2013

Microsoft's new version of Office will take heavy advantage of the cloud.

Demoing the upcoming new suite at a press conference today, Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president for Office, explained how Office apps will sync key settings by using SkyDrive as a central repository.

After you sign in, you'll see the same settings, templates, dictionaries, and recent documents across all your Windows devices: PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

Using Word as an example, Koenigsbauer showed how users can insert pictures through the traditional Office.com clipart, through image searches via Bing, by opening something from SkyDrive, or by … Read more

A demo of PowerPoint by Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president for Microsoft Office, showed how Windows 8 tablet users can employ taps, swipes, and other gestures to create presentations. Users can also draw on their presentations via a stylus.

A demo of the new version of Outlook also revealed how to go through their e-mail messages and quickly go through their in-boxes by tapping on messages. A new Quick Actions tab lets people move, delete, flag, or forward messages as well. Finally, a feature in Outlook called Peek offers an interactive look at People, Calendar, and Tasks.

Monday's top tech headlines feature a new challenger to the LTE battle:

Microsoft is releasing a new flavor of Office to go along with the new look of Windows 8. This new Office is all about making your documents available wherever you are, on any device. The design is also streamlined. Since you might be using it on a touch-screen, Microsoft simplified some options. You can see highlights of the features in our review of the new Office suite.

Sprint's already been selling devices that use 4G LTE, but today customers can finally tap into that faster network. … Read more

Microsoft has pulled back the curtains on the latest version of its Office suite.

At a press conference today, CEO Steve Ballmer announced the new version, noting that a preview edition of the cloud-based Office 365 edition will be available for people to try out today.

Ballmer called this "the most ambitious version of Office we've ever done." Touting the cloud-based Office 365, the CEO also said that this is a version that lets users simply click start and being running.

Office 15 launched as a technical preview this past January, available for testing to only a … Read more

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft has been beefing up its design chops in recent months, pushing the sleek Metro user interface in Windows 8 and diving into hardware design with its striking Surface tablet prototype.

But maybe the most daring makeover comes today as Microsoft unveils the new-look Office. The productivity software suite is among Microsoft's longest-in-the-tooth products, dating as it does back to 1989. It's ballooned from a relatively compact offering of word-processing, spreadsheet, email and presentation software to a vast collection of applications, each of which gets countless new features with every release.

Elegant design is often … Read more

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will reportedly appear at an invitation-only press event the company will host in San Francisco on Monday.

The press conference, which starts at noon PT and is set to end at 12:45 p.m., promises that attendees will get some form of news from Microsoft. The company didn't disclose details about the event on the invitation.

While Microsoft remains mum, USA Today has reported that Ballmer is expected to unveil Office 15, a new version of its suite of productivity programs.

Attendees will have a chance to speak with Microsoft experts and customers from … Read more

The Consumer Electronics Association, the organization that runs the Consumer Electronics Show, announced today that Kazuhiro Tsuga, the newly appointed president of Panasonic, will deliver the CES 2013 opening keynote speech.

"Panasonic is one of the largest and most dynamic consumer-electronics companies in the world, and I congratulate Mr. Tsuga on his official appointment to president of Panasonic Corporation this morning," CEA Chief Executive Gary Shapiro said in a statement. "We are thrilled to have Mr. Tsuga take the stage for his opening keynote at the 2013 International CES, and we look forward to hearing his vision … Read more

Bitdefender's line of 2013 suites launches today with a new secure browser for performing financial transactions in the browser equivalent of a safe room.

You can download Bitdefender Total Security 2013, Bitdefender Internet Security 2013 , and Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 exclusively from Download.com today.

The company's Safepay browser is the keystone new feature in this year's edition. The browser takes existing sandboxing technology and closes off the rest of your operating system as it creates a safe space for you to browse the Web. The focus here is on virtualization, not speed or features.

You can … Read more

The June 12 Microsoft TechEd keynote was billed as being all about Windows 8 for business. But the only bit of new information shared during the hour-and-a-half presentation was a quick glimpse of branding for the next version of Office, codenamed "Office 15."

During a demonstration on stage of Windows on ARM, director of program management Linda Averett showed a quick glimpse of what Excel on the device. The software was identified as a preview of "Office 2013 RT" (with the "RT" representing Windows RT, the final name of Windows on ARM).

(A screen … Read more