The price of Office 365 Personal is £59.99 per annum or £5.99 a month. This compares to Office 365 Home Premium, which is £79.99 a year but can be installed on 5 devices. A household with multiple computers would be better off with Home Premium, but an individual might prefer the new Personal Edition.
Microsoft have released yet another version of Office 365 - which is really Office 2013 but purchased on a subscription basis rather than outright - known as Office 365 Personal. It contains the full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook, along with additional OneDrive (SkyDrive) storage and 60 minutes Skype usage per month. It can be installed on one PC or Mac, plus a tablet (Microsoft recently released Office for the iPad - see here).
The price of Office 365 Personal is £59.99 per annum or £5.99 a month. This compares to Office 365 Home Premium, which is £79.99 a year but can be installed on 5 devices. A household with multiple computers would be better off with Home Premium, but an individual might prefer the new Personal Edition. Microsoft have updated Windows 8.1. Although only a minor update, it weighs in at the best part of 900 MBytes. In a major change of policy, the update can be obtained through Windows Update rather than the Windows Store, which will be welcomed by those who have struggled previously with the Store.
Many of the change affect things "under the bonnet", but there are a handful of visible improvements. There is now an option to restart or shutdown Windows from the Start screen - yep, it's now as easy to shutdown Windows as it was prior to 2012. The full screen "modern" apps (previously Metro apps) now have a cross in the top right-hand corner, making them easier to close. As these were both things that commonly baffled newcomers to Windows 8, it shows that Microsoft are listening. Perhaps not carefully enough yet - we'll have to see if the Start menu really does return in Windows 8.2. Another useful change is the ability to more easily sort the items on the Start Screen, such that the most commonly used programs are listed first for example. Despite the slightly cynical tone of the above, Windows 8 continues to improve and now has many advantages over its predecessors. Performance, reliability and stability do indeed go a long way to making it the "best Windows ever", even if not to everyone's liking. Today - 8th April 2014 - marks the official end of Windows XP. From now on it is unsupported by Microsoft, meaning no more updates or security patches. This doesn't mean it will suddenly stop working, but rather the absence of updates means that it will increasingly become vulnerable to security exploits and malware. Some software developers will stop updating or producing programs that work with XP (in fact, this has already been the case for a year or two). In short, the use of Windows XP becomes untenable. Some people have stated that this is an attempt by Microsoft to force people to switch from XP to later versions, such as Windows 7 or the (still unloved) Windows 8. This may be partially true but it is not unreasonable; after all Windows XP is now 13 years old. Think how much the computing landscape has changed in that time - the Cloud, tablets, Smartphones, broadband and so on. It is increasingly difficult to support all the new technologies on such an old framework. In truth, only a minority of people still use XP. Most computers run Windows 7, with a few stalwarts on Vista. New machines comes with Windows 8.1, which is coming on nicely but is not a popular choice in business. So, farewell Windows XP. You have served us well. |
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