Microsoft is opening up its ad-supported "software-plus-services" Office Live Workspace answer to Google Apps to public beta for feedback, it says, starting with those who pre-registered for the thing.

The way it works Office users can post Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDFD files to an online collaborative workspace on Microsoft's servers directly from their Office programs with a click of a mouse and share their work or simply access it from someplace other than their PC.

It's supposed to be a saner approach than sending a document off to collaborators on a version-uncontrolled e-mail round robin. Five versions are preserved.

Changes in a desktop file are made in the cloud version.

Only registered users have access to a given document via Windows Live ID - unless of course one feels the world at large deserves to see them - and the documents themselves are supposed to be virus-protected.

It's supposed to work with Internet Explorer and Firefox and XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Vista on most PCs and Macs.

The current beta is for English. It's supposed to go international next year.

See www.officelive.com.

Meanwhile, an operation called Ulteo is testing a browser-based version of OpenOffice.