The Ultimate Office
Office fans, have we got a deal for you. While your friends and co-workers
pound away on Office Standard or Office Professional, you'll be on top
of the heap, owner of
Office
Ultimate. That's right campers, for only $679 you'll get Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Groove and InfoPath (and you know how popular that
is).
Microsoft and eBay: Buy It Now?
Reports are surfacing that Microsoft
may be trying to buy eBay. If true, I'd imagine the price tag would
be a whopper -- the auction site's market cap is around $50 billion. Microsoft
has bought a lot of companies, but I can't remember anything near that
large. My prediction: It'll never happen.
The Anti-Virus Virus
I'm sure Symantec used to laugh every month when Microsoft's
security bulletins came out describing flaws that let hackers take over our
machines. The anti-virus leader isn't chuckling now that hackers
found a way to use the software that is supposed to protect as a launch
pad for attacks. Oops!
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Word Wide Open
Now there is another reason to hate Word. I get angry every time Word
decides it knows how to format better than me, or crashes mid-document (I see
the recovered files panel more than I see my kids sometimes). But if hackers
exploit a recently found
Word flaw on my machine, I'll be more than peeved -- they'll
be walking on the fightin' side of me! This hole allows attacks to be
carried out through e-mail attachments, and Symantec (makers of the less than
foolproof anti-virus software discussed above) is telling users to be careful
when opening Word attachments, and that IT should quarantine these attachments
for up to a half a day. A patch from Microsoft is on fast forward, set for release
well before the next Patch Tuesday.
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.