office

The more things change, the more Microsoft would like them to stay the same.

That's the gist of Horace Dediu's assessment of the tech giant's "perplexing" pricing strategy for its new Surface tablet, as its old mainstay, the PC market, becomes the PC-plus-tablets market. It's the tablet portion of that equation, you see, that's driving the growth in that combined marketplace. (See Dediu's charts.)

For the several decades of the PC era, Asymco's Dediu points out, Microsoft has benefited from the "tax" payments that accrued to it by way … Read more

Rumors have been swirling for a long time about the possibility of Microsoft's Office suite coming to iOS, but new leaks point to this happening sometime in the next year.

The biggest question we have about this rumor is: why hasn't this happened already?

Also this week, we go on and on about Bloomberg's possible plans and what that means for LinkedIn, and Dish has its eye on your cell phone contract.

Thanks for watching!

Heard a tech rumor you think we should cover? Leave a comment below; ; send us a tweet (@EmilyDreyfuss, @karynelevy, and @CNETRumorShow); or … Read more

I love a good win-win.

From now until December 24, you can get SoftMaker FreeOffice for Windows or Linux absolutely free. And when you do, SoftMaker will donate 0.10 Euros to betterplace.org, which raises funds for a variety of worthy worldwide projects.

So what the heck is SoftMaker FreeOffice? As you may have guessed from the name, it's the free version of SoftMaker's commercial office suite. It provides word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, all with an interface that closely resembles Microsoft Office 2003.

Speaking of which, FreeOffice is fully file-compatible with Microsoft's suite, though it'… Read more

Microsoft officials have stopped bothering to deny that there will be some kind of Office support on the iPad. But the Softies still aren't sharing when this support will arrive or in what form.

Reports that Microsoft was developing Office for iPad began circulating, courtesy of The Daily, earlier this year. Reporters at The Daily claimed a Microsoft representative demonstrated privately to them Word, Excel, and PowerPoint running on the iPad. Microsoft officials, at that time, tried to throw cold water on The Daily's claims.

In subsequent appearances, Microsoft officials danced around questions as to when and whether … Read more

The BYOD (bring-your-own-device) trend is a new reality, with employees bringing their own smartphones and tablets into the workplace. The idea is to be more productive, but compatibility issues with applications can hinder that. Case in point is Microsoft Office: the only way you can view and edit MS Office documents on your Apple device (for now) is by installing a third-party app. Polaris Office is such an app; it offers users a way to view and edit MS Office docs, as well as PDFs, with incredible ease. We tested it on our iPad.

Polaris Office opens with sample Word, … Read more

Sooner or later, nearly everyone whose work involves computers will need basic office tools such as a word processor, spreadsheet program, or presentation maker. Since Microsoft's powerful Office suite sets the standard, alternatives need to demonstrate their compatibility with the latest versions of Office. Kingsoft Office 2012 Free is the freeware version of Kingsoft Office Professional. It's a fraction of the size of some similar programs, and of course, it's free.

It bundles Kingsoft Writer, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. Each can open, edit, and save documents that are compatible with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, respectively. While it can'… Read more

With the Kingsoft Office app, you can view, edit, and send Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and other data on your Android phone. It may not have all of the options found in desktop versions, but this free app proved to be very useful.

The Kingsoft Office main interface includes a row of icons similar to what you'd find in your basic word processor or spreadsheet editor. It handles all the latest Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats as well as text and PDF files. You can create files as well, but if you're working on a touch-sceen … Read more

People who want to take Office 2013 for a spin can download a 60-day evaluation edition.

The version available is the full Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 suite, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, and Lync. The software contains all the features in the paid edition, so you won't miss out on anything.

You will need a Microsoft account in order to access the download page, but otherwise there are no strings attached.

Here's how you can grab the free trial version:

Head over to the Office Professional Plus 2013 download page on TechNet. Click … Read more

On November 13, some Microsoft Office 365 customers in North America were reporting (via Twitter and e-mail) that they were experiencing e-mail problems -- just like they were five days ago.

A Microsoft representative provided the following update around 11 a.m. PT today:

"On Tuesday, Nov. 13, some customers served from our North America data centers are experiencing intermittent access to e-mail services. Customers are being updated regularly via our normal communication channels. We sincerely apologize to our customers for any inconvenience."

This tweet was posted shortly thereafter:

This isn't the first time this month some … Read more