A while ago, I blogged how Microsoft is giving away free domain names if you try their free service, OfficeLive. I signed up and got my free domain name and tried out their site. OfficeLive Basic, is a hook to get you to sign up to the extravagantly priced other Office Live products at $29.9 a month.

Here are my impressions of Microsoft Office Live (free version).

Positives:

• Price is right.
• Might be a good place for a Business Card: a website with no functionality except contact information and product information. Adequate for a small company that wants web exposure, but does not want to do any online selling.

Negatives:

• Updating the site requires Internet Explorer.
• Site is Verrrrryyyy Slooooooow.
• No JavaScript.
• No Server Side scripting. There are no counters, forums, contact forms, blogs or other applications that EVERY website needs to succeed.
• You must use their templates for websites.
• The css and the Microsoft JavaScript are buggy. Pages do not display correctly under other browsers because of non-standard use of css elements and JavaScript. 15-30% of users will have display issues.
• Mail interface is very slow and requires multiple clicks to do simple things. You can’t autoforward mail to a more reasonable mailbox. No POP3.
• No FTP access.

You can quit Office Live after 60 days and the free domain name is yours to keep. I followed the complicated instructions and was able to free up ScienceFictional.com. I now have another domain name. I don’t really need it, but I’ll find a use for it someday. It redirects to CthreePO.com for the time being. Anyone need ScienceFictional.com? – it’s for sale cheap – and I’ll throw in cheap hosting. (along with AsoundingTales, AstoundingStories, AstoundingSF, AstoundingScienceFiction, StrangeTales.net, ATales.com and several others – AstoundingTales.com has a google page rank of 5 so it might be worth money.)