Microsoft has released office live (at http://office.live.com), which is their free online app platform to compete with google apps. I have been playing with it via firefox on my laptop and it works ok, but I haven't been able to raise the pages from the browser on my n900.

Has anyone tried this yet, and have you had any success getting it to work on a Maemo device?

(Please feel free to include copious messages flaming both Microsoft and Google, with additional oblique digs on Apple as well. I think the free-flowing bile helps get the creative juices flowing, and will help someone find out how to make this work.)

It works in Firefox, but it's very slow. Maybe HideUserAgent will help getting it to work in MicroB

I hadn't reinstalled firefox since I flashed 1.2 onto my phone. I just installed and live works fine--not too slow over a solid 3G connection. Not how I would like to work all day long, but it is nice to know there is another way to create or view word and excel documents in a pinch.

I have never been impressed with google apps word processor, but the spreadsheet was pretty good. I haven't played enough to make a comparison here between google and microsoft.

Just tested Google Docs and Microsoft Live Docs and Google Docs is definately quicker. There's a definate delay with Microsoft Live Docs. Still would prefer an installable office package that I didn't have to pay for that is verified as stable!!!

I just tried, it does run after changing the user agent, and it's faster than in Firefox, but buggy and unstable. this is the one I used:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux armv6l; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/20070810 Firefox/3.0a1 Tablet browser 0.1.16 RX-34_2007SE_4.2007.38-2

edit: JFH, OpenOffice via Easy Debian takes forever to start, but it is very stable (for me), and free.