Microsoft Office provides important productivity functions that many of us need to use on a daily basis, but at times the cost just seems so prohibitive! Thankfully though, you can buy Microsoft Office for cheap if you know where to look.
Here are some tips and ideas for getting a totally-legal discount off of the world’s most popular productivity suite: Continue reading
According an FAQ on the SuperSite for Windows:
Office 14 is the next version of Office 2007 (or what Microsoft calls the 2007 Microsoft Office System). [...] 14 is the version number. Office 2007 was called Office 12 internally at Microsoft. The company skipped 13 for superstitious reasons.
Superstitious silliness if you ask me. I did wonder though how they were going to handle this, but I didn’t think they’d actually skip the version number!
Click below for 8 Excel-lent screenshots of Ribbon-y goodness. Enjoy!
Start the slideshow!
(click the Back button when finished to return here)
Here it is: 8 screenshots, one for each tab of the Word 2007 Ribbon (not including the “context tabs”). Enjoy!
Start the slideshow!
(click the Back button when finished to return here)
Yep, I did it – I downloaded the Office 2007 beta before it becomes a paid download tomorrow (Wednesday). And is it cool or what! So far I’ve only tested Word 2007 (which I’m using to write this post), and just that is enough to get me excited. Can’t wait to test out the rest!
If you’ve been planning to download the Office 2007 beta, better do it now! According to a PCWorld article:
Microsoft says that it will begin charging $1.50 for users to download a copy of the Office 2007 beta 2.
“In just the past two months since its launch, more than 3 million people have downloaded the 2007 Microsoft Office system beta 2,” the company said in a statement sent via e-mail.
“Given how dramatically the beta 2 downloads have exceeded our goals, we have made the business decision to implement a cost-recovery measure for downloading the beta.”
Microsoft will begin charging users starting Wednesday, it said. The company released beta 2 of Office 2007 in May.
This looks interesting: test Office 2007 Beta 2 right from your browser. No CDs, no installation. Just go to the Office 2007 Test Drive page and follow the steps. (Be forewarned that the test drive doesn’t work with Firefox, and I had some trouble getting it to work with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview.)
I did some testing and was surprised to discover that the test drive actually consisted of remotely controlling a real Office 2007 Beta 2 installation on a Windows XP computer (or virtual machine, maybe). The system clock time suggested that the test drive was hosted somewhere in Europe.
The test drive seemed very, very slow compared to what I’m used to, and it was especially annoying to see all of Office 2007′s fancy eye candy in slow-mo, but I’m guessing that the performance (or should I say lack thereof) is normal for a remotely-controlled computer.
One Office 2007 Beta 2 feature that I found particularly interesting is the ability to post blog posts directly from Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word 2007 includes integration with blogging services such as Blogger, MSN Spaces, and yes, it looks like it’ll be able to integrate with WordPress.
I was about to write a post from within the test drive installation, but I changed my mind when it asked me for my WordPress username and password. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about handing over my password to a third party that is running a test system (with who knows what kind of security) for Microsoft.
But still, I think this Office 2007 test drive is a very cool concept. I really like the idea of being able to tinker with software without actually purchasing, downloading, and/or installing it.
But then again, OpenOffice.org is making the whole Office test drive concept look foolish with its cleverly coinciding campaign called Take the Test Drive – Keep the Car. Clever. 
It’s easy: just type =rand() into a Microsoft Word document and press Enter. It’ll be replaced with a five-sentance paragraph:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
You can also type in =rand(3) to get three five-sentance paragraphs.
I figured out that the highest you can go is =rand(200), which produces 14 pages of random goodness. (Assuming you have 12-point Times New Roman font.) Typing =rand(201) and then pressing Enter doesn’t do anything.
So, what’s the practical use of this?
Well, say you want to test some text formatting or text wrapping. Instead of pounding on the keyboard for three minutes producing gobbeldy-gook text to test on, just use Word’s random text insertion.
It’s official: Office 12 is now Office 2007!
Here are the new Office editions:
Hey, what happened to the “Edition” branding? For example, now we have Office Small Business Edition 2003, but the Office 2007 edition of that will be known as Office Small Business 2007. Ugh, this will make it hard for newer PC users to differenciate between the suites and the products.
If you look at the list closely, you’ll see some new products in the lineup.
According to Bink.nu, it’s going to be announced on February 16. My guess? Office 2007. Since some proposed names for Windows Vista were Windows Seven and Windows 07, and since the name of the current version of Office is Office 2003, I think a combination of the just-mentioned year and year format is a likely possibility.
I don’t think it’ll be Office 2006, since Microsoft already has an Office Small Business Management Edition 2006. (However, despite the version number, it just includes Office 2003 Small Business Edition plus Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006.)
What are your guesses?