Hard on the heels of Google's acquisition of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) start-up Upstartle LLC and its Writely.com beta word processor a couple of weeks ago, Michael Robertson (pictured) - the serial entrepreneur behind MP3.com, then Linspire (née Lindows, the Linux operating system company that won a $20M settlement out of Microsoft after Microsoft sued it for trademark infringement), and more recently SIPphone - has just unveiled a thing called "ajaxWrite," his idea of a SaaS alternative to Microsoft's vaunted cash-cow Office software.

After AjaxWrite, Robertson says that the new company he started last year in stealth mode to house the overall effort is promising to deliver software components that will replace all of the pieces in the pricey Office suite - and he says it will all be free.

Office down at your local computer shop can run $400-$500. Figuring to change the world, Robertson is promising to launch a "new sophisticated program" every Wednesday at high noon on the West Coast at ajaxlaunch.com. He says these programs will "look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and available to the user at no charge."

Robertson doesn't explain exactly how he's going to make his investment back, only that the software business is in the throes of a "very large shift" in the way ISVs make money. It sounds like he may mimic Writely's initial thought and charge for extra functionality, or storage, but he promises that the core software will remain free.

Robertson claims that ajaxWrite is the first AJAX program to looks and operate like a traditional program, complete with menus and toolbars, although it's delivered over the Net and updated and patched constantly.

ajaxWrite is browser-accessible from any Windows, Mac or Linux computer provided you're using Firefox 1.5 or better. It's supposed to load instantly, complete with the latest features, which may be stuff Microsoft conquered years ago - but we're reinventing the wheel here, remember. It's supposed to have 85% of Office's functionality, which should suit most people. It lacks stuff like numbered footnotes. Robertson says that if you need features like that use OpenOffice.

Like Writely, ajaxWrite is still in beta and lacks features such as a spellchecker that are supposed to be on the way. It may also have bugs. Early users are asked to report them.

According to Robertson, ajaxWrite can open Microsoft Word documents and save them back to the Word.doc format. Theoretically that means they would be salvageable in Microsoft's upcoming XML format, but let's see if Microsoft delivers on its backward-compatibility promise. Robertson is naturally hoping the world goes to the new Microsoft-upsetting OpenDocument formats.

The ajaxWrite program is reportedly just 330K at this point, way skinnier than the obese Office, and is supposed to load to your computer in 15 seconds, where its performance is then gated by the underlying hardware although Robertson also claims that it runs "equally well" on a low-powered laptop as on a high-powered desktop.

Robertson says he's thinking about expanding ajaxWrite to other browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer - which would seem inevitable - but then this is a stepped procedure appealing initially to the anti-Microsoft camp.

There's a FAQ on the ajaxwrite site that was evidently written before Google bought Writely that calls the notion of Google Office "vaporware" and a figment of the press' imagination. It say "not even Google's engineers can turn a giant semi-truck like OpenOffice into a hybrid vehicle that can run over the net like ajaxWrite."

(This is a redacted version of a story that appeared originally at www.clientservernews.com.)