Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive has hit a significant numerical landmark: over a billion Office documents are now hosted on it. To celebrate, Redmond has made is a little easier to edit files using Office Web Apps — you no longer need to sign in using a Microsoft account (unless the sharing party wants you to), so if you’ve got the right link, you can start tweaking with minimal fuss. A billion Office files sounds like a big number, but we’d really like the details of how many users that’s spread over. As many as DropBox? Who knows.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Microsoft

Open source obsessive Michael Larabel says he has it on good authority that Microsoft is considering a native version of Office for Linux. Specifically, the company is taking a “meaningful look” at the idea, now that Linux is showing signs of becoming more of a player in the OS stakes. The information came to Larabel from an unnamed source during this year’s Free Open-Source Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels, and this voice in the shadows apparently also revealed the port could be ready in 2014.

Larabel is often right about things like this. But regardless of whether Office for Linux comes to fruition, the idea of Microsoft even thinking about it — and potentially giving such oxygen to a (free-of-charge) Windows rival — may come as a surprise. When someone alluded to this on Twitter, Larabel replied that he wouldn’t be surprised if there are “many doubters” but challenged them to “wait and see.” He points out that Microsoft has offered “unlikely sponsorship” to Linux projects in the past, albeit on a relatively small scale, and that the rumored Office for Android may also function as a stepping stone. Still, there’ll need to be a few more meetings in underground parking lots before we’re totally convinced.

Filed under: Desktops, Software, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Phoronix, Michael Larabel (Twitter)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn’t afraid to speak his mind when it comes to competition, and that’s exactly what he did just recently speaking about Google and Dropbox. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Ballmer discussed the company’s new Office 2013 suite, as well as its SkyDrive cloud storage service, and said that he’s confident that Microsoft’s new Office products will gain a lot of users, despite competition from Google’s own set of office suite products.

Speaking about Dropbox, Ballmer mentioned that the service’s 100 million users “sounds like a pretty small number,” and he noted that Office users outnumber Dropbox’s user base by quite a few. While he wasn’t necessarily trying to downplay Dropbox’s significance, Ballmer said that it’s merely just a “fine little startup.”

Microsoft currently boasts around one billion Office users, and while many think that number will stay stagnant, Ballmer disagrees and says that the service will continue to grow and bring in new users, thanks to the “more and more people” entering the classroom or office and taking on more information-heavy jobs.

Towards the end of the interview, Ballmer was asked about Office coming to the iPad, and declined to directly comment on it. However, he did say that the company is “very glad” and “very happy” with the product, and “it makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC.” As far as future plans for an iPad version of Office, though? “We’ll see what we see in the future.”

[via Bloomberg Businessweek]

Ballmer not worried about competition from Google, downplays Dropbox is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft’s Office 365 Home Premium has gone up for sale, with the cloud-centric productivity suite launching in 162 markets ahead of its business counter part’s arrival next month. The new subscription-based Office Home Premium version is priced at $99.99 per year for use on five computers – including PCs, Macs, and Windows tablets – and includes access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access, together with an extra chunk of SkyDrive storage.

Home Premium users get 20GB of SkyDrive space, as well as 60 free world calling minutes in Skype each month; they can also access Office on Demand via the PC browser. Students, meanwhile, can have Office 365 University, which comes at $79.99 for a four year individual subscription.

You’ll need to be a college or university student, or a member of faculty or staff, in order to qualify, however; it’ll be available in 52 markets. On February 27, meanwhile, Microsoft will release Office 365 for businesses. It’s not clear how much subscriptions for that will cost yet.

Whichever version is used, the Office.com hub will serve as a central access points for all cloud-based documents, as well as the point of entry for Office on Demand. Earlier today, Microsoft added the full Office 2013 downloads to its online store.

Office 365 goes live is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Until now, we’ve known almost all there is to know about Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365: we got hands-on with the new features last summer, and the company has even confirmed pricing. The only thing we weren’t sure of was the exact on-sale date, but even that got leaked when a Canadian retailer put up a pre-order page indicating the two products would ship January 29th. Well, what do you know? Today is January 29th and sure enough, Office 2013 is on sale, along with the subscription service Office 365. To be clear, while every version of the boxed software is now out, 365 is only being offered to consumers; the business version will arrive later, on February 27th.

For now, Office 365 Home Premium is priced at $99.99 for an annual subscription, with permission to install the suite on up to five PCs and Macs. There’s also a “University” version for college students and faculty, which costs $79.99 for a four-year plan. Either way, the sub includes 20GB of SkyDrive storage on top of whatever plan you already have which is to say if you previously only had 7GB of space, your limit will now get bumped to 20 gigs. (In other words, people grandfathered into 25GB don’t get an additional 20 gigabytes.). Of course, you can always deactivate a particular machine through Office.com if you need to free up a license. Naturally, too, as a part of the subscription you’ll always have the most recent version. That means Office 2013 for Windows users; Office for Mac 2011 if you’re on OS X. That last piece is a bit of a bummer, for sure, but for what it’s worth Microsoft has said a new Mac product is in the works, and that subscribers will get it as part of a future software update.

If you’d rather buy the software outright, you can do that today too. At the low end, there’s Office 2013 Home and Student 2013 ($139), which comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Home and Business adds Outlook for $219, while the top-of-the-line Professional package includes all of the above along with Access and Publisher for $399. Remember, though: these come with only one user license, and you don’t get any complimentary cloud storage or upgrades to future versions. It’s your money, obviously, but it seems clear to us that Microsoft has gone out of its way to make its Office 365 service the more attractive option. So, you might want to think long and hard about how much owning your software really means to you before going the old-fashioned route.

Update: An Office 365 subscription includes 20GB of SkyDrive storage in addition to whatever plan you already have. So, if you were grandfathered into 25 gigs of storage, you’ll end up with 45GB in total.

Filed under: Software, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Microsoft