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Free Books for Microsoft Office 2010
Jul 21st
Having trouble wrapping your head around Microsoft’s Office 2010 suite? Before you plunk down a wad of cash at your local bookstore for an instructional book, give Microsoft’s free materials a try.
Novices will want to start with First Look: Microsoft Office 2010, a 186-page ebook in PDF format. This one goes over the changes introduced in Office 2010 and covers each of the apps.
For those will a little more experience under their belt, Getting Started with Microsoft Office 2010 offers a bit more meat for IT types. This one is available in Word, PDF, and XPS formats, and checks in at 259 pages.
First Look: Microsoft Office 2010 (PDF)
Getting Started with Microsoft Office 2010
Is The Celeron Done?
Jul 12th
Is the Celeron brand coming to an end? It depends on who you ask. The talk from major notebook players is that they’ve been informed by Intel of its plans to gradually reduce the production of Celeron chips and replace them with Pentium and dual-core Atom N series processors. Following that, Intel will completely phase-out the Celeron line in 2011, Digitimes reports.
Sounds plausible, and it’s doubtful too many folk would really miss the Celeron brand, which many have come to equate with poor performance, even though that’s not always the case. Nevertheless, Intel is denying the rumors, but saying little else.
We’ll have to just wait and see what happens. What we do know, however, is that Intel will launch its dual-core Atom N processor line in the third quarter of this year, and presumably at similar price points to existing Celeron chips. It would make sense, then, to at least consider pulling the rug from the Celeron brand to avoid confusion.
At least in the short term, Celeron will remain in the market. Come September, Intel will launch a handful of new Celeron chips, including the Celeron P4600, T3500, and U3400. After that, it could be curtains for Celeron.
Google Adds Rich Text Signatures
Jul 12th
Google has rolled out rich text signature support to Gmail so you can have a fancy signaturewithout any Greasemonkey scripts or Macgyver-like cobbling together of Google Labs features.
If you hop into the Settings page of your Gmail account you’ll see a new signature section with some familiar rich-text editing buttons and options. You can tweak your text size and color, insert images and links, and otherwise format your text as you can within a rich-text Gmail message. In addition to rich text signatures for your primary address, you can also create a custom signature for each custom From: addresses you have set up in your account
Blizzard backs Down On Using Real Names In Forums
Jul 12th
“Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that they were going to be implementing changes in their official forums (for StarCraft II when it launched, and for WoW prior to Cataclysm) that would require users to post under their real names, as part of the Real ID system. After perusing nearly 14,000 European and 50,000 US forum posts, the majority of which decried this move with various levels of vehemence, it looks like Blizzard has given in to the pressure. From the official statement: ‘We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.’ Not that this doesn’t leave room for them to re-implement this at a later date, but that’s a pretty definite ‘no.’ It was clear they were going to take criticism, but the size of the backlash was impressive. It seems likely Blizzard simply wasn’t expecting that level of antipathy toward their new policy.
