When I heard about Microsoft's Office Live, I figured it would be an online version of Microsoft Office, ready to do head-to-head battle with Google's ever-expanding online office suite. But I was wrong -- at least as it stands today.

Instead, Microsoft has put together a suite of online tools that, in some ways, like the Google suite, make it easier to be mobile, but, unlike the Google suite, extend the way a user can take advantage of the traditional Microsoft Office software applications.

According to Baris Cetinok, Microsoft's director of product management and marketing for Office Live, the product is aimed squarely at an underserved set of customers -- businesses in the SOHO (small office/home office) market, who rarely have an IT staff.

Again, that might sound like Google's solution. But while that consists of alternative applications to Microsoft Office, the Microsoft solution doesn't. Instead, it packages supplementary applications, all of which can be helpful to small businesses.

Office Live applications include a mail and calendar server that can work with Microsoft Outlook, a business contact manager, a quick and dirty Web site creator, a collaboration tool and a way to manage online advertising. Put together, it's a pretty good place to find a broad set of tools; but savvy users probably can find competitive products in each category that are better in one way or another.

Choosing to use Office Live is partially a decision about whether to get your tools in one place from one vendor, or to cobble together your own set of best-of-breed tools from various sources.

Even if you choose to cobble together your own toolset, Microsoft has provided good reason to at least sign up for Office Live -- you have nothing to lose if you sign up for the free version. That allows you to test the applications, and to add capabilities later by upgrading to the fee-based versions.

Plus, if you use online marketing, you'll probably want to include Microsoft's advertising in your mix; and Office Live is a reasonable way to manage the ad program.

As you might expect, the mail and calendar applications are a lot like Microsoft's Outlook program, with a similar interface and terminology.

It's not as robust as Microsoft's Outlook Web Access, which is a similar program for larger companies. But for rudimentary e-mail and for sharing of calendars, it's useful. It also lets you use your own domain for multiple e-mail addresses so you can personalize your e-mail for your business, and you can connect your desktop version of Outlook using a free software connector.

The biggest problems I had with the mail program were the prominent and confusing links to Microsoft's Windows Live (a different online service from Microsoft), and my inability to find an easy way to get back to other portions of the Office Live suite -- except to use my browser's back button.

Because of the similarity in names between Office Live and Windows Live, I can envision users becoming confused and frustrated. It took me a couple minutes to realize that I was in Windows Live instead of Office Live.

The jewel of the suite is the workspace application, which helps users stay in sync with one another even if they're in different cities. It takes longer to set up than competitive applications, and is not quite as intuitive -- but it's very flexible. You can set up work spaces for your team or customers, with permissions to suit each.

Even if you don't use it much, Office Live is a good tool to have available.

Find it at officelive.com.