Category Archives: Windows Applications

The New Office Now Available for Business Customers

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Microsoft has announced via their official Office News Blog that the “new” Office is now available for business customers. The new software package including Office 2013, Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, SharePoint Server 2013, Project 2013 and Visio 2013 is now available through Microsoft Volume Licensing, with broader availability across retail stores and online outlets planned for early next year.

Some of the biggest features of the new Office include:

  • - The new Office works beautifully with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard to give you the ultimate productivity experience. It brings the familiar Office experience to a wide range of new devices and gives you the best experience on Windows.*
  • - The new Office is inherently social with real-time news feeds for people, documents and discussions, high-definition video conferencing**, shared notebooks and virtual whiteboards.
  • - The new Office provides security features without compromise, includes data loss prevention, compliance management, built-in malware protection, and flexible deployment options across on-premises and in the cloud.
  • - The new Office is in the cloud. Coupled with new cloud services available next year, the new Office will save your documents to SkyDrive by default, and your personalized settings, templates and documents will travel with you.*

The new Office is a big part of Microsoft’s new vision. With the home version coming as what Microsoft calls “Office 365,” getting a usable word processing suite across all your home computers has never been easier. This “personalized experience” allows access to all your documents and settings across the internet and includes the full suite of Office applications.

A free trial is available on the Office website.

[Microsoft Office News Blog]

Microsoft Security Essentials Fails AV-Test

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In a turn of events since the time I suggested you depend on Microsoft Security Essentials, followed by the time Avast emailed me letting me know that MSE isn’t “up to par,” the renowned antivirus software from Microsoft has failed AV-Test certification. Alright Avast, I was wrong. Not just kind-of wrong about Security Essentials, I was dead wrong. I’m sorry faithful WindowsWave readers for misleading you to depend on an apparently shaky antivirus.

In a test of 24 antivirus tools in Windows 7, all but one passed. Microsoft’s own Security Essentials scored a 64 in October regarding protection against 0-day malware attacks. With the industry average being an 89, that’s fairly poor. Including the other tests – detecting widespread and prevalent malware, and detecting a representative set of malware discovered in the last 2-3 months — Security Essentials got an overall Protection Score of 1.5 out of 6.0. Followed by a poor repair score of 3.5 out of 6.0, and a decent usability score of 5.5 out of 6.0, MSE’s overall score was a 10.5 out of a possible 18. In order to pass certification, it would have had to reach a score of at least 11.

Do you depend on Microsoft Security Essentials? Does this report make you want to switch?

[Tom's Hardware]

Music Player May Be Coming to SkyDrive in the Future

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Microsoft may be bringing a Google Music-like feature to its SkyDrive service in the near future, some reports say. SkyDrive currently allows you to of course store music files, but offers no real way of playing them directly from within the app itself. There was no evidence of something like that happening with SkyDrive until LiveSide found references to a “MusicPlayer” within code on the SkyDrive website. Maybe this is a hint?

With Xbox Music laucnhed recently, it’s likely that the two services would be intertwined in some way, but just how that might happen is not yet clear. However, at the launch of Xbox Music, the service allowed you to scan your existing library for matching files within Microsoft’s database, allowing you to stream those songs across Xbox Music compatible devices. Microsoft at that time promised the ability to stream other music files (those not recognized by Microsoft’s database) via a locker-like service coming in the future. Maybe SkyDrive is how they will implement that.

[PCWorld]

The Start Menu Code is Still in Windows 8

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There are now more than a handful of Start menu replicas out there for people that need their daily Start menu fix on their Windows 8 machines. From classic ones such as Classic Shell and StartMenu8 to experimental ones such as Pokki and RetroUI Pro. There are just no shortages of what type of Start menu one might need.

We reviewed Start8 from Stardock recently.  It is probably one of the better replicas out there. It works almost exactly like the Start menu from Windows 7 and can be switched to the fancier metro Start screen mode that it scales down to size. The problem with all these clones is that they’re all still third-party solutions and require extra processes running in the background and taking up resources.

If people wanted the original no-fuss Start menu, then they were out of luck. Microsoft replaced the traditional Start menu in Windows 8 and offers no solution to re-enable it, even in the corporate Windows Server 2012. Long-time Windows users and angry critics have been calling for the death of Microsoft because of it.

While third-parties have been hard at coding to satisfy the needs of those angry users, nobody asked if the native Start menu is really gone or just deeply hidden inside Windows 8? They’d be happy to know it’s the latter, but just some of it. Programmer Tihiy successfully worked on a solution to bring back the original Windows 7 Start menu to Windows 8.

According to Tihiy, some Start menu codes are still present in the explorer.exe process of Windows 8. Those codes are shared with the Jump Lists function and thus are essential and were not removed. The Start menu shell interfaces, start button, and Windows key codes are removed however. The exact method is not clear but it’s possible to speculate that Tihiy ported the required codes from the Windows 7 and re-implemented them in Windows 8 through private APIs access. Whatever the case is, the final product — StartIsBack — is exactly what it claims and includes some extra features.

After running a rather small install file, you’ll find that this is the very same Start menu from Windows 7. You won’t find any StartIsBack processes in task manager because there is no startisback.exe. The installed codes will hook itself to the native explorer.exe in the memory at boot up, thus does not modified the actual system file. You can search, pin programs, and drag&drop files to the Start menu as you could in Windows 7. There’s even the hidden “Exit  Explorer” menu item that shows up by Shift+Ctrl and right clicking the Start menu. Remember the Customize Start menu setting that was in the Windows 7 Taskbar Properties? It’s no longer in Windows 8, but it’s brought back in its own Properties box. You can get to it by right click the start button, select Properties and see that all the options are exactly the same to Windows 7.  Continue reading →

Pin Steam for Windows 8 Pins Your Games

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Many of us want our Start screen to be just a tad but more useful, and part of this would be allowing Steam users to pin their games to the Start screen without having to use OblyTile or make a custom image for each and every tile. Enter Pin Steam available on the Windows store. I’m sure this is not the last app of it’s kind, but it definitely provides a service many have been waiting for: easy creation of custom Start screen tiles.

Pin Steam’s functionality is limited, but powerful. The app opens and asks for only one piece of information: your steam ID. It claims to not use it for any other purpose than to look up your Steam games, and doesn’t appear to do so. Immediately upon clicking enter, tiles for every single one of your games start appearing. From there, it’s as simple as right-clicking the ones you want on your Start screen and pinning them. The app is available now on the Windows store for $1.49. The developer has set a reasonable price point, presumably because it is practically one-time use and provides no daily function.

Avast Anti-Virus is Now Free For Educational Institutions, Keeps Schools and Students Safe

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Avast announced today that its popular anti-virus software, which currently protects over 170 million PCs, Macs and mobile devices, will now be offered free for education. In particular, Avast will be offering its avast! Endpoint Protection Suite business-grade computer-network security software at no charge to several school districts, colleges and universities within the United States.

[quote_right]“AVAST has a very good freemium business model, with which we provide top-notch security for free to home users,” said Vincent Steckler, Chief Executive Officer of AVAST Software.[/quote_right]A number of different educational institutions will be participating in the program as it launches, including the School of Human Sciences at Mississippi State University, the University of California in San Diego, Carver College, Ranger College and several different K – 12 districts throughout the United States.

“AVAST has a very good freemium business model, with which we provide top-notch security for free to home users,” said Vincent Steckler, Chief Executive Officer of AVAST Software. “With the budget cuts that schools are experiencing, it seemed a no-brainer to launch a program to help.”

“By helping schools through tough times, we can also boost the size of our North American user base, which makes our detection rates even better. AVAST has been successful because people try our free security software, like it, and then tell their friends, which in turn supports our entire security portfolio. The more users we have, the better our detection,” added Steckler.

In addition to all public or non-profit educational institutions, Avast has also also extended this program to public libraries located within the United States or American territories such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To protect your school’s network, a free license to download avast! Free For EDU can be downloaded by following this link.  Continue reading →