Microsoft

Microsoft is offering a half-price deal for its Office 365 subscription package. However, some tight restrictions mean the offer will only be available to a specific group of users. Office 365 is a way of using MS Office applications (Word, Excel, ... etc) without having to pay the full purchase price outright; instead customers pay a monthly fee. The subscription covers access to the latest editions of all the applications, meaning Office 365 subscribers will be able to use all the features in the latest edition of MS Office without having to pay for an upgrade if and when it becomes available. ... (view more)

Microsoft has unveiled a batch of new features and fixes for Windows 10. However, it's not confirmed when they will be available for the average users. The changes revealed by Microsoft's Gabe Aul are currently only available to members of the ... Windows Insider Preview program with the "Fast Ring" option selected. Those are the people who have effectively chosen to act as guinea pigs by being the first to test new features in a real world situation. If all goes well, the features and fixes will eventually make it into Microsoft's new general public update system. That' ... (view more)

Microsoft Office 2016 goes on sale today (September 22, 2015). Here is what's new and how it fits into the new Windows 10 setup, with cloud and collaboration the key focus. How much does Office 2016 cost? When it comes to cost, there are two options ... for Office 2016. The first is as an outright purchase, which is $149 for the "Home & Student" edition and $229 for the "Home & Business" edition. In this scenario, MS Office is installed on the computer as with past editions. The only updates are security fixes to the program. (Source: venturebeat.com ) The second ... (view more)

Windows 10 is a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users until July 29, 2016; if you own Windows 7 or 8 Pro (or higher), then you can receive Windows 10 Pro for free. Conversely, if you own Windows 7 or 8 Home ( or anything less than Pro ) then you ... will by default receive Windows 10 Home as your free upgrade. With that said, Windows 10 Home users can also upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for a $99 fee. So, is the upgrade from Hone to Pro worth it? Here are some of the differences and whether they may be worth paying for. Fewer Forced Updates In Pro Edition Every feature in Windows 10 Home is part of ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed it has downloaded Windows 10 to some Windows 7 and 8.1 computers without express permission. The download comes through the Windows Update process and takes up space, but doesn't install the new system unless the user chooses ... to do so manually. The issue came to light when some users noticed that their hard drives had less free space than expected, then dug down into hidden files and folders to discover data related to Windows 10. In theory the Windows 10 installation file should only be 3GB, but some users have reported a 6GB file. The situation has been the ... (view more)

Microsoft plans to show off a range of new Windows 10 devices on October 6. A $20,000 wall-mounted giant tablet may be the most eye-catching of the rumored products. The official release about the event in New York City contains no details other ... than the fact that "[Microsoft has] some exciting news to share about Windows 10 devices." However, the most plausible theory is that the company plans to unveil or update information on a wide variety of non-traditional computing devices, with the idea being to promote Windows 10 as a versatile system. Surface To Come In Diverse Sizes The ... (view more)

The audience at an Apple launch event was shocked to see a Microsoft executive on stage this week. It marks a closer collaboration between the former bitter rivals, centered on people using Microsoft Office on the move. The appearance came from Kirk ... Koenigsbauer, one of Microsoft's many corporate vice presidents. He's responsible for the various versions of Office 365, which allows users to have an ongoing subscription (plus all relevant updates) to Microsoft Office, rather than buy a particular edition outright. Koenigsbauer attended the event to show off how Office 365 will work on ... (view more)

Windows 10 has hit a five percent market share for desktop PCs. However, closer analysis suggests the boost from giving Windows 10 away free of charge may have already passed. The five percent figure comes from a company called Net Market Share, ... which combines visitor data from around 40,000 websites. The statistics refers solely on visits from desktop PCs, a category that also includes laptops as well, but not tablet computers. Windows 10 Adoption Far Ahead Of Windows 7 The figure gives several insights into the success of Windows 10. First, Windows 10 has reached the five percent mark ... (view more)

Microsoft says it may revise its policy of giving little to no information about the contents of updates to Windows 10. For now at least, any details would only go to business customers. As previously discussed, Windows 10 marks a departure from the ... traditional monthly release of updates , with the only exceptions being one-off security patches for serious bugs in the wild which are usually being exploited by hackers. Under the new system, Microsoft quietly sends out updates both for security fixes and enhancements to features, as and when they are ready. That's accompanied by a change in ... (view more)

Figures for August have led one site to suggest that Microsoft's new Edge browser is not that widely used. However, the difficulty of calculating such figures means it is far too early to call it a bust. The figures come from Statcounter, which is a ... professional service for website owners which tracks web visitors. As well as giving individual sites details of their visitors, Statcounter collates the data from all of its customers to come up with estimates for web use as a whole. It believes the number and variety of sites it tracks makes this a reasonably accurate estimate. Edge Figures ... (view more)