outlook – TechVirtuoso

Office for Mac 2011 released today

October 26th, 2010 at 1:50 PM No Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft today released Office for Mac 2011 to the public. What is being lauded by both critics and Microsoft as the best version of Office for Mac ever, it’s probably the first version of Office for Mac in a long time that is at near feature match with the Windows version, although it doesn’t include all of the features. It also replaces the much hated Entourage email client for the less hated Outlook email client.

You can pickup a copy now from the Microsoft store for $149 for Home and Student, or $279 for Business. The business version is the only package that includes Microsoft Outlook, and includes 1 year of free technical support from Microsoft. The home version only includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel and 90 days of support.

MSDN & Technet users can download either from through their respective product sites and generate up to 5 keys.

Office for Mac 2011 requires at least OS X 10.5.8 Leopard with an Intel processor.

Surprise: Outlook 2011 renders emails using Webkit

October 25th, 2010 at 11:40 PM 2 Comments Michael Stanclift

Are your feet cold? Mine are, I think it’s because hell just froze over.

9to5Mac has the goods:

A little tidbit from the Microsoft gathering this evening. While demonstrating Outlook for Mac and the HTML rendering engine, Microsoft employees revealed that instead of using the Word HTML rendering that previous versions of Mac Office used (and the PC version as well), Microsoft has moved over to Apple’s Webkit rendering engine to render HTML mails. Outlook 2011 also uses WebKit to create HTML mail.

Coupled with the recent announcement that they were moving Windows Live Spaces to WordPress, I think Microsoft has managed to surprise me twice in one month.

The fact that Microsoft is actually using open source code in products is a great start, one can only hope they’re contributing back.

Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac will be released tomorrow.

TV Guide for May 3

May 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 PM 4 Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft will be adding a plethora of interesting features to Hotmail this summer. Chief among them is support for Exchange ActiveSync. This will allow users of any mobile device with ActiveSync support to receive push email, as well as synchronize calendar and contact information. Previously this feature was only available on Windows Mobile phones, and only in a limited fashion. Also coming soon is full SSL encryption on the Hotmail website, instead of just the Live authentication process. Microsoft is also expected to add conversation view, think Exchange/Outlook 2010, but in Hotmail. All of these features are things that Google has offered on Gmail for a while now and that Microsoft needs to play catchup with power users.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be providing full support for HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, and will be doing so using the H.264 protocol. Recently Apple has also been throwing support behind H.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice for Safari. Apple has somewhat famously taken on Adobe in recent weeks saying Flash video is no longer the preferred option for Internet users going forward. Awkwardly, Microsoft agreed.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released on April 29. The latest version is a long term support release, meaning updates will be published for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server versions, compared to only 18 months with standard Ubuntu releases. This makes LTS a great platform for business deployments where doing full release upgrades every 6 to 12 months can be a major hassle. The latest version is lighter on features than normal Ubuntu releases are, but still sports the latest stable and public versions of GNOME, X.org and the Linux kernel. It also features a refreshed theme, ditching the brown and orange for a purple and black theme. There is also a new optional “lighter” theme that has a hint of brown instead of the standard Ubuntu color scheme. Boot times, especially on SSD drives have also been dramatically improved.

Palm is dead. Well, actually, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion. The only hope for the WebOS platform now rests with HP and their commitment to “double down” and release new and improved hardware. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close rather quickly in July of this year. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some HP branded WebOS devices starting this fall or winter.

Microsoft provides first look into Exchange 2010 SP1

April 8th, 2010 at 10:34 AM 4 Comments Michael Stanclift

Microsoft has recently uncovered some of the upcoming features of Exchange 2010 SP1. While SP1 will contain all of the roll-up packs that have been released, using customer feedback they’ve identified problem areas that will be addressed, as well as enhanced some of the features of Exchange.

Most of the enhancements center around archiving/discovery, Outlook Web App (OWA) and mobile management. There will be a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June, giving administrators a chance to test it in their development environments prior to full production. (more…)

Next version of Microsoft Office for Mac to include Outlook

August 16th, 2009 at 9:42 PM 1 Comment Michael Stanclift

Thursday, Microsoft announced that the next version of the Office suite for Apple OS X would include Outlook, replacing Entourage as the bundled mail client.

“It is an exciting time for the MacBU with updates to our current products and the first public announcement about the next version of Office for Mac. For several years we have focused on providing the best Microsoft Exchange client for the Mac, and the Web Services Edition delivers that today for Entourage users,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager for the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft. (more…)