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Leaked: Office 2010 Beta!

J.R. Bookwalter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:12:35 -0600

To the surprise of almost no one, a beta copy of Microsoft Office 2010 is already making the rounds via peer-to-peer torrent websites, according to Neowin.com.

Microsoft is expected to release the beta officially at next week’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, having already pegged November as their target month and goosing rumors with a Twitter post about big Office news coming at the conference. Couple all that with the leaked beta already circulating, and it doesn’t take rocket science to make an accurate prediction about next week. The beta is the next extension to the technology preview Microsoft unveiled in July, which was also leaked early.

“We have not officially released the beta code of Office (2010),” a Microsoft representative commented. “We recommend that people do not download code from unauthorized sources.”

Adding fuel to the beta fire, the website Craving Tech has also posted several screenshots of what they claim to be the Office 2010 beta — and revealing their source to be none other than Microsoft themselves. Could “leaked” torrents be the new viral marketing or what?

Google Says Don’t Quit Microsoft Office Yet

J.R. Bookwalter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:55:03 -0600

Don’t put all of your eggs in the cloud’s ample basket — or in this case, Google Docs — right now. At least that’s the opinion of Dave Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise division, who recently warned that their cloud-based Google Docs is not ready to fully dethrone Microsoft Office.

In an interview with ZDNet Asia, the exec confesses that Docs is “much less mature” than other Google web apps such as Gmail or Calendar. “We wouldn’t ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet,” Girouard explains. “We know it.” As one of Google’s four presidents, his message carries a lot of weight behind it.

But that caution is only temporary. In the next year, Google expects somewhere between 30 and 50 updates to Google Docs, making the feature set more robust and improving performance at the same time. After that, Girouard says, Google Docs should be powerful enough to handle the “vast majority’s needs.”

Girouard is quick to point out that Microsoft Office is “an overkill tool for most people” — a quote that Computerworld seems to interpret that even with a souped-up Docs, it won’t be a feature-for-feature competitor for Office.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is forging ahead with its own web-based version of Office in an effort to thwart Google Docs’ momentum. Time will tell if word processing and number crunching in the cloud will take off, but in any event there should be some good competition vying for your attention in the next year.

Microsoft vs. Google - The Battle of Online Office Suites

Christine Chan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:38:58 -0500

Microsoft announced that it will begin widespread testing of Office 2010. In addition to the desktop app, Microsoft also announced that a web-based version of Office 2010 will be availble for "free." Well free for Windows Live users.

Microsoft said at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 that they will invite tens of thousands of customers to begin testing Microsoft Office 2010. The latest offering from Richmond boasts plenty of new features including: broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualizations in Excel, and co-authoring in Word.

Then there's the online part.

Noticing Google's increasing popularity with Docs, Microsoft will have accompanying Office Web applications, with ads, available to over 400 million Windows Live users for no cost. The service will also be available on-premises for those that are Office volume licensing customers and by Microsoft Online Services, where customers can buy a subscription to Office Web as part of a hosted offering.

There is a Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview site, where Microsoft states:

Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online. View documents across PCs, mobile phones, and the Web without compromising document fidelity. Create new documents and do basic editing using the familiar Office interface.

Microsoft Office 2010 will be available to purchase sometime in the first half of next year, and they have reduced the versions from eight to five. There has been no word on Office for Mac since this announcement, but it will more than likely make an appearance with a Mac version as well, which will no doubt utilize the web services as well.

Does this make you like/want Office more than before? Will you use it over the free Google Docs? Let us know!

Pretending to Work Video Makes MS Office Exciting

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:48:12 -0500

Remember the super-rad The Bird and The Bee fan video from last year. It had the Mac|Life staff singing again and again for days. The video was the work of the extremely talented Dennis Liu.

Well, Dennis decided to take it up a notch and teamed up with the Microsoft Mac Business Unit to create a short film entitled, "Pretending to Work." The video is created using Microsoft Office on the Mac.

Check out the sweet video below and be amazed.

Microsoft Releases Office 2008 Update Targeting Entourage

David W. Martin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:10:36 -0500

The Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft released updates Thursday for Office 2008. The update brings this version of Office up to 12.1.4 and its mainly meant for Microsoft Entourage.

According to Microsoft, "this update fixes a calendar issue in versions of Microsoft Entourage that were updated with the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update. The issue prevents Exchange accounts in Entourage from sending meeting invitations and responses. This issue can occur when an Entourage identity is configured with more than one mail account."

Microsoft "strongly recommends this update for all Entourage users who installed Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.3 Update" on their website. The update is available for download here.