Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Microsoft Helping Hardware Partners Build Cheap Windows Devices

Windows 8.1 is the latest update for the Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system. In fact, the tech giant came up with a new update by fixing some of the errors and flaws found in the previous OS and it also marked the return of Windows Start button. Microsoft is seriously trying to innovate their Windows 8.1 devices by entering partnerships with many hardware developers. Recently, the tech giant revealed that they are going to work on a new project to produce low cost Windows 8.1 devices. This will make the Windows 8.1 devices much cheaper when compared to other devices available in the market, thereby aiming for larger sales and popularity.

Brandon LeBlanc said in a Microsoft blog that, “Microsoft was built on the foundation of partner opportunity and our goal remains mutual success for us and our partners. This means a continued commitment to helping ensure our hardware partners are able to build innovative, differentiated and competitive devices on the Windows platform. The end result is that more people—across consumer and commercial—will have access to an even broader selection of new devices with all the awesomeness that Windows 8.1 provides, and get Office too, all at a really affordable price.”

When the Windows 8.1 devices become common, then it will provide an opportunity for the developers to build many more apps. According to Brandon LeBlanc, the new low cost Windows 8.1 devices will come with a new edition of Windows OS named Windows 8.1 with Bing. He wrote that, “This new edition will be only be available preloaded on devices from our hardware partners. Some of these devices, in particular tablets, will also come with Office or a one-year subscription to Office 365”.

According to LeBlanc, the tech giant Microsoft is working very hard to make the Windows 8.1 devices more popular and to reach the maximum number of customers by entering in business with more partners. This new strategy from Microsoft help to introduce new devices with a broader range of prices. In a bid to drive more price competitiveness and device differentiation, Microsoft has began to ease their approach and with the release of the new Windows 8.1 update, the tech giant is encouraging its hardware partners to develop devices of even lower cost with high specifications.

The tech giant Microsoft has also announced that their hardware partners can get the Windows OS free for phones and tablets that have 9-inches or lower screen size. For further information regarding this, contact the Microsoft help team.

Patch Tuesday Update Corrupts Office 2013

Microsoft has always released patches and updates needed for its applications that help to run the software without any glitches or errors. However, this was not the case with the recent Tuesday patch released by Microsoft for Microsoft Office 2013. Many of the users who have installed the Tuesday patch for Office 2013 noticed that it corrupted their applications following its installation. As a result, many of the users were unable to run the Office 2013 suite on their systems. News regarding this was confirmed on the company’s Friday blog post.

The Microsoft Office engineering team wrote that, “Shortly after the release of the June Public Update, we received notification of a potential issue affecting a subset of Office 2013 Click-to-Run users.” They added, “In some cases, users running Office 2013 may not be able to launch Office products after the June Public updates are installed.”

To virtualize the aspects of the Office experience, Office’s ‘Click to Run’ technology completely depends on internet streaming. This will help the users to start using the Office suite right after you start the download process. Click to Run installations are completely different from the traditional software installations and the tech giant used to release update for the same automatically. To install Office on PCs, both the downloaded versions of Office 2013 software and Office 365 mainly depends upon the Click to Run technology.

According to the reports coming from Microsoft, it is said that only one percent of the Office 365 users are affected by this problem. But, according to Computerworld, when we take in to account the number of users, this one percentage signifies thousands or more of Office 365 users, who will be affected by this. Studies conducted by Microsoft found out that in the month of April, there has been 4.4 million Office 365 Home subscribers, whose one percent will be equal to nearly 44,000 people. Also, these numbers do not include the users, who have purchased this application as a standalone one.

If you are the victim of this bug, then your corrupted Office 365 suite can be easily fixed by following the steps given by Microsoft. According to the steps detailed by the Microsoft technicians, it is necessary to uninstall the Office  2013 suite from your computer using the Fix It solution and from the Office's My Accounts page, you need to reinstall it once again. To do so, you need to first sign in to your Microsoft account.

Monday, August 4, 2014

China Turns Out To Be A Tough Spot For Microsoft

Microsoft was shocked by China’s decision to ban the use of Windows 8 on its government systems. A report published in China’s national news agency Xinhua indicates that the Chinese government has directed all government institutions in the country to not use Windows 8 on any office PCs. The ban does not affect individual users. However, it is sure to affect Microsoft’s ambition to become the biggest OS seller in the world’s largest market.  Of late, Microsoft has been working out different steps to improve the sale of Windows operating systems in the Chinese market. Meanwhile, it has been reported that the Chinese government is infuriated by Microsoft’s decision to lift Windows XP support.  

Windows XP market use in China

According to a survey conducted recently, more than 90 percent of the government offices in China use Windows XP. When Microsoft lifted Windows XP on 8th April, China was among the first countries to react to the decision. Of late, it has been reported that China is encouraging third party PC security firms to come up with effective solutions to curb security issues popping up in XP in the wake of Microsoft’s termination of support.

The country is willing to upgrade to Windows 8 or use the advanced Windows 8 transfer feature for backing up and moving data between PCs. It appears that the country has not approved Windows 8 because of the controversies over Edward Snowden’s revelation that Microsoft is supporting America to spy diplomatic data of other countries. Countries like Germany and Brazil had strongly opposed the CIA’s spying. However, no other country but China had taken a strong opposition against Windows 8 citing security reasons.

Future of Windows operating systems in China

Despite its status as the biggest country in the world in terms of population, China does not appear to be an easy spot for Microsoft to sell its operating systems. Although China does not interfere in individual users’ choice of operating systems, more than 70 percent of the individual users in the country prefer pirated or cracked versions of Windows instead of genuine licenses. To get potential customers in the country, Microsoft has to implement different sales and marketing tactics.

Features like Windows 8 transfer are welcomed by a large number of users and have been a reason for many people opting for this OS. However, it has hardly had any impact on the Chinese users.

Get Rid Of Unwanted Add-Ins To Improve Outlook Speed

Microsoft Outlook comes with many options and features. Being the most popular email application included in Microsoft Office Suite, Outlook offer facilities that do more than just emailing. You can enjoy handling your contacts, calendars, notes, tasks, schedules and organize them in an ideal way. Microsoft Outlook is the emailing application most preferred by business corporates.

As you have noticed, software applications turn slow after a while due to various reasons and Outlook too encounters such situations at times. Since Outlook handles voluminous data, they can obviously encounter such problems. Since slower emailing platform can interfere with your daily activities, it is essential to troubleshoot them at the earliest.

Various reasons contribute to these Outlook problems and unwanted add-ins is just one among them. Disabling or removing them at the earliest will possibly fix your Outlook problems. Disabling Outlook Add-ins is quite simple and can be easily handled even by a novice by following just a few easy steps. Get in touch with a tech support personnel, if you find it hard to fix this problem. Follow these steps given below.

Disabling the Outlook Add-ins that slows down its performance
  • Open Microsoft Outlook. Now go to Tools and select Trust Center.
  • You will find Add-ins on the left hand pane. You will find a button on the bottom of the page. This will let you handle your COM Add-ins.
  • Now, you need to disable anything that you are not using. You can start by disabling the non-Microsoft add-ins and then restart Outlook.
  • Verify whether your Outlook has regained its speed.
  • You might find it difficult to disable or remove certain add-ins, if you have Windows 7 or Vista. In such situation, you need to close Outlook. Login as the administrator and then try disabling these add-ins again.
  • If you have pinned the add-in to your taskbar on your Windows 7 system, you need to first close Microsoft Outlook. Now, press Ctrl and Shift along with taskbar icon. This will help you to remove these Outlook Add-ins successfully.
These steps can definitely help you to enhance Outlook’s performance. These above steps are simple enough and with this, you could fix Outlook within a couple of minutes. Get in touch with Outlook support team, only if you encounter problems while following the above steps. Hope you found this article useful.