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Microsoft Office 2010

By now, most of us have heard bits and pieces about what Microsoft is planning to do with their next iteration of Office, 2010, including extending the ribbon interface to Outlook and any other program that were without and the collaboration enhancements allowing multiple users to not only edit a document together, but even display PowerPoint presentations in a remote web browse.

However, some interesting news came out earlier about a completely new method of access and use of (most of) the software suite – nearly full featured online versions accessible on any of the major web browsers.  This isn’t a particularly revolutionary move, which is not uncommon when it comes to Microsoft, with Google Docs being so well developed for the past few years, but there is the potential for Microsoft to make a major splash with this release… and did I mention it will be free?

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MG_Chris Software, Web, Windows, technology collaboration, excel, Google, google docs, microsoft, Microsoft Office 2010, Office, one note, online, powerpoint, Web, word

I am going to say this first, I am not the most technically advanced person in the world.  Especially when it comes to my Macbook.  I have had this laptop for nearly 3 years now and I am just learning most of the shortcuts and how to use it to its fullest.  I really wanted to learn more and putting the newest Windows OS on my life line was a huge step.  The only reason I really wanted it on the laptop was because I wanted to play PC games and use Office.  This was my biggest and scariest experiment to date, installing Windows 7 on it.  I did face a couple of potholes on the way, Boot Camp Assistant was not my friend, but that was my own fault, too many files to partition. I had to burn two dvds because the first one did not work.  But when it was time for the macbook to preform, I was not let down.  This is why I love my 3 year old macbook.

First off, follow the system requirements it gives you, I only have 1 gb of ram and to date that has been plenty.  I have an 80 gb hard drive but I also have a 320gb external.  As long as you have more than 10 gb of space on your laptop and don’t plan on adding tons more to it, you should be all set.  If you cringed at the idea of having less than 3 gb of space left on your laptop, external is the way to go.

That being said, follow my lead.  Go to the Windows 7 download site, download your copy and make sure to write your serial down.  Then burn the iso to a dvd, its easier with the Mac then a windows machine.  After you have that done, I suggest trying out a free trial of VMWare Fusion.  It was a toss up between Boot Camp and VMWare, but when Boot Camp Assistant decided that it could not partition my hard drive, VMWare was the way to go.  I got the trial of VMWare Fusion and then inserted my Windows 7 cd and about an hour later, I was running Windows and Mac, smooth like butter.  I put the image on my laptop hard drive at first but then I moved it over to my external.  Once I opened the image on my external, it just asked if I had moved or copied it, select moved and it makes the changes.

It was a pretty interesting experience, but with VMWare Fusion, it is MUCH better than dual boot.  You can also use Parallels, which I have used before, but Fusion was much easier to use.

gmFunkd Laptops, Netbooks, Software, Windows, gadgets, technology Leopard OS, Macbook, Virutal Machine, VMWare Fusion, Windows 7

ATTENTION WEB SURFER: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!?!

Is basically the message I was greeted with after restoring a Firefox session following a version update for a few of my saved tabs on sites I visit regularly.  It seems that with its most recent version, Firefox has teamed up with Google in an effort to protect presumably unscrupulous users from accidentally stumbling upon sites that they seem to think will maliciously install software on your system (or, at least, try to).  Seeing a few of my tabs load with a “NO” icon instead of what I would normally expect was quite a shock as these sites it had flagged are not any that I’ve ever considered particularly malicious.  (I’ve been accessing them with no issues for some time now, though my continued use of Adblock Plus and No Script may be the reason for my lack of suspicious activity).

My initial thought was that a random addon would be the cause of this alert, but upon clicking the “Why was this site blocked?” button, I was surprised to see the real answer

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MG_Chris Laptops, Netbooks, Software, Web, Windows, technology alert, Firefox, Google, internet, malicious, malware, security, Web, website

One of the new features that will be introduced in certain skews of Windows 7 is an application knows as XP Mode, a virtualized install of (generally) Windows XP that allows users to run Windows XP apps side by side with programs running on Windows 7.   This seemingly opens up a whole new world of potential when it comes to using virtualization as security.  Having a program running streamline with your main operating system while being completely isolated from the system itself would be quite a boon.  Unfortunately, however, Microsoft may come through and chose convenience over security and leave a few holes open.

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MG_Chris Laptops, Windows, technology microsoft, security, software, technology, virtual pc, virtualization, Windows 7, windows XP

Windows 7

Microsoft has updated their Windows 7 development blog today with some depressing information about how they plan to allow users to migrate from the Beta version of Windows 7 to the Release Candidate – they want us to *shudder* DOWNGRADE to Vista then re-upgrade to the RC!  Of course, they do provide a separate option that will allow users to do a direct upgrade, but the steps they list seem unnecessarily difficult and convoluted when compared to running the upgrade from Vista to 7

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MG_Chris Windows, technology beta, microsoft, operating system, RC, software, upgrade, Windows 7