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| PC World - 30 May (PC World)For many years, Microsoft sold its productivity software Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on in a bundle called Microsoft Office. In 2013, the company saw where the software industry was heading and began a transition to a subscription-based model.
The suite of applications and a growing set of services continued to be called Office 365 until 2020, when it was given its current name, Microsoft 365. The company would like to see all Windows users have a subscription, and is doing its best to entice them with advertising in Windows. This seems unnecessary, as the service is one of the most affordable subscriptions on the consumer market. In this article, I’ll go through why this is the case, what’s included, and which subscription you should choose.
Further reading: Outlook: How to set up breaks between your meetings
Ed Hardie
Ed Hardie
Ed Hardie
Everything included in Microsoft 365
From being basically just the three basic Office programs and a few helper functions, Microsoft 365 has grown to consist of around 10 programs and a number of services. Some are also available as free versions without much difference, but most are significantly more powerful in the paid version. Here are the programs and services that are only included with a subscription.
WordMicrosoft’s advanced word processing program has hundreds of features and can do most things with text, except possibly make it look good in print.
ExcelThe world of finance would stand still without Microsoft spreadsheet software. There are alternatives, but the Windows version of Excel is by far the most capable of working with huge amounts of numbers.
PowerPointPresentations may not be as important to home users, nor as common in businesses as they once were, but they still have a place and a tool to create them: PowerPoint.
OneDrive with 1TB of spaceMicrosoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service can be used either like Dropbox to sync data between different devices and the cloud, or as a fully cloud-based storage for files you don’t want to offload from your computer. With a subscription, each account gets 1TB of space.
OutlookTired of webmail and prefer a real email program? Microsoft Outlook is one of the best, even for home users. Confusingly, subscribers also have increased storage space on the separate Outlook.com email service — 50GB instead of 15GB.
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft
OneNoteIf you’ve never tried OneNote, it can be hard to understand what it’s for, but it’s widely used in schools and elsewhere. The program is a kind of digital bulletin board where you can collect text, images, and other things.
ClipchampMicrosoft’s equivalent of Apple’s iMovie — a simple video editing program that allows you to do a little more with all the videos you record with your mobile phone. For example, you can edit a holiday film.
PublisherThis desktop publishing program is a better way than Word to produce printed materials such as posters, leaflets, and more, although it’s not in the same league as Adobe Indesign or Quarkxpress. Available only as a Windows program.
AccessDatabases. You might think it’s just for businesses, but in fact a database program like Access can serve as a relatively easy way to create your own applications. Like Publisher, Access is only available as an old-fashioned Windows program.
Foundry
Foundry
Foundry
Microsoft EditorA new AI-based tool embedded in Word and Outlook and available as a Chromium extension. Editor helps you write better by suggesting language improvements and spelling and grammar corrections.
Microsoft FormsHelps you create and distribute surveys. Very useful for some, completely uninteresting for others.
SkypeSkype is not nearly as popular today as it was 10 to 15 years ago, but in one area it is hard to beat: international phone calls. A Microsoft 365 subscription includes 60 minutes of calls to many countries every month.
pch.vector / Freepik
pch.vector / Freepik
pch.vector / Freepik
Individual or family
Microsoft 365 for consumers comes in two flavors: Personal and Family . Personal costs $69.99 a year or $6.99 a month, Family costs $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month. Paying annually gives a 16.7 percent discount. But see below for a tip on how to reduce the price further.
The difference between the two subscriptions is that Family includes up to six separate accounts, each of which gets 1TB of OneDrive space and 60 Skype minutes. Each account can also activate the Office programs on up to five devices. In other words, you get six accounts for the price of 1.43 accounts.
For those who don’t have a family to share the subscription with, it might seem natural to choose Personal, but it’s not quite that simple. 5TB more cloud space for $30 extra a year is nothing to sneeze at, although it does require a bit more fiddling to utilize than a cloud storage service that provides all the space in one account.
Further reading: How to get Microsoft Office 365 for cheap
I can give a personal example that illustrates the benefit of choosing Family even for a single user. I use two of my six Family accounts solely for backing up my computer; one account each for two 1TB SSDs. I use the Arq Backup software, which is sold as a one-off license, and the cost per year is much lower than with Backblaze, for example. It won’t work for everyone, but is definitely worth considering.
Another option is to get a Family subscription with some friends or relatives you don’t live with and share the cost. Each account is its own, separate account and the ‘administrator’ — the one who pays for the subscription and invites the others — does not have access to any other members’ data. So no one has to worry about being spied on.
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft
Buy discounted activation codes
When you subscribe to Microsoft 365, the company will activate auto-renewals that each month or year will deduct the regular price. But there’s another way to renew your subscription — with activation codes you buy from other stores.
Activation codes are often sold at a discount, especially around Black Friday but also during the rest of the year. You can activate for up to five years, so if you find a really good price, you can grab several codes at once, as long as you know you’ll want the Office programs for that long.
Marvin Meyer
Marvin Meyer
Marvin Meyer
Business subscriptions
Businesses and other organizations have a different set of Microsoft 365 subscriptions to choose from:
Business Basic – $6 per month per user, web and mobile versions of Office applications only (not including Windows or Mac applications).
Business Standard – $12.50 per month per user, same as Basic but with the desktop programs.
Business Premium – $22.00 per month per user, same as Standard plus advanced security features.
Business Applications – $8.25 per month per user, just the desktop applications for Windows and Mac plus 1TB of OneDrive storage.
In addition to the above programs and services, a number of business-oriented features are also included that are not available in personal subscriptions. These are mainly SharePoint, Exchange (email) with support for your own domain, the web version of the powerful Visio visualization tool, and the “real” version of Teams.
These prices are exclusive of VAT as it is aimed at businesses. In practice, there is nothing to stop self-employed people buying a private subscription and using it at work, for those who don’t need their own domain for email or have it otherwise, and don’t need any of the other unique features.
Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft
Standalone license – usually a bad choice
For those who refuse to pay for subscriptions, Microsoft actually still sells a standalone Office package on license, called Microsoft Office Home & Student. It costs $149.99 and the last update came in 2021 so the programs are not the latest versions. However, Microsoft has announced that it plans to release a new version towards the end of 2024.
What is included is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — no other programs, nor any services. For most people, this is a worse buy than the subscription, as the programs are not updated with new features and functions like OneDrive are not included. But there are situations where it’s still better, for example for a computer that won’t have internet access and where you want to be able to use the basic programs without restrictions indefinitely.
Slash RTC
Slash RTC
Slash RTC
Extended support
Free users will have to make do with support documents and Microsoft’s support forums, but Microsoft 365 subscribers will have access to manned support via chat or phone. That can make a big difference if something goes wrong.
This extended support applies not only to the components of Microsoft 365 but also to Windows 10 and 11, so you can get help from a human being if Windows updates are failing, if you’re worried you might have been hit by malware, or anything else.
Customers who buy a standalone license for the Office programs also get support via chat but not by phone.
Ed Hardie
Ed Hardie
Ed Hardie
Stingy? What’s included in free accounts
Some of the features included in Microsoft 365 are also available for free to anyone who gets a Microsoft account. Here’s what’s included even if you don’t want or can’t afford to pay.
Web and mobile apps for Word, Excel, and PowerPointHas all the basic features of the three main programs in the old Office suite, but only via a web browser.
OneDrive with 5GBFree accounts don’t get a lot of room to move around, but the Windows program to sync files and folders is included and it works great for those who, for example, have a folder of important files they want to access on all devices.
Outlook on the web and for mobilesMicrosoft has not made it easy to understand the jungle of different versions of Outlook, but for free users there are two completely separate Outlooks. The web mail client and email service Outlook.com is free and gives you an @outlook.com address with 15GB of space, and the Outlook mobile app for Android and iOS is free and works with most email services such as Gmail, Apple iCloud, and Yahoo Mail.
Skype and TeamsYou don’t have to pay anything to use Skype or Teams for individuals, although Skype does have a bonus for subscribers.
Skärmdump
Skärmdump
Skärmdump
Options – full office suite or individual programs and services
Don’t like subscriptions, or just tired of Microsoft’s programs? There are plenty of alternatives, both free and paid programs. What’s right for you depends a lot on what you’re actually looking for. There’s so much included in Microsoft 365 that you can’t replace the whole package with a single option from another developer.
If you’re mainly looking for something to replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the best options are free and open source, like Libreoffice and Freeoffice.
For OneDrive, there are many options, from Google Drive and Apple iCloud to smaller players like Shadow Drive and pCloud. You can also create your own cloud storage service that synchronizes folders between different devices using tools such as Syncthing and Seafile.
Further reading: Best cloud backup services
The best thing to do is to look for alternatives to the particular program you want to replace, and to think about what you need it for. If you use Word to write books, you have very different choices than if you use it to write emails and need features like Mail Merge.
Personal Software Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 30 May (PC World)Creating content is resource-intensive. It takes you a long time, or it costs a pretty penny to hire outside help. If you’re looking to scale your content output without breaking the bank, look no further than Scribbyo. During our Memorial Day Sale, you can get a lifetime subscription to this AI assistant for just $59.97.
Scribbyo is an all-in-one AI suite, giving you tools to write content, create images, generate code, generate voice overs, and even transcribe audio and video to text. It supports 37 languages and offers more than 50 templates to help you create all kinds of content with just a few data inputs. Whether you’re building a blog, coding a website, creating a podcast, or practically anything else, Scribbyo can help.
User John K. writes, “Scribbyo has been an amazing tool for my eCommerce business. The AI content generator has helped me create high-quality and unique product descriptions for my website, while the AI image creation feature has allowed me to generate professional-looking product images in just a few clicks. The ready-made prompt templates have also been a huge help in creating marketing campaigns. If you’re an eCommerce business owner, I highly recommend giving Scribbyo a try.”
Get the AI help you need for a discount. Now through 11:59 pm PT on 5/31, you can get a lifetime subscription to Scribbyo for just $59.97 (reg. $684).
Scribbyo: Lifetime Subscription – $59.97
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| | | RadioNZ - 30 May (RadioNZ)The business case for a third medical school at the University of Waikato is not expected until next year. Read...Newslink ©2024 to RadioNZ | |
| | | RadioNZ - 30 May (RadioNZ)From tax cuts to debt - these are the figures to keep an eye on as Budget 2024 is released. Read...Newslink ©2024 to RadioNZ | |
| | | PC World - 30 May (PC World)Arm has confirmed that it will be offering actual chips to its customers as part of its next-gen Arm compute platform, called Arm CSS for Client. These chips will be first marketed at Android smartphones, but executives also mentioned that they could be used for PCs as well.
The announcement confirms an earlier report that indicated that Arm might expand its traditional business model. Arm has traditionally sold CPU designs, not silicon, to partners like Qualcomm. Those companies have the freedom to adjust Arm’s designs — depending upon their license agreement — and then ask foundries like TSMC to actually manufacture the chip.
What’s new here is twofold: First, Arm is extending its services to include working with foundries to deliver physical chips, specifically 3nm chip designs first focused on smartphones and AI. Second, Arm is launching its next client platform, CSS for Client, led by the Cortex X925 extreme core, the Cortex A725 performance core, the Cortex A520 efficiency core, and the Immortalis G925 graphics engine with ray tracing. Arm is claiming that the new cores will offer the most performance yet, with a 36 percent boost in the Geekbench SC benchmark, running on Android.
“We’re making it easier to build and deploy Arm-based solution and leaving nothing to chance, enabling new performance points, compute capabilities, and helping speed time to market,” said Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of the client line of business at Arm.
There’s a twist, though. Arm is not announcing an AI core, like Qualcomm’s Hexagon. Instead, it’s providing software libraries to target the CPU for AI workloads. Normally, the NPU is seen as the most efficient way of performing AI. According to James McNiven, Arm’s vice president of product management for client, the software will be enhanced for “new features that we’ll be building into the CPUs going forward.”
Phones first, PCs second
Arm is targeting Android phones first, but executives implied that PCs are next up.
“The CPU is a natural first target for AI on Android devices,” Bergey said. “It’s performance and pervasive, and for 70 percent of third-party Android ML [machine-learning] workloads, that’s where they stay.”
Arm, of course, has been welcomed back into the limelight with the new Copilot+ PCs Microsoft just launched with its partner Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips power them. Nvidia and Arm have also been said to be working together, with reports surfacing last week that the two may be targeting 2025 for a launch. Arm CEO Rene Haas is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Computex show in Taiwan next week, where he may offer more details.
What is Arm’s new CSS for Client?
Not surprisingly, Arm says that the new CSS for Client is designed with AI, specifically generative AI, in mind. It’s an Arm V9 architecture, which was launched in 2021 with AI-specific instructions.
Arm isn’t telling us how fast its new CSS platform is, which means that most of the questions an enthusiast would have can’t be answered yet. When I asked about how many TOPS of AI power the CPU and its AI libraries would produce, company representatives demurred. (Arm CSS stands for Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems, and Arm debuted the first chips for the platform for the data center late last summer.)
“TOPS is a high-level metric that is dependent on frequency, IP choices, and configuration,” the company followed up in an emailed statement. “We are confident that the capabilities offered by our CPUs and GPUs, when complemented with an appropriate frequency and configuration (e.g CSS for Client), can easily achieve the needs of AI PCs and next-gen AI smartphones.”
James McNiven, Arm’s vice president of product management for client, said that the X925 name was changed to show how different that the X925 was from its predecessors. (The 36 percent improvement in Geekbench is a combination of the instructions-per-clock (IPC) improvement and a faster, undisclosed frequency, McNiven said.) It has a wider design, with larger (3MB) private level-2 caches to increase the TOPS count by 50 percent over its predecessor. The time to generate a response in the tiny-Llama AI metric has become faster, with a 41 percent improvement.
The platform’s Immortalis G925 graphics engine “delivers 37 percent more performance on a wide range of graphics applications,” McNiven said.
All told, Arm is promising that the platform will perform web browsing 23 percent faster on Android (via Speedometer 2.1), process YouTube 40 percent more efficiently through software-optimized AV1 video decode, and consume 25 percent less power while gaming. Ray-tracing performance should increase by 52 percent.
The Cortex A725 will be 35 percent more efficient than the A720, McNiven said, and the Cortex A520 efficiency processor will consume 30 percent less power while gaming.
So will these new CSS for Client cores be used in laptops? “We cannot comment on specific customer engagements, and the mobile cadence is pretty well known,” Arm’s Bergey said. “Things like laptops will potentially be a different cadences. But I think there’s considerable amount of interest around Windows on Arm and we think that this is a great solution that can be applied to that market. So stay tuned.”
CPUs and Processors Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | |
| | | PC World - 30 May (PC World)The only downside to a fluffy feline companion is having to scoop up after them every day. Catlink understands this, so they created a device that handles this nasty chore for you.
The Catlink Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box has a rotating inner bin that automatically sifts your cat’s waste after they’ve done their business, separating it from clean litter and dumping it into a waste drawer.
And right now, this self-cleaning litter box is available for just $340, a massive savings from its original price of $600.
The 13-liter waste drawer is large enough to contain up to 14 days of waste for a single cat. The waste drawer uses trash liners for convenient cleanup, sanitary disposal, and easy replacement. And smells aren’t an issue because a built-in filter absorbs and neutralizes odors.
The device itself is stable and well-ventilated, and it’s equipped with sensors that detect when your pet enters and leaves. This safety feature stops the inner bin from rolling and prevents accidental injuries.
Overall, the system not only ensures a consistently clean environment for your feline friend but also saves time and reduces litter costs. It’s pretty big, though, so make sure you have enough space to fit it. The whole thing measures approximately 24 x 24 x 28 inches.
Unlike similar self-cleaning cat litter boxes, this one by Catlink doesn’t need Wi-Fi or mobile apps to set up. It also doesn’t require any assembly because it arrives in one piece.
This limited-time deal is going fast, so treat your cat (and yourself) to the Catlink Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box for $340 while it lasts and free up more time to spend with your furry pal.
Get this self-cleaning litter box for $340 at Amazon
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| | | RadioNZ - 28 May (RadioNZ)Commonwealth of Northern Marianas governor Arnold Palacios has lamented the business sector`s seemingly `China-or-bust` stance in reviving the economy. Read...Newslink ©2024 to RadioNZ | |
| | | BBCWorld - 28 May (BBCWorld)More than 120 bosses endorse Labour`s economic plans ahead of the election saying it is “time for a change”. Read...Newslink ©2024 to BBCWorld | |
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