Office 2010 Features
Microsoft
Office 2010 (Word; Excel; PowerPoint; OneNote...) has introduced a new
look with additional features, however if you already have a previous
version of the suite the real question becomes, "do I upgrade or not?"
Let's start with a quick look at Office 2010:
If
you are using Office 2007, you have already experienced the shift
over to the more visual "ribbon" interface style, (departing from the
traditional toolbar icon and expandable text menu found earlier
Microsoft Office versions or Open Office).
Office
2010 brings a further shift towards visually driven menus (and Outlook
is included in this menu style conversion, strangely it
was skipped over in Office 2007's facelift - however Outlook is
now sold separately from Office - figure that one out). Some of
the new ribbon features include a standard "File" menu that replaces
the "Office Button" (good decision) as well as the ability to minimize
the ribbon (this
is a nice space saver however, it can cause some confusion if you
minimize the menu and don't know how you got where you are or worse yet
how to get the menu back to the way it was) . Also in the 2010 suite are some newly designed image editing, search and web features... (Read more on Office 2010 features)
The
cost of MS Office 2010 ranges between $150 - 500 (depending on the
version) which may be a major factor in making this decision.
Overall I am pleased with the changes to Office 2010 and would say that
if you tend to use Office beyond the basics of creating
straight-forward documents or spreadsheets you'll find 2010's
enhancements quite useful - Let me know if you want to give it a try.
Feel free to contact me if you have any comments or questions at DMielke@FileBankIT.com (416) 640-2874.
February 11 is Tokens4Change& in Support of Youth Without Shelter
Friday
February 11, Tokens4Change and schools across the city kick off a one
day event, raising TTC tokens for Youth Without Shelter (YWS).
Find out how you can help at www.tokens4change.com
Tokens
are essential so that homeless youth can use public transit to visit
the doctor, get to school and travel to job interviews. Transit allows
them to get their lives back. YWS serves over 1,000 homeless
youth every year.
Hundreds of students have volunteered for the event. Students will be
performing to catch commuter attention and to raise donations.
Commuters can expect to see choirs, drum bands, dance mobs, poets and
other acts in stations across the TTC. For those who travel light, they
can text tokens to 45678 to donate $5 via their phone bill.
For more information check out www.tokens4change.com or Youth Without Shelter's home page.
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Google Warns of Possible Web Page Problems
Google,
currently the most widely used search engine, has recently added some
security enhancement that you may want to know more about. Google's
goal is to give you greater information regarding websites that may be
compromised by hackers, allowing you to avoid these sites. While
Google’s application is not perfect, look for these warnings and
conduct yourself accordingly. Keep in mind Google does not have the
capability to warn you about all potentially hazardous websites, so you
still have to use some common sense.
Depending
on how much you use Google search and what topics you search for, you
may or may not have come across these warnings in the past. Google
introduced “This site may harm your computer” a few years ago. This
warning was designed to indicate that the website is potentially
hosting malicious software and should be treated with caution or
avoided all together.
Google
recently introduced another warning that states, “This site may be
compromised”. This warning is an indication that the site may no longer
be under the control of the legitimate website owner. (E.g., the
website has been taken over by spammers or may redirect you to adware
sites.) Potentially not as harmful, but annoying and probably a website
you will want to avoid. (See example on Matt Cutts search)

Read more about Google's warning system here.
Optionally
there are many other freely available programs to assist you in
identifying potentially harmful websites (E.g., AVG's link scanner, or
features/plug-ins available for most browsers including Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera). - Surf the Net Safely -
Feel free to contact me with your questions (DMielke@FileBankIT.com or 416 640-2874)
Happy New Year
As
we start another year, I'd like to thank everyone for reading our
articles, sending in your questions and entering FITS & Starts
contests. Hopefully we can continue to keep you
informed with our subject matter in 2011 and keep your computers
running trouble free. - We hope you have a happy and prosperous
New Year.
As always, contact me for all your computer related questions. (DMielke@FileBankIT.com or 416 640-2874)
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