Microsoft Office Live - the pros & cons

After writing this rather lengthy discourse regarding Microsoft's latest venture into total world domination, I began playing around with my prospective site. Here's my list of the benefits and potentital downsides of using this application:

The Pros

1. Easy to use web designer - create professional looking webpages quickly with the point, click, and type module.
2. 500 MB of storage space - use photos, videos, etc., you'll be hard-pressed to fill up this much space (if you do, you should be doing more lawyering, and less web designing - which one did you go to school for again?)
3. Marketing applications - easily promote your business with "adManager" and Email Marketing
4. Email - download all of your email to MS Office Outlook 2007 (of course) with the Outlook Connector, store up to 5 GB of messages, and create 25 separate "branded" email accounts
5. Price - the service is free for the 1st year, then $14.95 each year after, what's better than that? I paid $200 for 2 years, for my personal family website, and I still had to learn HTML

The Cons

1. No calendar synchronization - without paying more, it's impossible to synchronize your online and offline calendars. For anyone in a larger firm who depends on other attorneys, you should check out alternatives like ShareO. See my analysis here.
2. You're tied to that evil empire
3. Limited web design tools - despite the many design features, there is a limited number of templates, which may look "cheesy."

Certainly, every small firm or solo practitioner will benefit by using the MS Office Live service. This gives you a quick opportunity to establish a web presence and "validate" your law practice.