Computerworld Philippines :: Microsoft Office

An iPad at the office: Can it work as a PC?

By Fei Lumbania on August 18, 2010

By Galen Gruman
InfoWorld (US)
August 18, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Sure, the iPad is a great device for Web surfing, book reading, and movie watching. But it’s also getting a lot of interest in corporations as a possible business device for field forces, nurses and doctors in hospitals, and knowledge workers in the office and on the go.

That interest is obvious from the top iPad downloads from the Apple App Store, where Citrix Receiver, an app that makes the iPad a portal to server-based apps such as Microsoft Office and SharePoint, has stayed in the top five almost every day. Also in that top-downloads list are Apple’s iWork productivity trio (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) and two Microsoft Office-compatible productivity apps (Quickoffice Mobile Connect Suite and DataViz Documents to Go Premium).

[ See how business and personal smartphones are merging into a single device. | Get the best iPhone and iPad apps for pros with our business iPhone apps finder. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]

I decided to see how well the iPad could fit into a business environment. The short answer: awkwardly, but with lots of promise. (Note that all the apps mentioned here are available through InfoWorld’s “no-junk business iPhone and iPad app finder” Web page.)

The iPad is very portable and has long battery life (six to eight hours in my experience, although the more networking you do via Wi-Fi, 3G, or Bluetooth, the less time you get). So it is very appealing as a laptop replacement, at least for short trips. For many users, it can indeed replace a laptop. Which users? Certainly those whose lives revolve around email, Web access, and basic office productivity work. For other users, it depends greatly on the software availability for your work tasks.

Here’s what you can do, and what could get in your way.

THE IPAD SOFTWARE ISSUE

If you’re editing or commenting on documents, reviewing and adjusting spreadsheets, and reviewing and updating presentations, you’ll find that either the $15 Quickoffice or the $15 Documents to Go will do the trick. But outside of dire needs, I wouldn’t suggest you try to create complex documents, spreadsheets, or presentations with either; the tools aren’t there and the lack of mouse support makes fine control difficult. Apple’s $30 iWork suite is harder to use due to a too-spare interface, plus only its Pages app can export to an Office-compatible format for your colleagues’ use.

If you do need to run the real Microsoft Office suite or other corporate apps for which there is no iPad version (IT management tools, route-delivery planning apps, electronic medical records access software, credit-scoring apps, and all those kinds of vertical programs), that’s where the free Citrix Receiver app comes in. It’s a thin client app for Citrix-based terminal services, so you need a Wi-Fi connection to work with it. (You can use 3G but it is slower.) If your company has already deployed Citrix thin clients for remote access to secured applications, using it on an iPad is a no-brainer. The app does a good job translating touch movements to mouse movements, although because Windows and its desktop apps weren’t designed with touch in mind, you may have difficulty accurately clicking buttons and other controls — you may have to zoom in for controls such as the close box, for example.

o The iPad software issues, continued
o The iPad data-access issues
o The iPad input and output issues: monitor, keyboard, mouse, printing, and dock
o The iPad network issues
o The iPad power issues

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Experts predict extensive attacks of Windows zero-day

By Fei Lumbania on July 21, 2010

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
July 21, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Security organizations today raised Internet threat levels to warn users that they expect widespread attacks using exploits of a just-acknowledged critical bug in all versions of Windows.

The Internet Storm Center (ISC) pushed its Infocon threat indicator to “Yellow,” a rare move, while Symantec also bumped up the status of its ThreatCon barometer to “Elevated.”

Today’s shift by ISC was the first Yellow since July 2009, when the group alerted users of a vulnerability in Office Web Components , a set of ActiveX controls for publishing Microsoft Office content to the Web and for displaying that content in Internet Explorer (IE).

“The proof-of-concept exploit is publicly available, and the issue is not easy to fix until Microsoft issues a patch,” said Lenny Zeltser, an ISC security analyst, as he explained the higher threat level . “Although we have not observed the vulnerability exploited beyond the original targeted attacks, we believe wide-scale exploitation is only a matter of time.”

Last Friday, Microsoft confirmed that attackers can use a malicious shortcut file, identified by the “.lnk” extension, to automatically execute their malware by getting users to view the contents of a folder containing such a shortcut. Malware can also automatically execute on many systems when a USB drive is plugged into the PC.

All versions of Windows, including the just-released beta of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), as well as the recently retired Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000, contain the bug.

Many of the attacks spotted so far have been aimed at major manufacturing and utility companies. Last week, Siemens alerted customers of its Simatic WinCC management software that attacks using the vulnerability were targeting computers used to manage large-scale industrial control systems, often called SCADA, for “supervisory control and data acquisition.”

Symantec also boosted its ThreatCon indicator from the usual Level 1 to Level 2, dubbed “Elevated.” Like the ISC, Symantec said it made the move because of the advisory Microsoft issued Friday and the expectation of increased attacks.

“The Symantec DeepSight Team expects this issue to be incorporated by attackers to carry out remote drive-by download attacks in the wild,” said Symantec on its ThreatCon page .

HD Moore, the chief security officer of Rapid7 and the creator of the well-known Metasploit hacking toolkit, said that it was unlikely the vulnerability would be used in classic drive-by attacks, as Symantec predicted. “The vulnerability is serious, but it’s not as bad as a drive-by,” Moore said, talking about the type of attacks that compromise computers when their users simply browse to a malicious site.

Companies will remain the most lucrative targets for exploits of the Windows shortcut bug, Moore bet, while consumers will likely be relatively safe. One reason: Newer browsers , such as Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Firefox and Chrome, will shield consumers. IE6, however, which is still widely used in some businesses, does not.

Moore said he was already working on an exploit module for Metasploit, but said it would take time “to make a module really useful” for penetration testing. He’s currently exploring a pair of ways to weaponize the publicly-posted proof-of-concept code.

Although Microsoft has confirmed the flaw and offered up workarounds — including one that requires users to cripple shortcuts — it had no new advice Monday or a timeline for a fix.

However, Jerry Bryant, a general manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said that the company would definitely patch the problem. “Some of the discussions we’ve seen in the last couple of days state that we are not going to provide an update for this issue,” Bryant said in an e-mail reply to questions. “This is an issue that we will be providing a security update for.”

But unless Microsoft makes a dramatic policy change — and backtracks on statements it gave as recently as last month — patches will not be issued for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the edition that was retired from all support July 13.

And that will be a problem, said Moore. “Maybe the Zeroday patch guys will put something out for XP SP2,” he said, referring to a group of researchers who have infrequently released unauthorized patches for Windows vulnerabilities before Microsoft wraps up its work.

The group, which goes by the name ZERT (Zeroday Emergency Response Team) last shipped a patch in April 2007.

Microsoft’s next regularly-scheduled security updates are slated to ship Aug. 10. Microsoft does issue emergency updates at times, however. So far this year, the company has released two “out-of-band” updates, both for IE.

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‘Don’t get excited’ about Windows 8, says analyst

By Fei Lumbania on July 2, 2010

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
July 2, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Don’t jump to conclusions about Windows 8 based on leaked slides supposedly from Microsoft, an industry analyst warned today.

Putting aside the question of whether the information that leaked Monday is actually official, it’s dangerous to assume that the spelled-out features — ranging from facial recognition for log-ons to support for slates — will actually see the light of day, said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a firm that only tracks the Redmond, Wash. company’s moves.

“The worst thing about this kind of thing is that we don’t know where in the cycle this document was created,” said Cherry. “At the beginning of the [development] cycle, you want to brainstorm and blue-sky, and gather up the most wide-ranging ideas you can. You want Windows to interface with can openers.”

Cherry was commenting on a leaked slide deck first disclosed by Windows enthusiast site Win7Vista.com — the site has since gone dark — and reposted by Stephen Chapman, who writes the Microsoft Kitchen blog . The slides are from a presentation on Windows 8, the next version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system, and carried a late April 2010 date stamp.

Numerous news sites and blogs reported on the find, which many bloggers and pundits accepted at face value.

Cherry said that was a bad idea.

“There are two dangers here,” Cherry said. “They’re making assumptions about where Microsoft is at in the cycle, and they may fall in love with a feature, that when resources and time to develop actually come into play, just isn’t feasible.”

Cherry pointed out past examples of the latter, including WinFS, the storage subsystem once planned for the operating system that became Vista, but which Microsoft yanked when it was forced to restart work on the troubled OS.

“I won’t deny that this [slide deck] is interesting, but you can’t draw conclusions from it,” cautioned Cherry. “It’s just too early.”

Leaked Windows 8 slides, which may not be genuine, include a development timeline without dates. (Credit: Windows Kitchen)

Assuming Microsoft runs a three-year development cycle for the follow-on to Windows 7 , Cherry plotted out a rough timetable for its stages. “They’ve said they want three years from the release of each version to the next [edition of] Windows,” Cherry said.

The first year — which would take Microsoft through the fall of 2010 — would be occupied with spelling out exactly what will be in Windows 8. The second year, or from fall 2010 to fall 2011, would be when the company’s engineers implement those plans in code. The third and final year — from fall 2011 to fall 2012 — would be dedicated to testing.

That puts us in the middle of the spec phase, Cherry said, when planning is in flux and brainstorming on all kinds of enhancements and additions is at a frenzied level.

“My big beef is that this is being reported as ‘This is what Windows 8 will have,’ when that’s not the case,” said Cherry. “Don’t get all excited.”

While it’s possible the slides were the real deal, Cherry said several clues — including the use of watermarks on the slides as well as their formatting — made him suspicious. “Have you ever seen watermarks on a Microsoft presentation?” he asked. “I haven’t.”

If the slides are official, and Cherry conceded that they may be, they were most likely produced to brief Microsoft’s biggest partners, such as Intel or Hewlett-Packard, or even internal divisions, like the company’s keyboard-, mouse- and Webcam-design and manufacturing team.

Microsoft said it had no comment when asked whether the slides were genuine.

All the attention paid to the long list of Windows 8’s possible features also detracts from what Cherry said was the most important aspect about the next Windows.

“Vista got totally off track, and one of Microsoft’s goals for Windows 7 was to prove that they could deliver a reliable, tuned release in a given timeframe,” said Cherry.

“That’s why I think the most important thing in Microsoft’s mind is that it make that three-year date from the release of Windows 7 [for Windows 8]. Two data points, after all, is a trend, but one is just an event,” Cherry said.

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Uninstall trial software

By Fei Lumbania on May 26, 2010

By Chris Byers
PC Advisor (UK)
May 26, 2010

LONDON - QUESTION My Vista laptop came with a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office. I’d like to remove this, since I’ve never used it and it takes up a lot of disk space. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t? I don’t have a Windows CD to restore the OS should I mess things up. Ken Robinson

HELPROOM ANSWER Since you’ve not associated any documents with it, removing Microsoft Office shouldn’t cause you any problems. Uninstall it from Start, Control Panel, Programs and Features, Microsoft Office. Any applied updates will be removed at the same time.

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Google Apps gets big boost from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim

By JM Tuazon on May 14, 2010

By Jon Brodkin
Network World (US)
May 14, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google’s full-court marketing blitz to counter the Microsoft Office 2010 upgrade includes a familiar face to assure old-school IT executives that cloud computing can be trusted: Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun.

Bechtolsheim is fully embracing cloud computing applications these days, as co-founder and chief development officer of Arista Networks, a start-up that builds data center switches. Arista, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has only minimal IT infrastructure and relies on Google and several other companies to deliver core technology services.

Google this week has written numerous blog posts touting the benefits of Google Apps in an attempt to sway IT executives away from Microsoft Office. Bechtolsheim joined Google as a guest blogger on Monday and described his experiences with Google Apps during a Webcast for IT pros on Thursday.

Adopting Google Apps was easy for Arista because it didn’t have much of a legacy IT environment to rip out, Bechtolsheim said.

“We didn’t have a legacy issue,” he said during the webcast. “We started like this from the very beginning of the company. One reason for that was no one wanted to be the IT administrator, quite frankly. We still don’t have an IT administrator, and I don’t think we’d ever want to change away from this model.”

Arista is using Google Apps for e-mail and word processing, along with the Amazon cloud for hosting the company Web site; NetSuite for ERP database; and Salesforce.com for CRM.

Bechtolsheim raved about Google Apps during the webcast, which was not surprising given that the webcast was sponsored by Google. He did offer specific reasons why Google has worked well at his company, however.

With 150 licenses, Google Apps costs Arista $7,500 per year, less than one month’s salary for a really good IT administrator, he said. Spam filters work well, searching e-mail is easy, chat is integrated, and the 25GB limit on e-mail storage is massive, he said.

“Even large corporations have very tight limits on e-mail storage,” Bechtolsheim says. “It’s hard to believe why that is. I have close to 100,000 e-mails in my folder and I can still find every one of them. To me it’s like a database. It turns e-mail into a storage system, which I just didn’t have before.”

While Microsoft Office contains more functionality than Google Apps, Bechtolsheim said Arista doesn’t need much of what Microsoft offers. Arista doesn’t even take full advantage of Google’s applications. For example, Bechtolsheim said he and his colleagues don’t really use the Google video sharing service.

Google Docs, meanwhile, offers a good alternative to in-house word processing, he says.

“Being able to put the document in one place so everyone can see the latest version and actually collaborate on the same document is hard to do in a normal PC environment,” he said.

Bechtolsheim said he hopes Google Apps expands into new kinds of services. Salesforce.com is not cheap, he noted, saying he hopes for either an open source or Google Apps CRM application.

“My advice to every start-up is to use Google Apps,” Bechtolsheim wrote in his blog post. “It saves you from having huge headaches, it is very inexpensive, and just a better system. We also use some other cloud services such as Salesforce.com for customer relationship management, Netsuite for our database and Amazon to host our Web site. Cloud computing works great for us. I would never buy another server to bring these functions in-house.”

It remains to be seen whether endorsements from Bechtolsheim will result in mass adoption of Google Apps. It’s easy to see why small businesses with little IT infrastructure would use Google instead of Microsoft, but so far Google Apps adoption is low.

While 81% of businesses are supporting Microsoft Office 2007, just 4% support Google Apps, Forrester found in a recent survey.

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Add ‘Command Search’ to Office 2007

By Fei Lumbania on May 7, 2010

By Rick Broida
PC World (US)
May 7, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Ingenious. That’s the only word I can use to describe Search Commands, a free Microsoft Office Labs tool that adds a search tool to the Office 2007 Ribbon.

See, for anyone who cut their teeth on Office 2003 or an earlier version, the move to Office 2007 can be daunting. Much as I like the Ribbon, it’s not immediately intuitive. And to this day I still have trouble finding commands that were a snap to locate in the old menu system.

(Speaking of which, you can restore those “classic” menus to Office 2007 by installing the free UBitMenu add-on.)

That’s why I’m jazzed about Search Commands. Once installed, it adds an eponymous tab to the Ribbon. Click it, then click in the search field and type the name of the command you’re after.

Like all search engines should be, this one’s dynamic: It starts producing results as you type. So if you’re looking for, say, macros, you’ll see matching commands just by typing mac. Then just click the one you want.

Search Commands also provides context-sensitive help, meaning if you type out macros and then click the blue Get help question mark, it’ll open the help window for that subject.

Although the Labs page for Search Commands says it’s compatible only with 32-bit Windows XP and Vista, I’m running it just fine on my 64-bit Windows 7 system. Keep in mind, however, that because this is not an official Microsoft product, you can’t get support for it.

That said, this is a must-have addition to Office 2007. Why Microsoft hasn’t built it into the suite–and, for that matter, the upcoming Office 2010–is beyond me.

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Google Enlists DocVerse in Attack on Microsoft

By Fei Lumbania on March 8, 2010

By Jeff Bertolucci
PC World (US)
March 8, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google’s got its head in the cloud–again. The search giant today announced that it has bought DocVerse, a software startup that makes an online collaboration plug-in for Microsoft Office. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google paid $25 million for the San Francisco-based developer, which was founded in 2007 by former Microsoft employees Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui.

The DocVerse deal wraps up an acquisitive week for Google, which announced Monday that it gobbled up online photo-editing site Picnik.

Office, Meet Apps

So what are Google’s intentions for its latest conquest? “Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps,” write DeNeui and Sinha in their DocVerse blog. Their plug-in currently allows MS Office users to work collaboratively on Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents, even when they’re offline.

If implemented correctly, DocVerse’s Office-to-Apps bridge can help Google position its Apps communications and collaboration suite as a viable alternative to Microsoft products in the enterprise market. A collaborative tool that enables seamless (or at least pretty good) integration between the competitors’ business apps could only serve to help Google and harm Microsoft, which has reigned over the enterprise market for years.

A Cloudy Outlook

The DocVerse acquisition fits nicely with Google’s cloud-based view, and with the search company’s not-so-subtle efforts to dethrone the desktop-centric MS Office.

“The future of productivity applications is in the cloud,” blogs Google Apps group product manager Jonathan Rochelle. “But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office,” Rochelle writes.
Google recently added advanced data backup and recovery capabilities to all components of the Apps suite. It also introduced mobile device management tools for users of Google Apps Premier and Education Edition. Today’s DocVerse announcement is yet another sign of Google’s business-market play.

Microsoft, of course, is developing its own cloud-based strategy too. Its upcoming Office 2010, for instance, will feature numerous Web-based enhancements, including scaled-down online versions of core Office desktop apps.

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Google: My 10 Resolutions for 2010

By Fei Lumbania on January 4, 2010

By David Coursey
PC World (US)
January 4, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - As 2009 becomes 2010, Google remains the most interesting technology company. Google is involved in so many–probably too many–things and the regulatory environment, if not competition, has begun to heat up.

With that in mind, I offer 10 “New Year’s Resolutions” for the crew at the Googleplex, in the hope that Google can, in some cases, change its ways before government steps in to change them:

1. Do a better job of communicating with users regarding privacy. This seems obvious enough, but Google needs better help users understand what it is (and isn’t) doing with the information it gathers about them and their habits.

Ultimately, Google will be ordered to submit to some form of external oversight, so perhaps the company should get ahead of the curve and fund an independent Google privacy watchdog. It would provide counsel to the company and transparency to its users.

I trust Google’s current management–as I trust Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer–but users have reasons to fear Google’s collection and use of information, even in its search index. There will be restrictions placed upon the company, and I believe that will be a good thing over the long haul.

2. Be more proactive in dealing with government. 2010 is likely the year the Feds will start moving in on Google. I am especially interested on how the company has used “free” services, underwritten with ad revenue, to stifle real or potential competition outside of its core search business. Ultimately, Google is going to court.

3. Stay out of the social network business. Google has tried social networking and failed. Knol and Orkut have not come close to success. Give up.

4. Google should decide it is not a hardware company. I do not like the idea of Google competing with hardware vendors. I though the Droid was supposed to be Google’s idea of what a smartphone should be. Now it’s the Nexus One. What will it be next week? My hope is the handset manufacturers will gang up against Google for this sort of behavior.

5. Likewise Chrome OS hardware. It’s great for Google to create specs and reference designs, probably wrong for it to actually brand and sell hardware. I think “Made for Chrome OS” stickers are as far as it should go.

6. Make better applications. Am I the only one who notices that Google Apps don’t nearly compete with Microsoft Office if you actually care what the output looks like? Or if you need features beyond the basic set Google provides?

7. Give up on the AdMob purchase. 2010 really is the year Google will bump into external restrictions, if it doesn’t impose them itself.

8. Support competing operating systems. Where is Google Maps Navigation for the iPhone? Apple has said Google can submit the app for approval. I haven’t heard anything since.

9. Make Google Voice a more useful service. Google Voice could replace people’s telephone service with a VoIP product, but isn’t quite up to the task in its present form. Great start, though.

10. I have tried playing with the Google Wave collaboration beta and still find it to be a head scratcher. I think this is another technology in search of a problem to solve. No collaboration product–I am thinking of Lotus Notes and Microsoft Groove as primary examples–has yet become a must-have for average business users. Wave shows promise, but isn’t even close in functionality and ease-of-use. Having said that, collaboration is an incredibly tough problem to solve.

So, there are 10 things that Google should do to improve products and get ahead of the regulators.

As we begin a new year, I am wondering whether 2010 will be the year customers start to rebel against Google or whether the aura of “free” this and that has completely blinded them to the potential and real dangers Google may pose.

People who worried about Microsoft should really worry about Google.

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Bugs and Fixes: Zero-Day Patch for Internet Explorer 6 or 7

By Fei Lumbania on December 21, 2009

By Erik Larkin
PC World (US)
December 21, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - A dangerous vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 became publicly known before a fix was available, raising the specter of a high-risk zero-day attack.
The bug involves the way IE handles Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) objects, and could let an attacker run any command on a targeted Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, or Server 2008 PC. Bad guys have already posted sample attack code online. IE 8 is not affected. For more information, see Microsoft Security Advisory 977981. Meanwhile, a bug in the way Windows handles Embedded OpenType could allow a baddie to take over vulnerable Windows XP, 2000, or Server 2003 computers via malicious Websites or poisoned Office documents. The bug can’t harm Vista or Server 2008, and doesn’t affect Windows 7. Read Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-065 for details.
Office File Flaws

Two other patches repair Office flaws in Excel and Word affecting Office XP and 2003, and Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac.
The Excel bug endangers Office 2007, Office Excel Viewer 2003, and the Office Excel Viewer Service Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. The Word flaw also affects Open XML File Format Converter for Mac, Office Word Viewer 2003, and Office Word Viewer. Microsoft rates the flaws as important; see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-067 (Excel) and Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-068 (Word). Microsoft has also released two critical fixes for business networks. One closes a hole in the Web Services on Devices application programming interface; it’s critical for Vista and Server 2008 (see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-063). The second flaw affects only Windows 2000 systems running License Logging Server (see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-064).
Java and Opera Bump Up

Sun’s Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK) Update 17 closes a number of holes, including a serious flaw that allows attacks via Web pages. Java will check monthly to see whether updates are available, but you can check manually, too: Open Control Panel and double-click the Java icon. On the Update tab, click Update now. After updating, you may need to remove old Java versions manually with Add or Remove Programs. For details, or to download the latest Java, head to Sun’s Java SE Downloads page.
Version 10.10 of Opera’s Web browser fixes numerous bugs, including one that might let malicious JavaScript on a Web page launch an attack. Click Help, Check for updates to confirm that you have the latest version of Opera; if not, you can download Opera 10.10 from PCWorld’s Downloads Library.
Fix Shockwave and Mac OS X

An attack on critical vulnerabilities in Shockwave Player versions prior to 11.5.1.601 could “run malicious code on an affected system,” Adobe says. Check your Shockwave version at Adobe’s special testing page, and get the latest iteration (Shockwave 11.5.2.602) from our Downloads pages.

Finally, the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update corrects various problems involving PDF files, H.264 movies, TIFF images, and other things. Get it via Software Update, and read more at About Security Update 2009-006.

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Microsoft debuts ’streaming’ Office 2010 beta

By JM Tuazon on November 25, 2009

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
November 25, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Microsoft launched the beta of Office Home and Business 2010 over the weekend and is delivering the preview using its new “streaming” download technology.

The beta was the second that Microsoft made available to the general public, and followed the enterprise-grade Office Professional Plus 2010 test edition that it unveiled last week .

Microsoft’s move came just three days after it sent invitations to a small group of people asking them to test Home and Business.

The preview gives the general public a chance to try one of the three editions Microsoft will sell at retail, and includes Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Microsoft has not yet set prices for Office 2010, or slated a ship date more specific than sometime during the first half of 2010.

Home and Business is the first beta of Office 2010 that Microsoft is delivering via its Click-To-Run system, which “streams” pieces of the suite as users begin a download, letting them start working with the suite in minutes. While users work with the trial, the remainder of the code is downloaded in the background. The technology also places Home and Business in a virtualized environment, separating it from the rest of Windows by running its applications from a virtual “Q:” drive.

Although Click-To-Run lets users run the beta on a PC without disturbing existing installations of Office — with the exception of Outlook, since only one copy of the e-mail client can run on a given machine — it also presents some problems, Microsoft has acknowledged.

According to a Nov. 6 entry on the Office engineering team’s blog, users may find that some Office add-ons won’t work when running software delivered by Click-To-Run. “In some cases, add-ins might have trouble locating the Click-to-Run Office products on the machine, or they might have issues communicating with Office products when they are running in the virtual environment,” the team admitted.

Click-To-Run products like Home and Office also ditch Microsoft’s usual patching process, and instead update automatically and without any user approval. “Click-to-Run users also get updated automatically over time, with no need to download or install patches,” added the Office team in its blog post. “The product seamlessly updates itself in the background.”

Home and Business can be downloaded in English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish editions from Microsoft’s Web site.

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For the enterprise, Google Apps fights uphill battle with Microsoft

By Fei Lumbania on November 13, 2009

By Eric Lai
Computerworld (US)
November 13, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - While companies are starting to seriously look at the hosted applications from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. — and Google Apps is winning converts among schools and small firms — Microsoft’s incumbent status gives it a leg up, according to CIOs interviewed at the Society for Information Management (SIM) conference in Seattle this week.

Mueller Water Products Inc., for instance, is piloting Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which includes Microsoft-hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and other apps introduced a year ago.

“We had Google in to look at their apps,” said Bob Keefe, Mueller’s CIO. The Atlanta manufacturer has 5,300 employees, of which 2,200 use PCs with Windows XP and Microsoft Office. “We’re really trying to keep budgets slim. To change out the whole company [to Google Apps] in this economic environment would require a lot of retraining, and that would be very costly.”

Retraining costs also dissuaded the United States Tennis Association (USTA) from moving to Google Apps, according to CIO Larry Bonfante. The USTA “looked very seriously” at Google Apps last year, but ultimately stayed with the known quantity, Microsoft Office. More than half of the USTA’s 750 employees and volunteers are located outside of its White Plains, N.Y. headquarters.

That hasn’t stopped the USTA from shifting many of its back-end applications online, including its Exchange e-mail system, which is run by Web hosting firm USA.net, Bonfante said.

Oregon State University has a strong relationship with Google, which has donated more than $1 million to OSU’s open-source lab. But OSU also recently upgraded to Exchange 2007 for its e-mail. And it remains firmly on Microsoft Office, said CIO Curt Pederson, because of Microsoft’s deep educational discounts and the preference of OSU faculty members.

The situation is different at Sunoco Inc. The gasoline retailer is looking carefully at both Microsoft’s BPOS and Google Apps for its 1,000 office workers, CIO Peter Whatnell said. The company only recently upgraded to Office 2003 at the beginning of this year.

Insurance firm Chubb Corp. has not started to test either Google or Microsoft’s hosted offerings (the latter also includes the coming Web version of Office 2010 .) But group CIO Jim Knight says “the whole concept appeals to me.”

“Eighty percent of our employees are using 10% of the functionality of Office,” he said. “So I could seriously consider Google Apps for 80% of my users, with the other 20% getting the full Office.”

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Microsoft Offers a Sneak Peek at Office Web Apps

By Fei Lumbania on September 21, 2009

By Tony Bradley
PC World (US)

SAN FRANCISCO (09/18/2009) - Microsoft has opened up a sneak peek at the Technical Preview of the upcoming Office Web Apps, and you can take it for a spin. Using the cloud-based SkyDrive storage as a backbone, Microsoft Office Web Apps enables to access and work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files using any (compatible) Web browser from any Internet-connected device in the world.
The Office Web Apps components do not have the same comprehensive feature sets of their Microsoft Office desktop suite peers, but they provide a platform for creating and editing basic files via the Web. Microsoft has developed Office Web Apps to ensure that Office documents render accurately in browsers-even mobile device browsers-without data loss or formatting issues.

Users who have the Microsoft Office applications installed locally on their computer can save directly to the SkyDrive storage or open files directly from the cloud within Office 2010 applications (via Backstage).
Office Web Apps supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari web browsers. Chrome and Opera are missing from that list, but Chrome and Opera combined have less than 5 percent of the browser market combined so that isn’t a huge loss.
The Office Web Apps tools may very well work just fine in Chrome, Opera, or other browsers, but Microsoft hasn’t gone out of its way to develop for those platforms or test them to ensure compatibility. Files may not render properly on untested Web browsers and the consistency of the Office experience can’t be guaranteed.

Do you want to check it out for yourself? Just go to skydrive.live.com. You will need a Windows Live ID to log in to SkyDrive (you can sign up for it from the SkyDrive login page).
Once you are logged in to SkyDrive, click on the My Documents folder. If you don’t have any files stored in your SkyDrive My Documents folder yet, upload a Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file. After there are files present in the folder you will see a blue bar across the top of the files with a link to “Join our preview program”.

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