Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate

To be eligible for this deal, you must have university email address at a ‘.edu’ domain and must be enrolled in at least 0.5 units of course work. We highly recommend taking advantage of this deal since the next cheapest Microsoft Office bundle, the Student and Teacher Edition, costs over $80 and only includes four applications. And if $60 bucks is still too much, the next best alternative is Open Office which is an open source office suite available for download at no cost. In case you are wondering, Open Office is completely legal and is distributed by Sun Microsystems, however I still recommend Office Ultimate for $60.

Buy Now: TheUltimateSteal.com

Sony just released a new version of their electronic “Reader” (PRS-505) as an upgrade to the PRS-500. First off for those of you that don’t know what this gizmo is, it’s a electronic paper display. This means that it actually looks like ink on paper and doesn’t cause stress on eyes as backlit LCD screens do. Sony’s second generation Reader has new controls, imitates paper better than its predecessor, responds faster, and is much easier to read outdoors. Unlike other gadgets with displays, the Reader doesn’t consume any power when it is on. It only looses power when flipping through pages. According to Sony you’ll be able to read approximately 7,500 pages before the juice runs out.

The Reader now also sports a Memory Stick Duo and SD card slots for additional storage space and also functions as a mass storage device. Owners can transfer purchased books from Sony’s collection of 20,000 titles or copy their own PDF, Word, RTF, Text, or JPEG files. For easier reading the Reader can be oriented in either the upright or landscape position on the 6-inch display. Text can also be magnified by up to three times. The previous Reader wasn’t too popular, but was quite impressive despite being laggy when we took a look at it. Hopefully this version will bring many more improvements.

The reader is a bit on the pricey end, costing about $300 for the unit in addition to a USB cable, soft case, and charger. The unit is on sale now and will be available in both silver and dark blue by the end of this month. Look for it online, in retail stores, and even at Borders. We are trying to get a hold of a unit, so if you are interested check back for full in-depth review.

Links: SonyStyle.com
Related: Video Walkman Review

Google’s long awaited web-based PowerPoint-like application finally went live this morning. Google Presentation, as it is called, is their latest addition to the Google Docs family. Starting today, anyone in the United States will have the ability to upload, create, share, edit and view presentations online. Google Presentation also includes collaborative tools allowing multiple users to connect together to organize, modify, and present right from a web browser. Since Google Docs’s presentation feature supports Microsoft’s PowerPoint, any document created offline can easily be uploaded. Unfortunately documents created or edited online can only be exported into a HTML format, therefore won’t work with PowerPoint.

This is a pretty big step towards completing an entirely free online version of standard office applications. With Gmail and Google Docs for spreadsheets, word documents, and presentations, they may soon pose a serious threat to Microsoft Office. Although literally all their services are still in beta and are very limited in terms of features when compared to any standard office suite. For example Google Presentation only has 15 themes, basic text formating, limited image modification, no transitions, no sound/video, and lacks much more. This will most likely change as updates are rolled out.

Anyways give this a shot, but if you are still planning on purchasing MS Office keep in mind that Microsoft’s got that $60 deal! If you’d like to avoid that fee too try the new version (v2.3) of OpenOffice.

Links: Google Documents (docs.google.com)
Press: Google Blog – “Our Feature Presentation”

About three days ago, Microsoft announced a very unusual deal for students on Office 2007. Starting on September 20th, Any student with a valid “.edu” e-mail address will have the opportunity to purchase Office Ultimate 2007 for just $60. Offer ends in April 2008. For those of you thinking this is probably just another cut down version such as Home & Student Edition ($100), which has only the basic for processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications, WRONG! The downloadable Office Ulitmate 2007 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath! Although you probably won’t be using half those applications, we recommend going with this offer.

If you wish to grab this offer it’s available on TheUlimateSteal.com. As for those of you who wish to use an alternative to avoid even the $60, we would recommend OpenOffice which includes just about all the programs you would ever need and is completely open source, therefore free.

P.S. Don’t try lying to get this offer since Microsoft will charge the full $679 price if your student enrollment fails to validate!

Links: TheUtlimateSteal | Compare Office 2007 Editions

For those WordPress users that already do not know, Microsoft’s new Word 2007 now supports publishing posts to blogs powered by services such as WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and Live Spaces. It doesn’t exactly support every feature most blogging admin panels include, but is still a decent editor. I recommend using it to write out the text, spell check, and save the post as a draft. Then, once complete, login to your admin panel to format everything and finally publish.

If own Word 2007 and don’t plan to use it to blog, I recommend trying it since it’s extremely easy to setup. Just follow this tutorial and you should be able to start publishing articles within 2-3 minutes.

(Note: Tutorial is specific to WordPress. Click on thumbnails for larger pics)

MS Word 2007 Setup Procedure:
1) Open a Microsoft Word Document

2) Hit the new Office Button Then select Publish -> Blog
3) If prompted to register, select “Register Now”

4) Choose WordPress from the dropdown and hit “Next”

5) Enter your exact WP blog URL followed by “/xmlrpc.php”
6) Then enter your WP username and password and press OK

Once complete, you should receive a “Account registration successful.” in a few seconds. You may now enter a Post Title, Insert Categories you have previously created and write your article. When ready you may either directly publish it or save it as a draft for later from the dropdown. Word 07 also allows editing recent documents you have published by using the “Open Existing” button. If you need any help or having problems, you are welcome to ask questions in the comments.

Links: WordPress | Microsoft Word

The “web word processor” is still in beta, therefore there are many changes that must be made. Google’s first step will probably be to transfer all user accounts onto the “Google Account” system. (Google is in the process of moving Blogger over) Another step would probably be to change the GUI to look more like Google Spreadsheets. Anyways give this service a try, its great way of accessing your documents when your away from your machine. Now all we need is Google Presentations (aka. PowerPoint).

Link: Writely | Sign Up Now
Realted: Google Acquires Writely