10 Unknown & Under-Utilized Features of Microsoft Word

Long before computers gave up productivity in exchange for social networking, media streaming, gaming and many other unproductive practices, they have been utilized for usefulness, designed as a machine made to simplify tasks and produce beautiful output.

Microsoft Word is still an absolutely essential program that needs to be installed on every computer, even though its usage has lessened through the years. In fact, I noticed that I use a basic text editor like Notepad more frequently. Furthermore, there are also several free alternatives available, like OpenOffice, LibreOffice and Google Doc’s. And yet, in spite of all of these, I still prefer Word because there are still a lot of features not found in other word processors, enabling me create professionally crafted documents with absolute ease. There simply aren’t any substitutes. However, many users don’t seem to be aware of these features, so I decided to list down some of the easy ones.

Continue reading

[Humor:] What’s with Microsoft’s Longwinded Software Names?

I had a few laughs a few days ago while browsing my favorite tech sites. Well, on ArsTech, MS just unveiled the newest version of its Windows Embedded OS. And I dare you to pronounce the complete name correctly on the first attempt. It’s Windows Embedded Compact 7 public Community Technology Preview.

Continue reading

Windows 7 Product Guide

Interested in Windows 7? (I suggest you should, it really rocks) Anyway, if you want to do a little more reading before jumping in, or you’re one of the early adopters to the OS, you may want to download Microsoft’s 140-page user guide from their site. At 140 pages, it’s definitely comprehensive and contains lots of information for both new and experienced users. You can download the document either in PDF or XPS form from this link. Otherwise, you may also read my Windows 7 blog post.

Source: Ars Technica

Office 2007 Service Pack 2: Now Available

I logged in today at around 6pm and Windows Update greeted me with a pleasant surprise: the SP2 patch for Office 2007 is now available.

If Windows Update is not activated, you can alternately download the 292MB installer from here.

The full list of  improvements and bug fixes from SP2 is listed in full details here, but the most significant of them was the native support for publishing the created document as PDF, XPS or ODF (open document format). In previous versions, you need to download and install a separate installer in order to save your document as a PDF or XPS file. Other improvements of note include new enhancements for SmartArt and increased performance for Outlook.

Internet Explorer 8: Now Available

IE8 is now out of betas and RC so just in case you haven’t upgraded (particularly if you’re still using IE6, gawd, it utterly confounds me that many are still using an antiquated version. Come on, IE6 has been around since Windows 98 and that exists for something like 11 years ago? Anyway, to check your version of IE, if you’re not at ease with clicking Help > About, you can simply check the e icon and if it’s a dull blue color, no yellowish Saturn-like ring, then chances are, you’re using IE6). Now is the time to go to IE Main Page and download the installer.

I’ve been using IE8 since the first beta and it’s safe to say that Microsoft has put a lot of improvements in the web browser. IE8 has now passed Acid2 and it has also improved on its security. There has also been many original features included in the browser, such as web accelerators, web slices, visual search suggestions, inPrivate browsing and many more.

In fact, I’ve been testing IE8 on Windows7 and I think that IE8 was actually faster than FF, Chrome or Safari 4.