Computers > Microsoft Office and Features
Microsoft Office and Features: News, Information and Reviews
"The European Commission has reiterated its demand for the creation of a single European patent. It said the absence of such a protection is hindering the growth of technology companies in the European Union. The Commission has published a strategy aimed at increasing the benefit to be gained in the EU from technology research and development. It announced an increase in research funding for technology research of over 50 per cent between 2010 and 2013. It will increase spending from EUR 1.1bn to EUR 1.3bn, it said."
Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:19:33 GMT
OpenOffice.org 3.1 is 65 days away, and developers are finishing up more than 1000 issues targeted for this Microsoft-Office-killer packing an army of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. Major new features include antialiased drawings, solid dragging, translucent selections in Writer, improvements in Chart axes and labels, improved grammar checking, macros and full support for SQL including syntax highlighting in Base, and many more.
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:24:46 GMT
Yesterday we ran a story on how educational institutions defaulting to Microsoft Office may stifle some people who do not own a copy of Office or Windows. A Forrester Research report now states the bloody obvious by claiming that organisations stick with Microsoft Word not out of necessity, but out of habit.
Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:45:43 GMT
The news of OpenOffice.org's third major release has generated quite a bit of buzz on the internet for many reasons, one of which being that it now runs natively on a Mac (sans X11). ZDnet has posted a screenshot gallery of OpenOffice.org 3.0 for those who have yet to try the hot-off-the-press application.
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:20:24 GMT
After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite's overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:36:20 GMT
Michael Meeks who leads the OpenOffice.org development team within Novell has taken a detailed look at contributions associated by metrics to OpenOffice.org and makes the case that Sun's tight control over the codebase and the lack of enough volunteer contributors leaves the development slowly stagnating over a period of time. Michael Meeks has recently started strongly advocating the position that Sun needs to setup a more independent OpenOffice.org foundation or otherwise allow more relaxed policies for commit access and be less rigid about assignment of copyright to itself for the development community of Openoffice.org to thrive beyond Sun developers.
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:39:03 GMT
Everyone knows that Microsoft Exchange is expensive - but ubiquitous â€" and plenty of open source projects and vendors have been trying a variety of technical approaches to replace it. While none is yet a drop-in replacement, a PC World article looks at ways that some administrators can get a cost advantage by switching.
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:51:47 GMT
Periodically, there's a review of text editors for a particular platform. Linuxlinks' latest post is pretty thorough though, covering 21 different Linux/Unix text editors. "In many users' eyes, a text editor should be lean and mean, fast to start up and shut down, without fancy splash screens or a graphical user interface. The choice of editor has long stirred up strong emotions. [...] To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 21 high quality Linux text editors. There's a mix of graphical and console based applications included.
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:10:16 GMT
OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft's Office application suite. It is fantastic if you need basic office applications such as a word processor or spreadsheet at no cost. However, large organisations and power users may be disappointed by its lack of features and support. Read the full review here.
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:22:34 GMT
InfoWorld's Curtis Franklin reviews the four leading contenders to supplant Microsoft Office in business and finds that, while Google Docs is not ready to take on the full mantle, OpenOffice and Zoho provide viable alternatives should IT endeavor to wean business off Office.
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine has a hot little tutorial for anyone who wants to master some very fantastically useful (but lesser known) keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org (for Writer). Read the full story at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com.
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:08:07 GMT
The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:09:55 GMT
Michael Crider at Freesoftware Magazine has written a fine, detailed howto on using Mail Merge in OpenOffice, full of useful tips and screenshots. This is one of the better OpenOffice.org tutorials.
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:20:55 GMT
Last week, IBM unveiled the first version of their OpenOffice.org offshoot, Lotus Symphony. Symphony is aimed at professional users in a corporate environment, but brings to OpenOffice.org many UI enhancements in an attractive, single tabbed interface. Symphony 1.0 runs on Windows and Linux; while the site used to suggest a Mac version was forthcoming, there is currently no reference to a Mac native version of Symphony. The Lotus Symphony website has been updated to reflect the recent release, however, downloads are very slow at the moment "due to high demand."
Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:59:37 GMT
eWeek's Debra Donston has penned down five ways the end user desktop in enterprises will look different in five years. While some of her ideas and predictions make a low of sense, there are a few things which are slightly debatable. Mostly, the reliance on virtualisation and web applications.
Fri, 30 May 2008 13:41:59 GMT