The PC Informant » Office

IBM Lotus Symphony alternative to Microsoft Office

Vic Laurie — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:51:08 +0000

I have often mentioned Open Office as a free alternative to Microsoft Office but there is another good alternative from IBM. It is called Lotus Symphony and is now in version 3. It is in fact built on the Open Office code but has an IBM look. Larry Dignan discusses the new release of Lotus Symphony at ZDNet.

Updated version of OpenOffice

Vic Laurie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:40:04 +0000

If you want an office suite but don’t want to pay Microsoft prices, OpenOffice is a free alternative that I have mentioned before. It is more than adequate for most home PC users. The main complaint against it is that it can be slow. A new version 3.2 is out that is supposed to load faster. TechCrunch says:

Improvements in the latest version of OpenOffice are speed tweaks, new features, enhanced compatibility with other office software programs, bug fixes and the addressing of potential security vulnerabilities.

The download link is here.

For some discussion of using OpenOffice, here is a How-to Geek post.

The illusion of progress

Vic Laurie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:25:03 +0000

PCs keep getting faster but how much improvement do you notice in the speed of what you actually do on the PC? Software keeps getting bigger and more complex. Programmers get less careful in writing software. So all the added hardware speed often doesn’t result in actual better performance. When all is said and done, how much faster is your computing experience? For example, I find that creating a Word document in Word 2000 on an eight-year-old Windows XP PC is at least as fast as doing the same with Word 2007 on a beefed up Vista machine. And Word 2007 is more confusing to use with lots of features that I never use. In fact, a lot of programs never get better with each upgrade; they just get bulkier with unused features and become more unstable. At ZDNet, Ed Burnette comments:

As computers got faster, some would argue that programmers got sloppier. For example, Excel running on today’s hardware is not really faster than Visicalc on MS-DOS even though the computers are 100 times faster. Like a gas, software expands to fill all available space and use all available CPU and disk speed. Users get more functions, but not better performance.

Consumer electronics in general is subject to the rush to add more features (which most of us may never use). At MaximumPC, Loyd Case comments on what he saw at the recent Consumer Electronics Show:

The other downside to this is that no product becomes fully baked. Instead of fixing problems – through firmware updates or recalls – the CE companies just push new gear out the door. No product ever seems fully finished. Hey, it’s okay of Gmail is in perpetual beta, but I don’t want to spend $2,000 on an HDTV that’s still not a fully finished product.

So here’s my message to the CE industry: slow down already. I’m game to move to the next generation of stereoscopic 3D gear, but take the time to fully work out the kinks in the technology, develop universal standards and provide some actual long term value to your customers.

Now I’m not denying that real progress has been made in many ways. Broadband is a lot better than dial-up. A lot of people like the fancy graphics of fast machines and viewing videos and doing other things made possible by faster hardware. But, in general, software has not kept pace with the hardware. How many programs take full advantage of multiple core processors? How many 64-bit applications do you see?

A complete compendium of Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts

Vic Laurie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:01:00 +0000

The Windows Club has made available for download a free PDF file with a “complete” set of Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts. I put “complete” in quotes because there may be thousands of possible keyboard shortcuts in Windows; this ebook has just over 200. In any event, this is a useful reference work. The download includes an XPS formatted document as well as a PDF. Most home PC users can just keep the PDF.

Search commands in Microsoft Office

Vic Laurie — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:28:06 +0000

Microsoft completely rearranged the menus in Office 2007 and it meant relearning where everything is. After several years, people are still complaining that they can’t find where the commands and menus are located. Microsoft Office Labs has developed an add-on called Search Commands to help you find things:

You know there’s a button for it, but you don’t know or remember where it is. If this ever happens to you, check out Search Commands. You can use this concept test today to quickly find the commands you need in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just search with your own words and click on the command you need. It also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for the specific tasks you’re looking for.

Download is here. It’s for 32-bit systems and I have 64-bit so I haven’t tried it. Has anybody out there used it?

Quick way to change text case in Microsoft Word

Vic Laurie — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:20:12 +0000

I’m no Microsoft Word expert but every now and then I like to pass on a Word tip that I find useful. If you highlight some text in a Word document, you can cycle through all upper case, all lower case, and title case with the keyboard combination “Shift + F3″. Repeat the action to go through all the variations of case.

Unfortunately, this shortcut doesn’t work in Notepad or several other text editors I tried. Anybody know where else this might work?

Open Office as an alternative

Vic Laurie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:00:57 +0000

One of the examples of the grip that Microsoft has on home computing is the large number of people who pay for Microsoft Office when they don’t need it. Sometimes, they do this inadvertently since many PCs now come with a trial version of Microsoft Office and people are inveigled into purchasing it when the trial period expires. Also, PC salesmen often try to convince you that everyone should have Microsoft Office.

In fact, in the home, few people need Office. Unless there are students in the household, few people need any kind of software of this type. And even fewer actually use more than a small fraction of the features. Microsoft Ofice is designed for businesses, government, and other institutions. As I wrote last year:

One of the mysteries of life is why so many people waste their money buying expensive software that they don’t understand and barely use. A case in point is Microsoft Office. There is no question that it has a lot of features and is a versatile and powerful program. But I doubt that most ordinary computer users even know of the existence of most of what’s in Office, let alone actually use all the features.

Those who want an office suite have a perfectly good, free alternative in Open Office. Such is the power of the Microsoft label, however, that Open Office remains in obscurity. For those who want to learn more, the How-to Geek has a discussion of Open Office.

Scrap files scrapped

Vic Laurie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:59:22 +0000

Windows is a complicated operating system and has many properties and features that most PC users are unaware of. One of the odder and lesser known features in Windows 98/XP was something called a scrap file. I wrote about scrap files some years ago in connection with their use by virus writers. I visit the subject again to note that, beginning with Vista, Windows no longer supports scrap files.

What were scrap files supposed to do? They were intended as a kind of handy way to copy a small part of a document onto the desktop where it could be kept and then used in another file. Only a few applications, mostly Microsoft Office, supported this function, however, and very few PC users even knew about it.

To see how a scrap file works in Windows XP, open a Word document. Then highlight some text and use the mouse to drag the highlighted material onto the desktop. A new file will appear. Double-click the file and a Word document containing the text will open. Or drag the scrap file and drop it into an open Word document and the text will appear in the Word document. With a slightly different procedure, images can also be manipulated. In that case, however, you need to use a right-click drag and make a selection from the context menu.

Because of backward compatibility considerations, Microsoft doesn’t often drop a Windows feature. But scrap files were little known or used and had some security issues so this feature was omitted from Vista and 7.

Microsoft patches patched

Vic Laurie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:11:45 +0000

Some of the Microsoft security patches from the October patch Tuesday were buggy. Microsoft issued some fixes yesterday. So you may need to check Microsoft Update. Details at InfoWorld.

Microsoft Works to be replaced

Vic Laurie — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:37:54 +0000

The venerable Microsoft Works has long been an option for those who did not need all the many features or the big price that came with Microsoft Office. Now Microsoft is abandoning Works and will be replacing it with a stripped-down version of Office 2010. The new edition will contain advertising and will be available on new PCs starting next year. It will consist of Word 2010 and Excel 2010. Unlike the trial versions of Office now often bundled with new PCs, this new edition will not time out but will carry ads.

Via Computerworld.