Microsoft Office 2010 and Exchange 2010

Microsoft today announced their upcoming releases on Office Products. Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010.

Though Exchange 2010 beta is now released and available for public download at Microsoft’s site, the final release will be available on last quarter of 2009.

Microsoft Office 2010, including Office Web Applications, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, will enter a Technical Preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

The term “Technical Preview” made us to belive that Microsost will not release any beta for Office 2010, rather, it’ll will be given to workers in Microsoft’s largest corporate accounts as well as ‘run-of-the-mill’ consumers.

Its confirmed that Microsoft will start shipping of both the 32bit and 64bit of the Office 2010 in second quarter of 2010.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Microsoft Stops Support for Windows XP and Office 2003

Microsoft finally announced the stop of mainstream support for Windows XP and Office 2003. From April 14, 2009 onwards, they will stop supporting these two products officially and will not release any upgrade pack.

The list contails all versions of Windows XP and Office 2003. Like,

  • Windows XP Home
  • Windows XP Professional (Both 32bit and 64bit)
  • Windows XP Media Center Edition
  • Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
  • Office 2003 (Both Home and Student)
  • Office 2003 Professional

They have set the End of Sales date on June 30, 2010. So, the products released in between will contain the latest updates and all. Currently we have Service Pack 3 for both of the products.

The last Service Pack for Office 2003, SP3 was released in September 2007. The Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter will continue to receive updates with new junk email definitions through the end of the extended support phase.

The mainstream support phase for Microsoft products usually runs for 5 years after the release of the product. As per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle, mainstream support delivers free fixes for security patches and other bug fixes to everyone. Extended support delivers security updates to all users, but nonsecurity hot fixes are to be provided only to companies that have signed support contracts (purchase of Extended Hotfix Support Agreement and per-fix fees) with Microsoft. Self-help online support will continue to be available for a minimum of 12 months after the product reaches the end of its support lifecycle.

Extended support for both Windows XP and Office 2003 ends on April 8, 2014.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Desktops Will Go Online with GDrive

Search Engine giant Google will soon launch a service called GDrive that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection making the desktop computer virtually redundant, predict technology experts.

The GDrive System will merge Google’s all existing web-based services to make them easier to use together. It could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the Internet.

“Throw your Hard Drive away, Google’s GDrive is arriving in 2009,” the Telegraph quoted TG Daily, an American Technology News website, as predicting.

The GDrive would make it possible to access and update information like emails, photographs, music, documents and spreadsheets from any device with an Internet Connection.

The novel system is being described as “Cloud Computing”, wherein the web rather than the hard drive is used as the place where information is stored. Google experts are said to have begun convincing the world of its benefits.

It is believed that the GDrive could “cause a major paradigm shift in how we use computers and bring Google one step closer to dethroning Windows on your desktop”.

However, there are some who think that trusting Google with so much personal or commercial data is dangerous, for information may not be as safe in the cloud as it is in a computer.

Peter Brown, of the Free Software Foundation Charity, said: “Does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American Government?”

Popularity: 19% [?]