We are very excited to announce the grand prize winner of the Office Live Workspace sweepstakes that kicked off when the service launched on March 4, 2008.  David Austin, a Seattle-based graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at the University of Washington, has been awarded the $100,000 grand prize.  Austin was selected randomly from a pool of hundreds of thousands of entries. He plans to use the $100,000 toward funding his graduate education, and may put money toward a down payment on a house in the future.

Participants entered for a chance to win by signing up for their own Workspace, and earned up to two bonus entries by uploading their first document to their Office Live Workspace account and the first time they shared a document or Workspace with others. The winner could use the grand prize to fund a favorite charity, an education or build a business - the choice was up to them.

The anywhere access to documents that Office Live Workspace provided was an attractive feature for Austin: "I was drawn to the portability and access to my documents, even when I didn't have my laptop with me, so signed up for it as soon as I heard about it," he said. "I currently use the Office Live Workspace to keep my work schedule and school papers - both Word and Excel files - in one safe place. I plan to use this service even more in my grad program next year as I work on projects that will require me to share and collaborate on Office documents with others."

David's Workspace

In total, an assortment of more than 30,000 daily and weekly prizes were given away as part of the sweepstakes, including Xbox 360 Elite Video Game Systems, Samsung Blackjack II Smartphone devices, 30GB Zune players, Expedia hotel and package coupons and Microsoft Office Professional 2007.

Start using your own free Workspace by visiting: http://www.workspace.officelive.com/. Contribute to the Office Live Workspace forum and provide your feedback at http://www.officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/.