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Microsoft has been busy over the past few months, rolling out a lot of new updates. Windows 8 debuted in October of 2012, Office 2013, along with its companion Office 365 Home Premium, in early 2013, and numerous updates to other services as well. While both flagship products introduced many changes, some failed to address one pressing request from users.
The new Explorer for Windows 8 introduced the ribbon interface which has become a staple of Office and the new Office added a Start screen, which makes for easy launching of previously opened documents as well as access to templates and simple searching for additional ones.
Both new apps failed to address a feature that has been apart of web browsers for some time now — tabs. You can add this simple, but useful, feature to both through third-party apps, but it was something that Microsoft simply should have built in themselves.
Several options exist for adding tabs to Explorer, with my favorite being QTTabBar, but I have found only one suitable solution for Office and, if you are using 2013, then it is not free, but reasonably priced.
I was browsing through the Windows Phone App Store the other day and was appalled to see the severe drought in the number of quality health and fitness tracking applications for my windows phone. At the end of my search, I found Microsoft’s own Personal Health Record management system Healthvault and little did I know that they had a Windows Phone version of their web application.
To turn back in time, Microsoft launched their web based PHR management system way back in the year 2007, and most of us including me was of the thinking that the Redmond giant has discontinued with the service and never knew that it is rendering its continuous support for its dormant existence.
Microsoft’s Windows 8 update, which has been code named Windows “Blue”, has been outed to the world well ahead of the company’s planned release, which is rumored for August of this year. If you feel ambitious, then you can grab a copy and see what you think of the next Windows version.
In part one of this we looked at setting Windows Blue up using virtual software — in this case Virtual Box from Oracle — and the new settings options that are included, such as new colors and other options that have been built into the next Microsoft operating system.
Now, in part two, it is time to look at the new apps and software updates that have been built into Windows Blue, and if you think the setup and customization options were different, then you have not seen anything yet.
If you have moved out from that home under a rock then you probably heard that the next iteration of Windows, code named Blue, leaked out to the web recently. Windows “Blue” is a code name only for now, but it is also the next Windows 8 update. The new version is not exactly the next Windows (that would be Windows #, rumored to be released in late 2014), which will apparently be actually called Windows 9, but Blue is also much more than a service pack.
Service packs generally bring a roll up of Windows updates, many of them for security patches, but Blue adds a number of new features, which we will get to in part two of this mini-series.
Most of the Windows regular users like to have antivirus and firewalls suites installed and running on their systems, but most of the time they don’t really care or realize what they are dealing with. If the security software finds a threat, they just put it to work and take care of that issue. Now, do you even know where most of the threats come from? Do you know which of the Microsoft’s latest operative systems is safer?
In this article I will explore some of our time’s security issues, getting to grips with the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (Volume 13: January – June 2012), going into further detail about the top 3 Windows 7 infections.
Microsoft recently pushed out its latest version of Office. The app suite had been available in public beta for sometime, but nobody seemed to realize exactly what the company had in mind for the final release. Well, on January 29th the world found out and it was bit different from what most users were expecting.
First, the suite was released as not just Office 2013, but also as Office 365 Home Premium. While Office 2013 comes as traditional desktop software and in several different versions like Home and Student, Home and Office and Professional, it is an expensive suite and can only be used on one computer.
Looking for an easy way to control two or more computers with a single mouse and keyboard? A little while ago we looked at look at Multiplicity which enables you to do just this, but Microsoft’s Mouse Without Borders adds handy extra options.
The app is free of charge and can be used to control up to four computers that are on the same network with a single set of peripherals. But the clincher? There’s also a shared clipboard so you can copy and paste text and files between machines.
Microsoft made some bold changes to Windows with its latest release. The latest version of the operating system had garnered a lot of attention and emotions from users tend to run on both the love and hate side with very few middle-of-the-road feelings. But Microsoft is always careful about a couple of things — one is backwards compatibility and the other is user customization.
Windows 8, in those ways, is no different from its predecessors. Programs that ran under Windows 7, Vista and even XP will, for the most part, run in Windows 8. Users can also make the operating system look the way they want, just as they have been able to do in the past. Things that can not be changed under the native OS can be handled by the plethora of -third-party apps that have been pouring into the market.
Microsoft plans to roll out Office 2013 in the early part of the year. In the meantime you can try it out by grabbing the beta or the 60 day trial of the RTM (release to manufacturer) or by shelling out the money to buy the Windows Surface RT tablet. Regardless of how you get it, or if you wait for the public release, there are a few tips that can make your experience with the app suite a little smoother and easier to deal with.
In many ways, Office 2013 has not changed much from its predecessor, the 2010 version. The ribbon interface, once loathed by many users, is here to stay and has grown on most of us. In fact, Microsoft likes it so much that the company incorporated it into the Explorer in Windows 8.
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A few Fridays back marked the launch of the latest version of Microsoft’s eponymous Office lineup, and to celebrate we are going to be releasing a series of Office 2013 posts, including Reviews and How-Tos, to find out what Microsoft have brought to the table in this shiny new suite of Productivity software.
Today we’re talking about everyone’s favourite spreadsheet package, Excel!
