Windows Vista launch - live from the Australian event

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 30 November 2006 06:11

Your IT - Entertainment

Microsoft spokespeople talked about these companies all ‘betting their business’ on using the new trio of Microsoft software.

I was able to ask the question about smaller businesses with only a couple of employees or sole traders wanting to use something like Sharepoint for themselves.

My question was surrounding the Office Live system – would I, or small businesses, use something like Sharepoint, which needs its own server platform, or would I use the online services of Office Live, which are meant to offer similar sorts of sharing and collaborative capabilities, without needing to go down the Sharepoint path, especially if you are a smaller business.

Tony Wilkinson from Microsoft said words to the effect that the Office Live program would be something that would be relevant to my needs, save for the fact that Office Live is not yet available in Australia, something I personally found a little surprising, although I’d be even more surprised if Microsoft did not move as quickly as they could to get Office Live working for Australians.

I also asked the question as to whether or not I could just go to the Office Live service in the US and sign up for it there, or if it would block me based on my IP address. Tony laughed, and suggested that the Office Live service in the US was not localized for Australian users.

From this I took it to mean that I could indeed sign up for the service through the US site if I really wanted but if I needed support or Australian localisation I’d have to wait for a local version, which is fair enough.

The Vista launch event has now ended. Once again, it was going to be the business launch, and that’s definitely what it was, with all the consumer activity waiting for January 30, 2007.

We’ll be installing Vista soon and reporting on it at iTWire very soon.