For those of us who use OS X in an enterprise environment, it can be difficult to make our Exchange calendars sync with our iPhones. There is an excellent workaround, however. All of the updated versions of Office for Mac include a synchronization service that makes it easy as pie.
In Entourage, go to Entourage > Preferences > Sync Services.
There you have an option to sync your address book, calendar, or both with Apple’s built-in software. This works great for synching the iPhone.
Google today announced a new suite of professional office applications that are entirely web-based and hosted by Google. The search giant already had an advertising-based service for non-enterprise users. The office suite competes directly with Microsoft Office. Here’s a rundown of the features included with the “Premier Edition” of Google Apps:
Google isn’t likely to start stealing away users from Microsoft left and right. What they are likely to do is peel off users who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford Microsoft products or are simply served by far fewer features than MS Office provides. University students are bound to jump right on this bandwagon. With the proliferation of bandwidth, we’re likely to finally see the thin-client model really start to take hold, at least for applications (NOT the OS) for the first time.
From time to time we have the opportunity to review a truly great piece of software, and Microsoft OneNote shows why Microsoft is so dominant in the Office productivity market, despite the fact that there are free alternatives. I’ve become accustomed to using Microsoft OneNote, a great tool for note-taking, Microsoft Outlook integration, shared meeting spaces, and a great place (in Office 2007) to accumulate notes from mobile devices, meetings and other applications such as Internet Explorer.
I especially liked the drag and drop interoperability with Office 2007, and the ability to link OneNote documents to Outlook appointments. I can now open my notes from my calendar, without sacrificing all of the features that are found in OneNote.
You can read about it and download a free trial from the Microsoft website.
Here at Techblog.TheVanguard.Org we had the chance to review the Treo 750 from Palm. The 750 runs Windows Mobile and functions on the Cingular network in the U.S. It is a GSM world phone, email device, broadband Internet browser and fully-functioning PDA. Perhaps the biggest draw of the new Treo 750 is its Windows Mobile 5 Operating System. Windows Mobile 5 allows hundreds of applications to be run on the device while providing enterprise-class push email for customers with Microsoft Exchange. We tried the Treo 750 on Cingular’s 3G (WCDMA 1900) network.
Industrial Design
The Treo 750 is a class-leader in terms of design. Its weight is comparable to most PDA Phones, it easily fits in the palm of your hand (pardon the pun) and its screen is nice. It’s not as bright as some smartphones, including the Blackjack and the Q. We were surprised that it isn’t as vivid as the Cingular 8525 PDA Phone, either. That said, the elimination of the antenna (its predecessor, the Treo 650, had one) makes it much easier to carry. The keyboard is spacious and crisp. Keys respond well. The only design problem we found was its thickness compared to the Blackjack and the Q. Understandably, the Treo is a fully-functioning PDA and requires more battery and more components. That said, it’s almost impossible to place in jeans pockets.
Call Quality
The Treo is unbeatable in terms of call quality. Palm scored another homerun with the model 750. The call quality on the Treo was better than the Blackjack, and comparable to many flip-phones. The speakerphone was nice, though it’s no better than other PDA/Smartphones on the market, though much better than the Cingular 8125.
Email
The Treo has Microsoft Outlook Mobile. What more needs to be said? It’s better than every other email platform for smartphones including Blackberry. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially for Blackberry users.. but, this does not mean it is inferior. We were especially impressed with ActiveSync, which allows for free push email for Exchange users. Our contacts, calendar events and tasks were synchorized along with emails. This makes synching with a PC almost unnecessary (a good thing for Mac users who don’t want to shell out the dough for a copy of The Missing Sync).
Software
This is where the Treo really excels. Because it has Windows Mobile 5, it includes Microsoft Office programs including Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile (along with the aforementioned copy of Outlook Mobile). Palm plans to release an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 when it is available as well, which provides a neater user interface and HTML email. The ability to open and edit attachments is a huge improvement over other platforms. It is also a nice add-on if you’re used to Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition, which does not include the ability to EDIT office documents. The Samsung Blackjack and Motorola Q both use Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition.
Overall, we were impressed with the Treo but were discouraged by its price tag ($500 with a $100 mail-in rebate). We think this will prevent it from ending up in the hands of a lot of business users, who rely on budgets and departmental appropriations for their devices. Since the fastest growing smartphone market is for working professionals, Palm may see more territory go to RIM as a result.
The Treo is an enterprise class PDA and cell phone. Let’s hope they come down on the price tag a bit, though.
Everytime I go to a computer store and see someone who looks like my mother in line with a copy of Microsoft Office, usually priced in the 300-400 dollar range, I get a little bit sick. The story is always the same… someone ordered a new computer, but the manufacturer or salesman didn’t bother to tell them that it included substandard or no office productivity software. When they fired it up and got their first e-mail attachment, shock ensued as they couldn’t open the .doc flyer or the .xls spreadsheet from the PTA.
What really makes me sick is that there is another way!
OpenOffice.Org is a complete office productivity suite that is multiplatform (e.g. it works on Macs and PCs), multi-lingual, and best of all - it is free! A free office productivity suite is hard to come by. In addition to this, it is open source, meaning the source code is out there for a savvy community of developers who continue to develop the software and make it better. For most home users (and a good deal of business users, really) OpenOffice is more than enough to get the job done. Not only is it compatible with Microsoft Office, but it is also compatible with other formats such as OASIS.
Check it out! Some of the enhancements aren’t included in Office 2007 for Windows. Once again, it appears that Microsoft is about to make a better copy of Office for Mac than Office for Windows.