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Microsoft Hands Out $100,000 Office Live Workspace Prize

Along with a plethora of additional prizes

Jun 23, 2008 13:40 GMT  ·  By
David Austin, a graduate student at the University of Washington
   David Austin, a graduate student at the University of Washington

The Office Live Workspace sweepstakes introduced on March 3, 2008 have come to an end. Microsoft announced that David Austin, a graduate student, is the winner of the $100,000 grand prize. The sweepstakes provided a way for Microsoft to attract attention and build an initial user base for the online Office service designed to be an extension of the Office System, much in the same manner as Windows Live builds on top of the Windows operating system. Signing up to Office Live Workspace qualified all users for the sweepstakes, but Microsoft offered a way to increase chances of winning for those who actually uploaded files and shared them.

"I was drawn to the portability and access to my documents, even when I didn't have my laptop with me, so I signed up for it as soon as I heard about it," Austin explained. "I currently use Office Live Workspace to keep my work schedule and school papers - both Word and Excel files - in one safe place. I plan to use this service even more in my grad program next year as I work on projects that will require me to share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents with others."

Microsoft indicated a strong interest in Office Live Workspace, pointing out that there have been hundreds of thousands of entries in the sweepstakes. The Redmond company has so far served in excess of 30,000 prizes, including Xbox 360 Elite consoles, 30GB Zune digital media player, copies of Office Professional 2007 and others.

Office Live Workspace is not a copy of the Office System moved in the cloud. It is, however, designed to work in conjunction with the Office Suite, allowing users to store, access and view documents online, but also to save files and perform sharing and collaborative work. While the service is still in Beta stage, it allows users to save over 1,000 Office documents in the cloud with support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats, including Office 2007's Open XML standard. Still, Office Live Workspace does not allow users to edit the documents, this action requiring the Office System.