Microsoft honing its 'better together' story for Windows 7 and Office 14

Now that the Windows 7 Beta and Office 14 alpha are both out there, word is beginning to trickle out about some of the ways the two are being designed to "work better together."

Microsoft isn't planning to integrate Win 7 and O14 to anywhere near the degree that it is integrating Windows Live and Win 7, sources say. But officials are looking for ways that users who buy both of these new products will be able to take advantage of how O14 "lights up" on Win 7.

(An aside: To better understand the "lights up" concept, check out this excerpt from a Windows Live planning memo from 2007. This paragraph detailed how the Windows Live team wanted to make sure its services would "light up" when used on Windows systems:

"We will 'light up' the Windows experience with Windows Live. One way to think about this goal is that from 10’ away a customer can tell that a Windows PC has Windows Live – whether through a new theme or other feature. What does it mean to 'light up' the start menu, taskbar, sidebar, and folders? What happens when a customer types their Live ID in their Windows account? As an example, we could 'light up' the user tile on the start menu with their picture, add presence information, and automatically replicate and roam their documents, photos, and other media. We could roam a set of Windows settings, including background bitmap and other preferences, making it easy to make one PC look like another PC. Our family safety solution could naturally extend the Windows experience for parental controls, providing reporting and content filtering as well as account management."

With O14 and Win7, how would the "light up" concept manifest? According to one beta tester who requested anonymity, enterprise search is one area where there is opportunity for the two products to feed off one another.

When using O14 on top of Windows 7, users will be able to use the Windows Explorer to search for files that are on SharePoint sites, the tester said. They'll be able to add an enterprise search connector between SharePoint Server 14 (which includes search as one of several different servers that comprise that product) or Search Server 14 and Windows Explorer. Via the connector, files indexed by the enterprise search engine will be part of the Windows Explorer search results. And Windows 7 features like file preview will be able to be used for the O14 documents and files.

Any other testers who are lucky enough to have test versions of both the Win7 and O14 code found other examples of some of the planned synergies between the two products? What about possible synergies/integration points between Windows Server 2008 R2 and O14? While you're contemplating those questions, check out some leaked screen shots from the Office 14 alpha that are up on Neowin...