Microsoft Topic

Microsoft recently announced that the company will be releasing Office 2010 for Mac (the replacement for the current Office 2008 for Mac) in time for the 2010 Holiday season.  New to the suite will be 'Outlook for Mac', a version of Microsoft's Outlook program that is available on Windows.  Outlook for Mac will replace Entourage, the current email application in the Office for Mac suite of applications.

A June 12, 2009 CNNMoney.com article titled 'Can Windows 7 save PCs?", David Goldman writes about Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system.    The article discusses the PC slump and highlights a March survey conducted by Dimension Research that indicates that 50% of respondents are likely to dump Windows in favor of Apple's Mac OS X operating system.

Chalk this one up in the chuckle category! MacUser has come across a very interesting result from Microsoft's new search engine Bing when it is asked if one should use a Mac or a PC, it tells you to 'Get a Mac'

Today Microsoft has released updates for Office 2008 for Mac, Office 2004 for Mac that address security issues with the software.  The updates take Office 2008 to version 12.1.9, Office 2004 to version 11.5.5, and Open XML File Format Converter for Mac to version 1.0..

When Apple redesigned Office for Mac 2008, it had to drop Analysis ToolPak (ATP) because Visual Basic was removed from Office 2008.  As a result, Excel 2008 doesn't have data analysis out of the box.  Microsoft and AnalystSoft have collaborated to release StatPlus:mac LE, a free download that will provide data analysis options in Excel 2008.

In a post over at The Apple Blog titled the 'Pleasure of Productivity', Liam Cassidy, a self described switcher describes his migration from Microsoft Office to Apple's iWork suite of productivity applications that includes Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined the 'I'm a PC' parade but doesn't quite stick to the official marketing tag line.  In a video posted to YouTube on September 19, 2008 Ballmer is shown in an office building walking towards a camera.  In his customary boisterous tone he states:

The Justice, an student newspaper of Brandeis University, reports that 60 percent of incoming freshman have come to school with a Mac. This influx of Mac users has raised the school's Mac user base to 40 percent.

Microsoft is currently offering (via select authorized resellers including Amazon) students up to 30 percent off Office 2008 productivity suites when purchased alongside any new Mac.  The offer is valid from July 15, 2008 to September 8, 2008.

Edward C. Baig states that you don't have to hold back on making the switch.  His column starts off with the following statement:

Macworld has published some recent benchmarks of the new Boot Camp enabled Intel iMac and MacBook Pro running Windows XP Service Pack 2.   The tests had these system go head-to-head with a Dell Inspiron E1705 (Core Duo laptop), HP Compaq nx9420 (Core Duo laptop), and a HP Pavilion a1250n (Media Center Desktop).

Apple's new Intel based Macs have recently been hacked to allow native installations of both Mac OS X and Windows XP.  Following this development, a post at Gearlog outlines recent benchmarks demonstrating that Apple's MacBook Pro runs Photoshop faster than Windows based notebooks.