Posted 11/13/09 at 08:42:58 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Is a week just too long to wait to get your hands on the beta of Office 2010? If so, you can head on over to you friendly neighborhood torrent site and grab the code. While we don’t necessarily recommend doing this, you certainly could. Microsoft is neither confirming nor denying anything saying, “We have not officially released the beta code of Office (2010)… We recommend that people do not download code from unauthorized sources."

Microsoft is expected to officially release the Office 2010 beta at the Professional Developer Conference next week. A tech preview was released in July, but was still lacking some features and polish. The Redmond software giant is also making a bit of a departure by offering browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. So, interested?

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Posted 10/28/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Are you stuck using Outlook at work? We feel your pain. Compared to the alternatives, like Mozilla's light-weight and customizable Thunderbird client, Outlook is slow, bloaty, and downright unwieldy. Add to the fact that it isn't free and Outlook doesn't appear to have much going for it.

But whether you use Outlook because you have to or have grown accustomed to its interface and are reluctant to switch (or maybe you just want to justify the cost of Microsoft Office), we have some tricks to help you manage your email and contacts like a pro. After all, if you're going to use Outlook, no matter what the reason, you might as well get the most out of it, and we're here to help you do just that.

Hit the jump to get started!

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Posted 10/08/09 at 09:18:26 PM by Ryan Whitwam

If you buy a Windows 7 PC in the future, you might not be getting that copy of Microsoft Works nobody uses. Instead it will come with a completely free version of Office 2010. Oh… Office 2010 Starter Edition, that is. It will be a limited functionality version of Office supported by Ads. The nature of the ads was not made clear.

According to Microsoft, the Office Starter Edition will have, “a simple path to upgrade to a fully featured version of Office 2010 directly from within the product.” This is probably an effort to get customers used to Office features in the hopes that they will purchase the full version. Microsoft will have to walk a fine line to make the ads annoying enough that people will want to get rid of them, but not so annoying that they don’t even use Office.

The new PCs will already have the full version of Office 2010 installed on the hard drive. Customers will simply have to purchase a card from a retailer with the unlock code. The card will apparently be sold through some “major electronic retail outlets”. Microsoft hasn’t detailed which OEMs would be installing the Office Starter Edition software. Try to contain yourself waiting for this one.

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Posted 10/08/09 at 09:02:38 AM by Paul Lilly

Your grandkids - if you don't already have them -- will one day wonder how you ever got along without motion sensor cameras and voice recognition microphones in your home office. That's assuming Microsoft's vision of a futuristic office ever comes to fruition.

In a YouTube video, Microsoft Research shows off a prototype for a next-gen office environment, which is largely built around Microsoft Surface technology. Neat tricks abound, such as holding up a document against a giant, wall-mounted Surface where it's instantly scanned and able to be pinned, but that's just the beginning.

You really have to check out the video, and we dare you not to make any comparisons to Minority Report.

Video Link

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Posted 08/21/09 at 08:28:04 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Upholding i4i’s patent infringement claim against Microsoft, a US Federal court judge placed an injunction on Microsoft Word on August 11, 2009. Judge Leonard Davis ordered that Microsoft pay the Canadian company i4i $290 million in damages and stop the sale of Word in the US, within 60 days of the pronouncement of the order, until the dispute is fully resolved. Microsoft Word’s default file format Office Open XML is at the epicenter of Microsoft’s dispute with i4i. The XML-based file format infringes i4i’s US patent number 5787449.

On Tuesday, Microsoft filed an appeal against the injunction. It is seeking a stay on the injunction, which it believes could cause "irreparable harm.” It has warned that the ban could force it to stop the sale of Microsoft Office for many months to come.

“Microsoft and its distributors face the imminent possibility of a massive disruption in their sales. If left undisturbed, the district court’s injunction will inflict irreparable harm on Microsoft by potentially keeping the centerpiece of its product line out of the market for months. The injunction would block not only the distribution of Word, but also of the entire Office suite, which contains Word and other popular programs," the company’s filing reads. Although Microsoft can take corrective steps by disabling the XML feature, it will have to cough up a lot of money for that exercise.

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Posted 06/11/09 at 07:11:41 PM by Mark Edward Soper

June 9th saw a rare 'double-header' in security updates: Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday was joined by Adobe's quarterly security updates for Acrobat and Adobe Reader. How big was this month's 10-update Patch Tuesday? According to a Microsoft spokesperson quoted by Cnet, the 31 vulnerabilities covered by updates are "the most since Microsoft started releasing updates on a regular schedule of the second Tuesday of every month in October 2003."

Users of Windows 2000 SP4 through Windows Vista SP2 (and holdouts still running Windows 7 Beta), Microsoft Office 2000, 2003, or 2007; Microsoft Office for MacOS 2004 and 2008, Microsoft Works 8.5 and 9, and IE5.01 through IE8 users have some work to do before heading off on vacation, as do users of Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.x, 8.x and 9.x. To find out what's being changed - and why - join us after the break.

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Posted 04/09/09 at 06:20:42 PM by Mark Edward Soper

If you've been worrying about computer security for awhile, you might remember when macro viruses in Microsoft Word and Excel files were at the top of the exploit list. These file formats, along with the omnipresent Adobe Reader PDF format, are once again among the biggest threat vectors being exploited by today's malware, according to a new report from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. Fittingly, the full report and a condensed key findings version are available in either PDF or Microsoft's own XPS formats. These reports cover the July-December 2008 period.

Some key findings include:

• Scareware (which Microsoft calls "rogue security software") is on the rise, including the latest versions of our old friend  Antivirus XP.
• A slight reduction in unique vulnerability disclosures from 2007, but the High (most serious) category was larger in the second half of 2008 than in the first half of the year or the second half of 2007.
• Applications continue to be the biggest target (86.7%, with browsers at 8.8%, and operating systems at only 4.5%)

Join us after the jump for more highlights.

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Posted 03/23/09 at 04:27:01 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Step one on the long road to retiring 32-bit computers to the PC graveyard was the development of 64-bit processors (check). Step two was the development of 64-bit operating systems (check). Step three was the development of 64-bit drivers (check). And now, it's almost time for step four: major 64-bit applications.

ZDNet's Ed Bott has done some digging around in Windows 7's MigWiz.xml file (it's used to configure the Migration Wizard in Windows 7) and discovered that the upcoming Microsoft Office 14 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. In the Office 14 section of MigWiz.xml in post-beta builds of Windows 7, Bott found references to both standard and x64 programs in Office 14, as well as references to upgrade options from Office 2003 to either Office 14 or Office 14 x64 (note that the public Windows 7 beta doesn't include these settings). What does this mean to Office 14's expected release date? Bott says:

The fact that this code is being baked into Windows 7 now suggests that the rumors of an early 2010 ship date for Office 14 are accurate. Having native 64-bit support for all members of the Office family is an extra bonus and welcome news.

If you're currently using some version of Microsoft Office, does the advent of a native 64-bit version make you more likely to upgrade to Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 14? Join us after the jump for your chance to sound off.

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