Microsoft Office Live

Microsoft has announced pricing for Office 2010, with the biggest change being the fact that buyers can pay less by forgoing the full boxed copy in favor of a card with only a product key code.

Office 2010, which is now in public beta testing and due in final form later this year, will come in four retail versions--Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and an academic version of Office Professional. Of note, the product key cards are good for only one PC, while the boxed copies are good for installation on two PCs, with the exception of Home … Read more

With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft showed Wednesday it's trying to retake the browser initiative.

IE remains the Net's dominant browser. But perversely, it became something of a technology underdog after Microsoft vanquished Netscape in the browser wars of the 1990s and scaled back its browser effort.

That left an opportunity for rivals to blossom--most notably Firefox, which now is used by a quarter of Web surfers, but also Apple's Safari, which now runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X, and Google's Chrome, which aims to make the Web faster and a better foundation for applications.

Microsoft has been pouring resources back into the IE effort, though, and at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, some fruits of that labor were on display. In particular, Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky showed off IE 9's new hardware-accelerated text and graphics.

The acceleration feature takes advantage of hitherto untapped computing power in a way that's more useful than other browser-boosting technology--Google's Native Client to directly employ PC's processor and Mozilla's WebGL for accelerated 3D graphics, for example--according to Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.

"This is a direct improvement to everybody's usage of the Web on a daily basis," Hachamovitch said in an interview after Sinofsky's speech. "Web developers are doing what they did before, only now they can tap directly into a PC's graphics hardware to make their text work better and graphics work better." … Read more

Microsoft said Thursday that it has finalized the code for Exchange 2010, the next version of its e-mail and communications server.

Exchange 2010, which has been ahead of the rest of the Office family in development, becomes the first of the Office 2010 wave of products to be finished.

"Our senior leadership team has signed off on the final code, and it has been sent to our early adopters for one final look before its public release.," Microsoft said in a blog posting.

The product will become broadly available in November, Microsoft, said with a launch planned for … Read more

Microsoft plans on Thursday to start public testing for the first browser-based version of Office, although the technology preview is at least as notable for what it doesn't include as what it does offer.

The limited test of the so-called Office Web Apps includes versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but not the OneNote note-taking application. And while Excel and PowerPoint offer the ability to edit and create documents, the current Web-based version of Word can only be used to view documents, essentially the same capability it already offers as part of its current Office Live Workspace product.

Microsoft … Read more

In a reversal, Microsoft says it will now charge all small businesses an annual domain registration fee, even those companies it had promised free Web site registrations for life.

Starting October 1, all customers will have to pay $14.95 a year to renew their custom Web address. Microsoft offers Web site registration as part of its Office Live Small Business service. In some ways, it's understandable, given that Microsoft has to pay fees each year in order to keep renewing the domains.

However, the move does mean the software maker is going back on a promise it made … Read more

As noted by blogger Long Zheng, Microsoft has snapped up the Office.com domain.

The address would seem to make for a logical home for the forthcoming Web-based version of Office, though Microsoft declined to say how it plans to use the address.

"At this point it's too early to share details on our plans around www.office.com," a Microsoft representative said on Thursday. Microsoft launched a technical preview of Office 2010 last month, but the Web-based versions aren't slated to start public testing until later this year. Microsoft has said that the browser-based Office … Read more

Microsoft is releasing the second service pack update to Office 2008 for Mac, the company said Monday.

The free update, which is expected to be available later on Monday from Microsoft's Web site, is designed to improve speed and stability as well as add new features for connecting to SharePoint servers and to Microsoft's Office Live Workspaces.

"With SP2 we are not only delivering on top customer requests midcycle, but also taking a first step in bringing Microsoft software plus services to Mac users," senior product manager Mike Tedesco said in a statement. "This connection … Read more

Those attending Microsoft's TechEd event will not only get to hear about Office 2010, they will also be among the first to get to try it out.

Microsoft said Monday that it will launch an invitation-only Technical Preview Program of the new Office in July, and said that those at this week's Microsoft conference in Los Angeles will be among the first to get to kick the tires on the new version of Microsoft's flagship software.

Whereas Office 2007 introduced new file formats and a major overhaul of the user interface, Office 2010 is a more modest … Read more

The next version of Microsoft's corporate e-mail server will not only offer the ability to view e-mail by conversations, but also the option of "muting" any thread that a user would rather not take part in.

Conversation threading, a popular feature from Google's Gmail, and the mute option are several of the new features in Exchange 2010, the next version of the company's e-mail and calendar server. The software is entering public beta on Wednesday, with a final launch slated for the second half of this year.

Among the other features of the product, which … Read more