC is running at its peak.

It sounds like the load of crapware that comes on a new PC, doesn’t it?  And I’m sure that will be the favored marketing method. Buy a new PC and break out your credit card again when you get it home. I also think the provision of the newest versions of Office when and if one arrives during the subscriber’s “lease” is fraught with peril. Particularly if Microsoft does another huge user interface overhaul like they did with Office 2007.

Still, it’s all about the price and if the subscription is cheap enough it might be a good deal for consumers and help stave off free Office competitors like Google Docs. No prices were announced since it is a beta, so we’ll have to defer judgment.

Finally, Mary Jo Foley is apparently the only reporter who asked what happens if a subscriber stops paying. Microsoft says that he’ll have to purchase a full price copy of Office to access his data, but a little thought would suggest that there are other, cheaper alternatives although they may not be apparent to the average consumer.

Microsoft conceived of Office Live Workspace, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, as a way to counter the easy document sharing selling point of the various Web office app vendors and started a public beta last December. Today Microsoft announced that the beta is now available worldwide albeit only in the English language.

There’s a nice feature comparison of Office Live Workspace with Google Docs at Read Write Web, but in checking out the bells and whistles, don’t overlook the key differentiator: “Files can’t be edited from within Workspace, but clicking on “edit” will open them up in Microsoft Office (of course).” For better or worse, Office Live Workspace is not a Web app for editing and creating office documents - it’s a free document sharing service for purchasers of Microsoft Office.

As I have observed previously, Office Live Workspace is a reasonable way for Microsoft to try to keep Office users on the reservation. The question is whether it is enough.

Over the weekend Microsoft revamped their Office Live Small Business offering (which is the new name for the original Office Live which has little to do with Microsoft Office). Scott M Fulton III at BetaNews has a nice summary of the changes:

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Microsoft announced Office Live Workspace in October and today started rolling out the public beta. The play here is for Microsoft to bring some sort of equivalent of the easy document sharing provided by Web-based office software competitors to the users of their cash cow desktop Microsoft Office software. They have done this in essence by adding new file saving options to Office applications and connecting them to a document checkout service running on the Internet.

That certainly provides the sharing function, but the early press reviews are generally less than ecstatic because Office Live Workspace doesn’t provide any of Web editing features of the Web-based competition. Past indications were that it would be a cold day in Hell when that happened, but Microsoft seems to be changing its tune as Erick Schonfeld reports:

Granted, this is version 1.0 of a beta. It will get better. One of the Microsoft execs who visited made it clear to me that the company’s goal is “bridge the gap between the online and offline world so that people don’t have to care where a document lives.” He also suggested online editing capabilities would be coming “maybe next year.”

As long as the Web editing functionality is tied to a registered copy of Microsoft Office, the Microsoft bean counters won’t care, but how long can they keep it tied up?

Microsoft has a fundamental problem competing with the online office application offerings like Google Docs in that they want to avoid cannibalizing their considerable Microsoft Office revenues. Therefore they have to try to emulate the desirable features of the online offerings while still requiring that the users have a fully paid up copy of Microsoft Office. That’s just what they did today when they announced “Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a new Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.”

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