Office Live–Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs

If you have used Google docs you know the convenience of having your docs available wherever you have internet access and shareable with whoever you want. Now Microsoft has joined the cloud computing world with Office Live.  People will enjoy its seemless interface with your existing Microsoft products.  You can view the doc online or click “edit” to have it open in your computer’s Microsoft programs.

Office Live also boosts working with a team b/c it tracks comments and actions allowing multiple people to work on the same document–no more searching for the latest version.

I’ve already found it useful b/c I work back and forth b/w two computers. Rather than emailing myself stories or information, I can now just put it “in the cloud” so I can access it wherever I happen to be.

Best part–it’s free!

Found via Hands on Small Business conference ( a free small business technology workshop coming to cities across America )

Great Windows 7 deal for college students

Just in time for back to school. Microsoft is offering its Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro Edition (normally $120) for just $30 to college students.

To qualify you just have to be a current student and have a working email address from a U.S. university

Offer ends Jan. 3, 2010!

Oh, and while you’re there you may as well pick up Microsoft Office for just $59.95. The so-called “Ultimate Steal” is a 91% savings! The pack includes: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote, Groove, Publisher, Access and Info Path.

Found via geeksugar

Retail Retaliation

Microsoft tries desperately not to follow in Apple’s footsteps. Despite both companies selling computers they try to remain separate, different (especially with their competing commercials). Well, Microsoft is finally following Apple for real.

Microsoft has officially announced it will be opening it’s own chain retail stores (the first two in Arizona and California). Apple may have the reputation of a friendlier user interface but Microsoft wants to connect with its users as well. Will the Microsoft store be as successful as the Apple store without the ipod and those Mac geniuses? It all remains to be seen, but it can’t hurt. It’s better than traveling around to a hundred different electronics mega stores in search of a Microsoft computer.

LMK–Let Me Know

The Girl Scouts and Microsoft Corp have partnered to give parents and teens information about online safety, including topics like cyber-bullying, predators and social networking.

The companion sites, LMK and LetMeKnow ( for parents), are designed to address the needs of each audience. On LMK, girls are the experts addressing issues on a teen-to-teen level. The sites include videos and interactive feedback.

Parents can sign up for a online safety newsletter to keep up on issues that may affect their teens.

You can’t have enough help these days!

Microsoft Arc Mouse is Pur-ty

Microsoft’s  Arc Mouse is just a beauty.  The crescent-shaped mouse is set to be released in new “fashion colors” like eggplant, frost, deep olive, and marine. When it was launched last September, it was only available in red and black.

People love color. Apple figured this out a long time ago.  You can even get air conditioning units in fashion colors if you want them.

The new mouse will retail for about $50.

Technological Alliance

Microsoft has finally caved to the dark side (or seen the light, depending on how you look at it).

Seadragon mobile is the first (of hopefully many) Microsoft iphone applications.  (When did you ever think you’d hear that combination.  It’s a super zoom abled image browser in case you’re wondering what Seadragon does.  To me it doesn’t really matter that apps purpose, just the fact that it exists.

Imagine the possibilities of Apple and Microsoft together?  What other unimaginable alliances can you see aiding the world?

My View of Vista (or Why I May Need a Mac)

You may recall when I took Windows to task for treating me like an idiot. Welll, I just bought a new laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista and suddenly Windows XP seems like a lean. efficient OS that treats me like I’m a PhD.

I could rant about how Vista now asks you a third time before allowing you to do any task more complex than opening an application, but it’s a minor annoyance compared to some of the lovely new quirks to discovered.

I still use Microsoft Office for XP. It continues to serve me well and they haven’t added anything significant enough to justify me spending a thousand dollars on an upgrade. (One of the few things I miss about working for a big company – they paid to upgrade your software!). Part of that Office suite is Outlook 2002. I successfully installed Office on the new Vista machine and cloned my email account info, of course telling it to save my passwords. And it all worked fine until I closed Outlook. When I started it up again, it had purged my passwords and thus failed to retrieve my email until I used the account management tool to re-enter the passwords. A Google search on the problem confirmed that it was common to Outlook 2002 and that Microsoft had no intention of fixing it. “Please send us $1000 for newer versions of software you didn’t want to replace”.

But wait! It gets worse. I had no trouble detecting and logging into my home wireless network - except that it came up “Local Only”, meaning no Internet connectivity. After frustrating attempts to figure out all the new “user friendly” nomenclature for networking I gave up and decided to use good old DOS brute force. Finding out how to open a command line window was a chore and when I finally did and tried the old faithful “ipconfig /release” command, it told me that it required “elevation”. Huh? I live at sea level in a one story home. Did I need to hit the roof? My account was set as “Administrator” but apparently that wasn’t good enough.

In a classic Catch-22, I wanted to check the web for updated drivers, but that required web access that Vista wasn’t giving me. I tried plugging in a cable direct to the router and all of a sudden all the connections worked! Sweet! Or not…

I go to a client’s office where I’ve always successfully connected to their wireless network, but I get the dreaded “Local Only”. After seeking help (and I HATE to do that) from their network admins, I was ready to give up and plug into a network jack. Presto! Once I did that, wireless kicked in. See a pattern emerging?

I was on the road last weekend. Tried to connect in the airport. Yep – Local Only. When I got to my destination, I used someone else’s computer to research the issue. It’s common. I tried to follow some of the proposed solutions. But the only one that ever worked was “plug it into a router”. That’s kind of hard in an airport.

Microsoft is mum on the issue. The net community hasn’t been able to overcome it. And my smug, welf-satisfied Mac friends are all saying “I told you so…”