Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Microsoft to Release Office for Mac 2011 in Late October

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Microsoft today announced launch details for Office for Mac 2011, revealing that the latest version of the company’s flagship productivity suite will be released in over 100 countries in late October.

The suite will come in two editions to purchase at retail — Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 and Office for Mac Home and Business 2011. For better alignment across platforms, the Office 2011 pricing and edition options map closer with Office for the Windows operating system. In addition, starting today, if customers purchase Office 2008 for Mac, they will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 when it is available at no additional cost through the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.
Editions and pricing include:

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger and is priced at $119 for a single install or $149 for a Family Pack allowing up to three installs in a single household.

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger and is priced at $199 for a single install or $279 for a Multi-Pack that allows a user to install Office on two of their Macs.

- Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger and is available for higher education students, staff, and faculty, with a single install priced at $99. This academic version may only be purchased from authorized academic stores or direct from Microsoft.

Microsoft has also released details on its Technology Guarantee program that allows customers to purchase Office for Mac 2008 today and receive a corresponding edition of Office for Mac 2011 for free when it is released.

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Microsoft Offers Behind-the-Scenes Look at Office for Mac 2011 Features

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Microsoft today posted a blog entry talking a bit about its forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 release scheduled for late this year. A brief behind-the-scenes video of Microsoft developers talking about some of the new features included in the release has also been posted.

The team has a short video (above) and here is a quick look at the new feature they discuss:

- Starting off with the new Template Gallery in Office 2011, this feature allows you to quickly and easily pick a template from the built-in designs to the thousands of templates online – giving you a head start to create great looking, professional documents.

- Core features in Outlook for Mac like the Conversation View help you sort emails easily to keep track of what you need to do. Additionally, the new file-based database is faster and provides more stability with Time Machine support.

- Tying all of the new features together is the Office for Mac ribbon, designed as an evolution of the Office 2008 Elements Gallery while also utilizing the classic Mac menu and Standard Toolbar giving you the best of both worlds. We have put the most commonly used controls at your fingertips making it easier for you to find what you need. You can even minimize the ribbon and the Toolbar for more screen space or for the more advanced users who rely on keyboard shortcuts.
Microsoft has issued several beta versions of Office for Mac 2011 so far this year, which each showing an increasing level of refinement and polish as the company moves toward a public release in the last calendar quarter of this year.

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New Zero-Day Attack Claims 10,000 Windows XP-based PCs

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Microsoft this week confirmed that XP users are under attack by hackers targeting a flaw that was publicly revealed by a Google engineer. The software giant says that it’s aware of more than 10,000 PCs, all running Windows XP, that have been hacked, and that the attacks are increasing in speed. According to Microsoft, most of the attacks have occurred in the United States, Russia, Portugal, Germany, and Brazil. Although I could philosophize about the need to update aging OSs and so on, the reality is that it’s easy enough to fix this problem: Just use Microsoft Security Essentials, the free anti-malware solution. And then think about upgrading to Windows 7.

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Windows 7 Sales Are Fantastic, but They’re Also Accelerating

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Microsoft announced this week that Windows 7 had surpassed the 150 million unit sales mark in record time, making this version of Windows the fastest-selling version of any OS in history. No surprise there: This is what they said when Windows 7 surpassed the 90 million and 100 million unit sales marks as well. The software giant also reiterated a cute sales statistic, that Windows 7 was selling at a rate of seven units per second. Also neat. But the big news with this milestone is that Windows 7 sales are actually accelerating: Whereas it took almost four months to sell 40 million units earlier this year, the next 50 million units happened in just two months. That means Microsoft is selling more than 25 million units each month. Are enterprise upgrades finally kicking in as expected (and hoped)? Maybe.

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