Microsoft is bringing a pared-down version of its Office software to Android phones, but it won’t work on Android tablets just as it doesn’t on iPads. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Microsoft is bringing a pared-down version of its Office software to Android phones, but it won’t work on Android tablets just as it doesn’t on iPads. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Microsoft Wednesday added Android to the list of mobile operating systems now supported by Office Mobile. But Office Mobile for Android only covers phones, not tablets, limiting its utility.
The Android version, Office Mobile for Android, is also arguably the weakest of the bunch, in terms of compatibility with Microsoft Office. Microsoft is still tacitly encouraging users to buy Windows Phones, which come preloaded and activated with Windows Mobile and don’t require an Office 365 subscription to use. The problem is, within the Android world, there are a number of other office solutions that provide very good direct competition to Microsoft’s offering.
Nevertheless, Office Mobile for Android is free and downloadable from the Google Play Store. The only requirement is that your phone must contain Android 4.0 or higher, and you must already have purchased Office 365.
In a break with Office Mobile for iPhone, Microsoft doesn’t even offer the option to purchase Office 365 from within the app; instead, users must sign up outside the application itself. And without Office 365, Office Mobile for Android is virtually useless.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Dell is shipping Project Ophelia devices to early beta testers. PC sales are already suffering at the hands of mobile devices, and now Dell’s Android PC-on-a-stick threatens the relevance of traditional PCs from a different angle.
First, a little about Project Ophelia. The device is about the size of a large USB thumb drive. Instead of just flash-based storage, though, Project Ophelia packs a Rockchip RK3066 processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity into that small space. It also has a microSD card slot to add additional storage if necessary.
It runs on Google’s Android mobile OS. The device demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year ran Android 4.1 (a.k.a. “Jelly Bean”), but it seems reasonable to assume Dell will ship the device with the current version of Android before its official launch, which is expected to be the end of this year.
Project Ophelia is not a revolution that will make PCs irrelevant overnight. Android is great at what it does, but much of the business world runs on the Microsoft Office productivity suite and line-of-business or custom applications developed for a Microsoft Windows environment. Project Ophelia is rumored to be a meager $100 and plugs into an HDMI or MHL port on a TV or monitor. HDMI doesn’t transmit power, so it requires a separate USB connection when using that input.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Microsoft unveiled its earnings for Q4 2013 on Friday, and the results left some investors uneasy. What matters on Wall Street, however, isn’t the same as what matters on Main Street, so small and medium businesses need to analyze the news through a different lens.
Microsoft actually had a decent quarter to cap off a very successful fiscal 2013. Revenue for Q4 was up 10 percent over Q4 2012, and profit was almost $5 billion (USD) compared to a $492 million loss in the same quarter last year. Revenue was also up for the year, and Microsoft profit was nearly 30 percent higher than 2012.
Despite declining PC sales, adoption of Windows 8 is on pace with that of its predecessor. There has been some backlash over the dramatic redesign of Windows 8, and Microsoft’s attempt to convert the OS to a touch-based interface, but most of the major complaints are addressed with the Windows 8.1 update, which will be officially available later this year.
Another silver lining from the Microsoft earnings report is the fact that the Business Division and Server and Tools units both reported solid increases in both revenue and profit over the previous year. Office 365 is a cost-effective way for SMBs to acquire Microsoft Office, along with hosted Exchange and SharePoint, and it has quickly grown into a $1.5 billion source of revenue for Microsoft.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Microsoft fell way short of analyst estimates for its fourth fiscal quarter, with revenues nearly a billion dollars short of what analysts had expected.
The culprit? Microsoft’s Surface RT tablets. A lack of sales forced Microsoft to take a $900 million charge, in addition to a previously deferred $782 million charge related to Microsoft Office.
Sources close to Microsoft said that the charge reflects the recent pricing changes for Surface RT.
Microsoft reported net income of $4.97 billion (59 cents) on revenue of $19.90 billion, nevertheless, which showed strong improvements from a year ago. The company reported a 10.1 percent increase in revenue from a year ago, when Microsoft reported a loss of $492 million. For the fiscal year, Microsoft reported net income of $26.86 billion on revenue of $77.85 billion.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

The Surface RT includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. With Windows 8.1, the Surface RT also gets Outlook, and Microsoft just
Microsoft caved to market pressure and sagging demand this week by slashing the price of the Surface RT tablet by 30 percent. The Surface RT is better-equipped for business than rival tablets, and at $350 ( $470 once you add a Touch or Type keyboard cover, which it requires to be truly functional) it straddles the line between tablet and PC, and could help business customers rein in IT costs.
The Surface RT isn’t for everyone. It can’t run traditional Windows software, so businesses or users that depend on specific applications or custom software can’t just toss out their PC and use a Surface RT. For a variety of use cases, however, a device with email, Web access, and Microsoft Office is sufficient.
The Surface RT includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. With Windows 8.1, the Surface RT also gets Outlook, and Microsoft just updated the OneNote MX app to allow it to connect to Office 365 accounts. Microsoft has also made many of its tools available across iOS and Android, but the integration of the Surface RT with Microsoft software and services sets it apart from other mobile devices as a business tool.
It’s true a business can supply users with standard Windows laptops—with the full Windows operating system, more internal storage, a real keyboard, and possibly a DVD or Blu-Ray drive—for roughly the same money. But when it comes to weight and battery life, no $500 laptop can come close to what the Surface RT has to offer.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Microsoft pushed out an update for OneNote MX—the OneNote app for Windows 8—which makes the app more useful for business users. The new OneNote MX can connect to OneNote notebooks on Office 365.
OneNote MX is a great tool, but it has had limited functionality for business users. The issue is that OneNote MX connects by default to the SkyDrive associated with the Microsoft account used to log in to Windows 8. That’s fine for personal use, but businesses prefer that data be created and stored where it can be centrally managed and shared, rather than being spread across multiple personal SkyDrive accounts.
The update for OneNote MX enables users to connect to OneNote notebooks stored in an Office 365 SkyDrive account.
OneNote has become a crown jewel of the Microsoft Office suite, and it has led the way in blazing cross-platform trails for Office. Long before Microsoft finally made Office Mobile for iPhone, OneNote was available as a standalone app for both iOS and Android.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Trend Micro says it detected a targeted attack that sent malware-laden emails to representatives of 16 European countries and some Asian governments.
The bogus emails purported to come from China’s defense ministry and contained a malicious attachment that exploited a now-patched vulnerability in Microsoft Office versions 2003 to 2010, wrote Jonathan Leopando, a technical communications specialist with Trend Micro.
Microsoft patched the vulnerability in Office, CVE-2012-0158, more than a year ago although attackers are still frequently targeting it, including in the Safe and Taidoor campaigns, Leopando wrote.
If the email attachment is opened on an unpatched computer, a “backdoor” program is then installed that steals login credentials for websites and email credentials from Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook, Leopando wrote.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
According to Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, the future of Microsoft involves such things as “living” documents, the Microsoft equivalent of “Google Now,” a blurring of email and chat, and the ability to add a gaming layer to everyday activities.
It’s an ambitious vision, and Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer laid it all out in a strategy document that accompanied his “One Microsoft” memo outlining an ambitious company reorganization. While most of the early attention paid to Microsoft’s strategy correctly focused on what the reorganization means for the short term, it’s worth focusing on what the company has in store for the longer-term future of its product groups, too.
Ballmer made much of the fact that Microsoft is reorganizing around devices and services and moving away from being a purely software-driven business. But Microsoft was founded on identifying and meeting key needs that it can address, such as productivity, collaboration, and fun. What Ballmer’s document appears to do is essentially remix those concepts, combining them in much the same way painters mix primary colors together, to develop new and profitable combinations of technologies.
Ballmer addresses five key areas: the future of documents, anticipatory data, the future of social, gaming, and the “shell” of the Windows interface.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Following similar initiatives by Apple, Google and Facebook, Microsoft is enabling two-factor authentication for its Microsoft Account service, the log-on service for many of its online and desktop products.
“With this release you can choose to protect your entire account with two-step verification, regardless of what service (or device) you are using with your Microsoft account,” wrote Eric Doerr, Microsoft Account group program manager, in a blog entry announcing the secondary authentication. “It’s your choice whether you want to enable this, but for those of you that are looking for ways to add additional security to your account, we’ve worked hard to make set-up really easy.”
With two-factor authentication, a user logging in to a service or device supplies a second piece of information in addition to a password, thus making it impossible for another party to gain illicit access to the user’s accounts without all the separate pieces of information. Microsoft is using additional verification methods such as a short code sent to the user’s mobile phone, which is then entered in addition to the password, or by asking the user to supply additional information, such as an alternative email address.
Microsoft Account, formerly called Windows Live ID, is a single sign-on Web service to authenticate users of Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Skype, and other Microsoft services. It can also be used as an authentication mechanism for Windows PCs, the Xbox and Microsoft Office. Overall, Microsoft has over 700 million users registered to Microsoft Account.
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Microsoft is making a big mistake. Assuming the leaked Office ‘Gemini’ roadmap is both legitimate and accurate, it appears that neither Outlook RT nor Office for iOS and Android will arrive any time soon. By the time they do, it’s possible nobody will care.
Mary Jo Foley—a respected and reliable source of inside information from Redmond—shed some light today on what we can expect from the Microsoft Office team. According to a leaked roadmap, Office RT apps will be available this fall alongside the expected launch of Windows “Blue”, followed by a refresh of the Office RT apps, and a new version of Office for Mac in early 2014.
The last bit of the leaked roadmap is the perplexing part, though. The highly-anticipated Office for iOS and Android apps and Outlook RT apparently won’t arrive until late 2014—yes, a year and a half from now.
If the information is accurate, Microsoft is missing a huge opportunity. By the end of 2014, Windows RT may not even exist if it doesn’t start gaining some traction. The Mail client on Windows RT is OK, but it’s not Outlook. The CEO of Nvidia, for one, recently blamed anemic sales of Windows RT tablets at least partially on the lack of an Outlook RT app.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Tim Brugger, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
ABB has agreed to implement Microsoft‘s Office 365 and its enterprise social network, Yammer, utilizing the cloud-based solutions across its international operations, Microsoft announced today.
Currently, ABB utilizes multiple enterprise solutions to communicate among its 145,000 employees located in 100 countries. ABB provides power and automation technologies for utility and industrial customers worldwide.
Microsoft quoted ABB Chief Information Officer Andy Tidd as saying, “Office 365 and Yammer will enable us to transform communication and collaboration among our employees, surfacing the best and most innovative ideas across the organization.”
Office 365 integrates multiple functions, including mail, video conferencing, and Yammer. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner was quoted as saying, “ABB‘s decision as a global technology leader to deploy Office 365 and Yammer will help it realize its vision for empowering employees with new ways of working via enterprise social and the cloud.”
The article Microsoft Signs ABB to Use Microsoft Office 365, Yammer originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Tim Brugger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Microsoft Office has long been the gold standard for creating, editing, and formatting serious documents. Google Docs and other Web-based competitors, however, have outpaced Office by making it easy to share and coedit documents in real time.
Enter the new Office suites. Released earlier this year, they make up lost ground by letting you collaborate with other people through a mixture of desktop and browser applications. The features are a step in the right direction, but Microsoft’s new take on collaboration ultimately fails to be as easy as it should be.
Whether you’re thinking about purchasing an Office 365 subscription or buying Office 2013 desktop software—or are already using either one—read on to learn about the agony and ecstasy of coediting.
I tested collaboration for Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint, both with colleagues on an Office 365 Small Business Premium account and with people outside our company who didn’t even have Office 2013.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Pixelworks ® and ACCESS Collaborate on Officeviewer to Enable Content Viewing and Presentations without a PC
Officeviewer enables projection capability without a PC using USB host
SAN JOSE, Calif. & SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Pixelworks, Inc. (NAS: PXLW) , a pioneer in innovative video and display processing technology, and ACCESS CO., LTD, a global provider of advanced software technologies to the mobile and beyond-PC markets, today announced the companies are collaborating on Officeviewer to bring projection capability without a PC to a full range of projectors — from traditional mainstream projectors to small LED or laser-based portable and pocket projectors. Officeviewer offers users the convenience of using a portable USB thumb drive to view content and make presentations when a PC isn’t available or convenient.
As part of this collaboration, ACCESS ported its NetFront™ Document Viewer to Pixelworks’ existing platform of digital projector solutions. Officeviewer leverages USB host functionality in Pixelworks’ connected display processors, such as the Topaz platform family, to effectively eliminate the need for a PC to make presentations. The Officeviewer software solution is now available for integration by customers of new and existing Pixelworks SoC projector platforms, including the Company’s latest generation Topaz family of display processors.
“ACCESS and Pixelworks, respective leaders in software and projectors, have successfully collaborated to bring this innovative solution to market and improve the user experience for our customers,” said Graham Loveridge, Sr. Vice President of Marketing at Pixelworks. “This projection capability will be available for a range of platforms, including the Topaz SoC family, and will ultimately be designed into nearly every leading projector brand. As such, we expect giving a presentation or viewing content without a PC to eventually become mainstream.”
“Similar to the growing trend of projection capability without a PC, viewing or sharing documents and content across connected devices has become a standard expectation for consumers in a connected world,” said Kiyoyasu Oishi, Senior Executive Officer, Global Business Unit, ACCESS CO., LTD. “By combining these projection and document viewing technologies, consumers will no longer need to use a PC to present and share documents, making it simpler and more efficient to work and collaborate.”
Features of Officeviewer include:
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
What do you use to open files? If you’re in the majority, your answer would be “depends on the file.” This is not the case with Free Opener. Free Opener claims to open over 80 different file formats—anything from Microsoft Office documents and PDF files, to image, video and music files, with many more in between. It may not open as many file types as Quick View Plus, and it’s certainly more of a viewer than an editor, but you can’t argue with the price. It’s a good first stop for trying to view that mystery document.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Google launched its Microsoft Office substitute, Quickoffice, for Apple’s iPhone, Android smartphones and Android tablets, fulfilling a promise made in December. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Computerworld Latest
By Evan Niu, CFA, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Last summer, search giant Google acquired mobile productivity app maker Quickoffice, which was at the time exclusive to Apple‘s iOS platform. Google has now released the popular app for its own Android platform.
Quickoffice appeals to a wide audience since it supports common Microsoft Office document formats, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
Google offers storing and sharing options through its Google Drive service. Quickoffice competes with Apple’s own mobile iWork suite, while Microsoft has long been rumored to be working on a mobile version of its flagship productivity software package.
With Quickoffice for Android, Google is bolstering its enterprise mobility appeal.
The article Google Releases Quickoffice on Android originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Whether talking about the constellation in the night sky or the sign of the zodiac, the word “Gemini” is synonymous with twins. It’s no coincidence that Gemini is reportedly the code name for an upcoming Microsoft Office build that could be the twin project to Windows Blue. Together, the two efforts represent a complete shift in the way Microsoft develops and rolls out software.
According to Mary Jo Foley, a respected authority on Microsoft with reliable inside sources, Gemini will be released inititally this fall alongside Windows Blue, with new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
For Office, Gemini could have multiple meanings. It could even be an altogether new Microsoft Office suite, a fraternal twin to the existing Office 2013. Perhaps instead of replacing Office 2013, Gemini will be a suite of Office MX apps designed for the Windows 8 Modern interface, following in the style of the current OneNote MX.
What does Microsoft have in store for Office Gemini? Here are four things Redmond should consider:
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…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
A recent leak of Windows Blue, an impending update for Windows 8, persuaded some observers to argue that Microsoft is laying the groundwork needed to take the windows out of Windows by transferring several traditional desktop lynchpins to the touch-centric modern UI.
Right now, however, the idea is laughable for one simple reason: Microsoft can’t ditch the traditional desktop interface without having a modern UI version of Microsoft Office waiting in the wings. Along with Windows, the Office productivity suite is a key pillar of Microsoft’s consumer-facing business, and neither early reports nor Microsoft’s recent public admission that Blue exists ever linked Office with a modern UI makeover.
A new report does.
ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley claims that a Blue-like rapid update cycle for Office exists, code-named “Gemini.” The first wave of updates is allegedly due to arrive this fall, followed by a follow-up sometime next year. Foley expects the first fall wave to introduce modern UI versions of Office’s various apps, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By finid From LinuxBSDos.com.
LibreOffice is a Free Software replacement for Microsoft Office. If you are a Linux user or use other UNIX-like operating systems, you probably don’t need a LibreOffice…
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at LinuxBSDos