Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

Apple and Microsoft have long had an uneasy truce going on. Microsoft dominates the operating system market with Windows, and Apple’s OS X is the second-biggest kid on the block.

The CEO’s of the two companies regularly poke fun at one another in important speeches. The truth of the matter, however, is that they need each other: Apple’s iTunes dominates the music player market, and you’ll struggle to find a company that doesn’t run on Microsoft Office: Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel makes the business-world go ’round.

It’s four and a half years since the last time Microsoft updated Office for Mac – back in the dark ages when eMacs were still around, and the G5 processor was cutting-edge technology, so it was well over-due for an update.

Let’s admit it: Office software is hardly the sexiest thing you could possibly install on your computer, and yet, it’s a necessity for most of us office-bound wage-slaves. Nonetheless, it’s good to see that Microsoft have gone the extra mile to inject some more useful functions into their suite. For one thing, stability has improved a lot, especially on intel-based Macs, but ‘the absence of crashes’ is hardly a feature.

We’ve got a load of great new toys across the Office range – Microsoft Word comes with a new functions making it much easier to keep track of bibliographies (great for students and scholars), fancy newsletter designs (great for amateur typographers), a useful way of dealing with formatting palettes (great for everyone) and a brand-spanking new design which makes it all feel a little bit more Mac-like.

Excel stays pretty much the same, with a few templates thrown in for good measure, but then, Excel has pretty much been king of the hill when it comes to spreadsheets for the past, oh, 20 years or so. Why change a winning formula?

Powerpoint is the de-facto standard for presentations, which is pretty damn depressing, considering that this is the one piece of Office-suite software where Apple has Microsoft well and truly licked: Keynote runs circles around Powerpoint in just about every way.

Of course, a few things have changed since 2004, other than Mac going Intel. Most importantly, the Office market has hotted up quite a lot, with quite a few cheap and free options becoming available. NeoOffice, and StarOffice are completely office suites, and it’s possible to move all of your document-editing on-line for free, too, with applications like Google Documents, Zoho Suite and ThinkFree Office. In addition, Microsoft is getting stiff competition from Apple’s own iWork, which retails at only £55 – a sixth of the price of Microsoft’s office.

Don’t get us wrong: Microsoft Office 2008 is a fine piece of software, but we can’t help but feel thoroughly ripped off by Microsoft: if Apple manage to charge fifty quid for a software package, so can Microsoft – especially because the latter have the economy of scale to pull it off.

Sadly, for the office-rats among us, Excel is a must, so we’ll begrudgingly stomp off to the shop to fork over our hard-earned, muttering curses under our breath. If you don’t need Microsoft Excel, buy iWork instead, and spend the money you save on an iPhone…

Blu-ray player sales up seven-fold

Those cagey folk who refused to hedge their bets in Hi-Def Match showdown sure didn’t waste much time once Toshiba closed the door on HD-DVD, this week.

Play’s Stuart Rowe informs us that on VHD (Victory in Hi-Def) Day this Tuesday, the company sold more Blu-ray players than in the previous week combined.

“There was a seven fold increase in Blu-ray player sales, on that day alone.” said the Chief Operating Officer.

“People have been waiting a long time to move into the Hi-Def era and now they have the confidence that this is going to be the format.

“Our cheapest player (The Samsung BD-P1400/XEU) is now £199 and you’d expect the prices to come down further as Sony try and build the brand. It’s all great news for the consumer.”

Play was among the first to react to Toshiba’s white flag on Tuesday by knocking £40 off their cheapest HD-DVD player, making it just £79.99 – the first of what Stuart is predicting will be a slew of bargain basement offers.

“There’s going to be a lot of great deals out there in the coming weeks. HD-DVD player prices will fall in line with DVD players with people now buying them more as great DVD players with the capacity for upscaling.”

Don’t expect to be finding too many HD-DVD flicks on the clearance stock shelves just yet however…

“There are no real plans for us to slash prices on the disks,” says Stuart. “A lot of people have the players and collectors will keep buying them for the time being.”

Paramount officially Blu-ray (again)

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Michael Bay can breathe easy, Paramount (Dreamworks included) has officially gone Blu-ray. Two and a half years after announcing itself purple, and exactly five months after becoming HD DVD exclusive, this move makes all six major Hollywood studios Blu. Don’t make space for that Blu edition of Transformers in your DVD rack just yet, as the company plans to “monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly”, but with PS3 sales up and BD Live on the way, we can’t imagine it will take very long. The Hollywood Reporter expects to see Universal and Paramount new releases hitting Blu-ray and DVD at the same time by late spring or early summer, when we can forget this whole thing ever happened.

[Thanks to Robert and everyone who sent this in]

 

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T-Mobile trials HotSpot @Home Talk Forever Home Phone in Seattle, Dallas

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Well, goodness, try saying that five times fast. T-Mobile has officially unveiled its rather longwinded “HotSpot @Home Talk Forever Home Phone” plan add-on for folks that aren’t quite ready to put their landlines out to pasture quite yet, though there’s a catch: much like the original, it’s beginning life as a trial in just a couple of test markets. Lucky folks in Seattle and Dallas will be able to march into their local T-Mobile outlet and pick up the long-rumored WRTU54G for $49.99 on contract, at which point $10 a month tacked onto their T-Mobile bill will allow them to jack in their old-school landline phones and get unlimited domestic calling. In the event they need a landline phone (o rly?) or are looking to upgrade their 70’s vintage AT&T Slimline, stores will also be offering this lovely DECT system from VTech to complete the package. There’s no word just yet on when we might see the hardware outside the test markets, but with landline popularity waning the way it is, we’d suggest they get a move on.

 

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Bluetooth: the Next Big Thing?

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Watch out Walt Mossberg, Al Roker’s got your number on this whole “technology pundit for the common man” thing. He teamed up with Cat Schwartz on the Today Show to get to the bottom of this whole Bluetooth sensation that’s sweeping the country. Will something finally dethrone infrared from its dominant role in our wireless lifestyle? Only time will tell. Video is after the break.

Continue reading Bluetooth: the Next Big Thing?

 

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Tech Blog by Ezra Hill