Microsoft Office on the iPad

Microsoft recently released the official Office for iPad including applications for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. OneNote has been available for a while. You can view documents for free with Office for iPad.

However, editing and creating documents requires an eligible Office 365 subscription. If you have a subscription, Office for iPad is considered one of your 5 devices for installing Office.

Initial reviews are in and it's a hit! It's already one of the most popular business applications at the Apple Appstore.

Windows XP is Dead! Long Live Windows XP!

As we've been warning you for a long time, Microsoft officially retired support for Windows XP a few weeks ago. That means no more security patches for the 13-year old operating system. We still recommend you upgrade any XP workstations to Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Unfortunately there will be millions of users who will continue to use Windows XP for a long time. If you are one of those, you can follow these 5 best practices to reduce your security risks. Let us know if you need some help.

1. Don't run as a local administrator. Restrict yourself to standard user to limit your ability to accidentally install malicious software
2. Enable the Windows firewall
3. Stop using Internet Explorer and switch to Firefox or Chrome - those will continue to receive updates
4. Keep updating other applications like Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, and Sun Java
5. Run a supported anti-virus/anti-malware product
6. Backup your data

Microsoft Improves the Windows 8 Experience

Windows 8 has always been a rock solid operating system. However a lot of people don't like the way it looks and miss some of the old ways of doing things.

Microsoft is listening and has released updates to address some of this.

These can be found in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update 1. These updates make the mouse friendlier on desktops, adds back some old functionality, and includes other improvements.

And of course you can also use some free or inexpensive third-party products to make it look just like the Windows you've always know.