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Microsoft announced on it’s pricing for the Office 2010 suites on the Office Development Group blog on Monday. There will be four different versions this time around (Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and Professional Academic), and two different prices depending on how you want to get the software. There will be a boxed version of the software that will include the installation CD and license, and there will be the alternative Product Key Card version. The Product Key Card version is just a small plastic card (credit card size) with a product key sticker on it. The software will come on new systems pre-installed with the Office starter/trial. For anyone that has an OEM version of Office 2007, you will most likely be familiar with the Product Key Card.

The Home and Student will have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Home and Business adds Outlook to the software. Professional and Professional Academic will be the full suite containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher and Access.

Home and  Student will cost $149 for the boxed version and $119 for the Product Key Card version. The boxed version can be installed on up to 3 PC’s. Home and Business will run $279/$199, Professional $499/$349. Both of which (boxed version) can be installed on 2 PC’s. Professional Academic will go for $99 and will only be available in boxed form and only to students, teachers, and academic faculty. The Product Key Card versions and Professional Academic version only allow for a single installation.

I’ve been playing with the beta version of Office 2010 for the past week, and I can’t really see all that much functionally, that they’ve changed from Office 2007. There are some nice additions though. The “minimize ribbon” button/widget, the “Background Removal Tool” and a 5:1 contrast ratio added into the silver theme. They also did away with the Office 2007 Button, and replaced it with a ribbon tab. Nifty, but hardly a reason to upgrade from 2007.

That’s something else they did away with. There is no upgrade option from previous versions of Office. So, for most people, that will mean having to buy the full boxed version of the software.

Something interesting to note, was that they mentioned that “Office Home and Student was one of Amazon.com’s top 3 Hot Holiday Bestseller software products in 2009.”. That just points out the amount of people that most likely won’t be buying the 2010 version.

On Friday Norton released it’s Kids’ Top 100 Searches of 2009. Predictably, Facebook and YouTube were among the top 3. What I found a little unsettling, was that the #4 and #5 most searched for terms were “sex” and “porn”.

Now, I know that teens will be curious about those subjects and that’s normal.  If you scroll to the bottom of the Norton page, it lists the searches by age categories. “Porn”, was the fourth most popular search performed by kids 7 and under! That has me worried if parents know what their kids are doing while they’re online, and if they know how to enable “Parental Controls” for when their children are online.

The CBC published an article yesterday about a mother in British Columbia, who’s Rogers account was charged 0.15$ per incoming text message. Although her contract states that all text messages are free, Rogers, implemented the charge on incoming text messages in July of this year.

According to the article “Her 16-year-old daughter sent and received close to 6,000 texts in one month — that’s 200 per day — to and from those numbers.” Let me do some quick math on that… 200 times 0.15… carry the 1…   $30.00 ?!?!?!

That’s just for one of her 3 kids, and not including her own incoming texts. As much as Canadian wireless companies are spending on advertising and making off their clients. You would think that they would inform their customers about upcoming changes to plans. A little fair warning would give people time to adjust their texting habits. While the additional charges are still ridiculous, being up front about them would show some respect for their clients, and go a long way in my eyes for being a company that operates ethically.

You can read the full CBC article here

Came across an application for your iPod and iPhone users via Chris Pirillo’s site (  http://chris.pirillo.com ).

It’s called CopyTrans® Manager. It’s apparently much faster than iTunes and easier to use. Hey, for a free download, give it a try here.

I came across an interesting blog article here. Although it states that current phones aren’t capable of those speeds and that the only way to connect to those networks is through a laptop’s wireless, it’s only a matter of time before the technology is adopted and widespread. While it’s easier to implement something like this in smaller countries like Norway and Sweden, it will eventually find it’s way to North America. Imagine being able to work from anywhere on your laptop, without having to worry about trying to find an open wireless network. The potential for business productivity is astounding.

I figured that might catch some people’s attention. Hey, I’m like just about everyone else. I like free stuff too! Over the years I’ve amassed a plethora of free applications that make living a digital life much easier. Some you may already know of, some you may not. Now, although the software is free, the authors actually do need to eat. So if you really like any of the applications, please send in a donation to support them. Even a small donation helps. Not only does it put food on their table and a roof over their heads, it also gives them a reason to keep updating the software, and writing more great applications. I’m not going to list all of them all at once, because that would take forever. So, check back frequently, because I’ll constantly be adding to the list.

 The first on the list, is 7-Zip. Although Windows natively supports uncompressing files, it’s still a bit clunky how it does it. 7-zip has a very small installation, and doesn’t eat up system resources like WinZip which, if you don’t do a custom installation will put something called “Quick Pick” in your task bar. It also doesn’t have any annoying “Buy the full version!” splash screens, or popups. It just plain works, and works well. They’re even working on a version for Windows mobile. You can give it a try by downloading it here.

 Next up, is Opera. Some of you may already be familiar  with it on your mobile phone. Opera is a web browser that’s much faster than Internet Explorer, and even Firefox. It has all the features you would expect nowadays in a browser, and even some more. What I particularly like is when you open a new tab, it opens what they call “speed dial”.  In their own words,

“Speed Dial gives you quick access to your favorite Web sites. Every time a new tab is opened, you are presented with a 3×3 grid of thumbnails, each representing a Web address.”

It’s so much more intuitive and useful than having to look through your bookmarks for the websites you access the most. But, the bad part? Not everyone recognizes it as a standard web browser, so some websites just won’t allow you access with it. Windows update for instance (if you’re still running windows XP or earlier), some banks won’t allow you to use anything other than Firefox or Internet Explorer, etc… But, for all the rest of your browsing needs, I suggest you give it a whirl. Check it out here.

Well, I’ve been messing with Windows 7 Beta (build 7100) for the past month or two, and I have to say, I’m actually impressed. I know this is not what was released to the OEM’s last week, and is still only the Beta version. I expect that the release will have much more compatibility for devices and software than what I’m currently using.

Finally, Microsoft has gotten their act together and taken a good look at the market and taken it into consideration. For years people have been staving off Windows Vista, due to it’s lack of compatibility, it’s awkwardness of it’s interface, and annoying UAC (user account control). While Windows 7 looks, visually very similar to Vista, they function very differently in key spots.

The first thing I noticed with Windows 7 was it’s taskbar, which is now called the “superbar”.  In previous versions of the taskbar, if you had a lot of windows open and you had it set to “group similar taskbar buttons”, all you got was a text description of what you had open. Niffty, but lacking a bit of functionality. If you were like me, and didn’t like the that type of stacking, your task bar would fill up until you had so much in there you would have to increase the height of your taskbar to accommodate everything or have to deal with scrolling through your taskbar via the little arrows that would appear on the right hand side. They’ve really put a lot of thought into it this time. But hey, a picture says a 1000 words, right? Video says even more.

Some of us spend our spare time watching tv, reading, surfing the internet. Some others, like myself, spend a lot of our spare time playing video games. I personally only play games on the computer. I don’t have any consoles (XBox, Playstation, etc…). Heck, I don’t even own a TV. Wether you want to want to belive it or not, games have become a huge, and one of the fastest growing parts of the software industry. In 2007, there was an estimated 800 million regular gamers worldwide, and some $31.6 billion spent by consumers on games (surpassing music sales by the way). That’s a hefty amount.

Some of you may think that games are predominantly played by teenagers and children, but the real truth is that the majority of gamers are 35 years old. The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) has some surprizing facts on it’s website that may shock you. http://www.theesa.com/

Now, if you’re  in that minority that’s not playing…
… what the heck are you doing when you’re online?

For the past few months I’ve been monitoring peoples reactions to Google’s announcement that they will be releasing an operating system next year, “Chrome OS”. Partnered with some of the industry’s heavyweights such as Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. This is not an endeavor they are taking lightly.

According to their blog, here.
“Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” . Now as far as I know, that’s most of the world’s population, that owns a computer built in the last 10 – 15 years.

This OS is reportedly to be optimized for the cloud. With the convergence of their other projects, and people’s changing views on what “cloud computing” is. It may possibly put them at the forefront of (what I belive is going to be) the next OS race.

The world is going mobile and Apple and Google are looking like the two big heavy weights in the battle. Microsoft, as always, may be keeping things under wraps for now, and may end up being a surprize contender. But, as it stands, they have only really poked at it. This late in the game, Microsoft is at a significant disadvantage. If they are depending on the release of Windows 7 to carry them through, till they get their market research in order, it may be too late. At this point they are relying on people not giving up their conventional desktops and laptops in lieu of net books, iPhones, and Internet connected smartphones.

Chrome OS, combined with the more open version of Android may pose a serious threat to Microsoft’s offerings. Add in Apple’s, making their moblie platform open for development, we may see a major shift in the market.

Just food for thought…

Well, I guess Microsoft fall guilty of piracy (of sorts).

“Canadian company i4i has won a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. that will see the major software maker pay the Toronto, ON-based firm $200 million.”

The full artile is here.