Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Had your fill of pre-release and now release candidate Windows 7 from
Microsoft, and want something else shiny and new to try out? Step right
up and take your chances with the law while downloading a “pirate” copy
of the Office 2010 Technical Preview, now available at all those
endangered torrent sites near you.
Microsoft and leaks of its software have been quite commonplace of late, and it looks like its new Office 2010 suite is no exception.
Originally intended for a more public preview from July this year, with an expected 2010 release date, a “technical preview” of Office has now made its way to torrent sites and is being eagerly downloaded by cyber-law breakers around the world.
The news was brought to us all by Geeksmack.net, going so far as to include links to a torrent site where both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available, although the actual torrent links and the torrent site they link to are (presumably now) delivering "page not found" errors, as if they've been simply erased off the Internet.
There are also warnings online that the Office 2010 "Setup.exe" has been infected in the same way as some of the leaked Windows 7 RC 7100 builds, connecting users to a botnet while then running Office 2010's installation software, so downloaders beware!
The major change that consumers will notice with the new suite is the appearance of the loved and hated “ribbon” toolbar in more Office programs, including Outlook 2010.
Personally, I believe the Ribbon toolbar is a great advance over the previous “drop down menu” system, although plenty of people hate it so much that they’ve gone to the trouble of buying the excellent “Classic Office Menus” software from the Chinese Addintools.com company.
Quite why Microsoft isn’t couldn’t include such an option, when clearly it is so simple to add, is obvious: they wanted to force people to make the change and move away from the “old way” of doing things.
No doubt the “Addintools” guys are very happy that Microsoft was so unforthcoming with backwards compatibility options, and no doubt they’ll be in business for years to come as consumers make their own minds up about the interface they prefer to use - or even a combination of the two as takes people's fancy.
Just as the release of Windows 7 is being plagued by ever better and free-of-charge Linux distros, so too is Office 2010 going to continue being troubled by the likes of Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, Open Office and the rest of the free office productivity suite coterie out there.
As already noted online, Office 2010 really needs to be something special to convince users to pony up the cash to buy a copy – especially in the cash strapped environment the world now finds itself in.
So, Microsoft, it’ll be interesting to see just how cool – or otherwise – Office 2010 really is, while the world also awaits the public availability and pricing of your true online Office offering!
David Bass
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