I’ve managed to lay my hands on a copy of the upcoming Microsoft Office release, Office 12. I’ll be taking you through my first impressions.

Office 12 didn’t take very long to install, no more than 10 minutes to install Pro, but I haven’t timed how long it took to install other programs like Frontpage.. But then again, I’m on a quite high-end machine (1.5GB RAM, Athlon 64 3400+, 250GB SATA…) so I don’t know how long it would take on a slower machine. The install interface is very good looking, and from very early on you realise the software is going to be very cosmetically different to previous versions.

The most commonly used program in Office is probably Microsoft Word, and this was the first program opened. At first you wouldn’t recognise it even as a Windows program. It seems to have the style of an Apple and Linux product – however the use of blue gives it a way a little. However, it looks nothing like Office 2003.

In Word tasks like making things into columns can be done in three easy clicks. You have lost menus such as Options and Tables in return for more useful menus such as Page Layout and Write.

Also, there aren’t as many drop-down menus, it comprises many of horizontal based menus called ribbon menus with great graphics. However I feel that adding items such as References and Review to the main menu is a bad move – I don’t know a single person you uses these features.

Another thing which is noticeable – but not quite as much – is the smaller title bar and smaller close, minimise, maximise and restore buttons.

Despite the heavy cosmetic changes made on the main areas boxes such as spell checker and options look very out of place. I hope Microsoft decide to change this. (see right).

Also, Office 12 sees a new file format docx, this format is only openable in Office 12 as it uses an XML based file format. However, if you wish you can change it from saving to this by default to saving .doc by default; which is best as not many people can read docx.

I’m not much of an Excel user, so I can’t really compare it much to previous versions – however one thing I can say is like Word, it looks far better. Also, it provides a better layout.

By default it now displays a page layout view when Excel loads. You can switch between views in a similar manner as you could in previous Excel versions.

In what I can see no changes have been made to formulae formating since Office 2003.

I have to take note it is easier to import data from Access databases, the web and flat-text files. It is very easy to import external data and then update it – this can be done with a built-in web browser. One bug I’ve noticed is though on links which open in a new windows it loads IE.  This could prove useful with changing statistics and calculations. However it doesn’t seem good at fetching small pieces of pages, but better at pages at a whole.

Other features I’ve never seen before include What-If Analysis and Text To Columns. Also, the file format is xlsx by default, but you can easily change this. Excel has almost as good bug handling as well.

Moving on again, I shall now move to Powerpoint. Like Word and Excel, Powerpoint has being re-skinned. However it’s interface is a little different, even excluding the ribbon menu. I feel a little disorientated as I can’t right click to do things like Custom Animation. To do this I have to go in the animation menu.

In Powerpoint many of the icons in the menu are pixelated and/or low quality. This seems to let the application down. Like previous versions of powerpoint you have Slide Designs but it has had it’s name changed to Themes. I forgot to mention this but you can theme Excel and Word files. You can also do many colour scheme effects.

I also find it easy to do such things as recording my voice. It is easy for people with two monitors to present a presentation, it has the Presenter View. I don’t have two monitors so I haven’t tested this feature.

Also, PowerPoint outputs as PPTX by default

Microsoft Publisher looks almost identical to the version in Office 2003. There’s a few cosmetic tweaks – especially in the Publication Type windows which has fantastic graphics. However, I believe in a later build of Office 12 this will be tweaked.

Due to this I can’t really say too much about how great it is, because nothing much has changed.

Unlike most other applications in Office 12 Publisher outputs in it’s usual format: .pub .

Microsoft Access has also been reskinned similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Like Excel you can capture external data. There is more options though, and you can import XML, SharePoint, Excel and various other formats; but not data from the World Wide Web. That really does spoil the prospect of a highly dynamic database.

Other un-prettified application include InfoPath, which I can’t see any changes with whatsoever. Outlook also looks exactly the same. But of a dull ending

I don’t generally like Microsoft, but I’m impressed with some of these applications. Microsoft has seemed to realise users don’t want the XP interface, but something even more futuristic. I wonder how long it is until a CSI style OS is made. It will be good to see the other programs made to match Word, Excel and PowerPoint menus.

Okay, I’m a little short on time for writing a quality post today, so I’ll be writing one of those bullet points posts. I know these posts aren’t as fun to read; however they are easier to write .

Let the bullets begin!

• I’ve started downloading a few distros from LinuxTracker.org – I like the system. I feel a little competitive too so I do a lot of seeding. It is a great source of Linux distro and has nearly each one available. You need at least a share ratio of 0.3 (you must upload a minimum of a third of the data you’ve download) but my upload amount is currently 1 gigabyte – which is scary due to the fact I’m capped at 20GB. The month’s nearly over though.
• Sarah from sarahintampa has got kicked off from BE for blogging about BM. I won’t go into detail, go and see Sarah.
• I’ve made a change to the navigational layout. I’m planning to integrate my del.icio.us links as a sideblog – but it would hog up to much space, so I’ve made most things collapsible. I spent a good few hours trying to perfect this .

  However this has pushed all my blogroll into a collapsible menu. If I’m not mistaken Technorati will still handle it though. Once again a MT guru came out to be helpful

• Would you donate to become a micro-patron of this blog? I’d create a special page and stuff; and you could donate as little as you want. Would this interest anyone? I wouldn’t be expecting $10 donations, but that odd $1 does make one feel good.

  I’m not an a-list blogger but I’ve never received a single donation – which may be because I haven’t had a donation button up for a month . I shall put it back up. Anyway, if you want to donate it’s 100% up to you. Now pay up!

• I bought a kettle lead off eBay for my new old computer I bought to dismantle and run Linux on. I also took a spare network card out of another machine and placed it in that one.
• I’ve found a decent remote desktop tool. It offers a free secure KDE desktop with 1GB free storage. I’m sure someone will abuse this; but you might as well check it out. I’ve joined but can’t seem to start a session – dunno why. See it
• I am extremely tired – I seemed to wake up earlier than usual on a weekend. 6:45am. Despite DST changing 7:45am would still be early for a Sunday .

Hope you enjoyed.

Microsoft has been taken to court for music piracy! Microsoft is a company who is one of the music industries biggest (anti-piracy) allies. Microsoft are usually the ones doing the sueing!

The former drummer for a defunct popular beat combo Ink & Dagger (who?), Ryan McLaughlin, had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for allegedly stealing his band’s songs and including them in the Amped Xbox game.

“Microsoft respects intellectual-property rights and enters into licensing agreements for music and media in our games and other products,”

Microsoft spokesman, Jack Evans.

I somehow think Microsoft will come out of this with minor punishments, but still it?s really funny that Microsoft might be hypocrites with piracy.

Naturally I think Microsoft should be punished, just due to the fact I don?t like them very much . To tell you the truth with smallish like Ink & Dagger I think piracy is much worst. I think stealing some shareware is worse than stealing some software from Microsoft as they will need the money more. Also, when large royalties would have been paid it?s worse than stealing the single MP3.

You can find the court filing here .

(via)

You may have been following my PortiApps posts (here and here) and I’m just telling you I’ve launched it’s official homepage.

Please pop over to PortiApps and download it for me, and post any bugs to the forums provided.

Just a quick post – thanks.

I’ve made an achievement today, I’ve completed something I’ve wanted to do for some time: got Linux running in Windows.

By using the live ISO of Symphony OS, a new Linux distro, and QEMU I’ve successfully got a Linux distro (a live one though) running in Windows. QEMU is a command-line application, so I suggest you download it and QEMU Manager if you want to try to do it.

QEMU is an emulator, which allows you to run a Virtual Machine which can run Linux, Windows and possibly Mac (haven’t tried yet). I’ve tried similar tools before like CoLinux, though this is the easiest to use.

I do criticise Linux a lot, however running under Windows is far better as you don’t need to reboot to change OS. Having to change OS is a pain, and this solves it. I haven’t tried to run anything which doesn’t run off volatile memory yet.

Getting Linux running isn’t hard – just the user interface isn’t great. You must create a profile and then boot. I’ve taken a screenshot and I’ll quickly show how to boot from a disk image (ISO):

I’ve also taken some screenshots of the end result .