While the statement of next Office version being “most ambitious ever” seems more like a marketing jargon, there are good chances that the next Office version may bring some drastic changes into the Office UI, specially at the time when Microsoft is  aggressively embracing Metro UI for all its applications and software programs.

PJ Hough, corporate vice president for Office program development recently wrote an official post announcing the beginning of limited Technical Preview for Office 15(or Microsoft Office 2012).

Under Technical Preview, the software program will be given out to limited set of people who will get their hands on the yet-to-release Office 15 and will offer their feedback to Office team throughout their use. This previewing process will not be shared in the public domain as users will have to abide by NDA(Non-disclosure agreement) that Microsoft applies to all its users of technical preview.

Hough said the updates to Office 15 will bring revisions to Office-related cloud based services, mobile & PC clients along with server clients as well. Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio will likely be updated and may get integrated altogether.

Limited Technical Preview will soon be followed up with Beta release of ‘Office 15′ when everyone will get to use next Office version in beta mode. Office 15 Beta could arrive by as early as summer of 2012.

Taking a cue from the product release schedules of Office 2010 and earlier Office versions, we can take a safe assumption that the next version of Office may come out for public release by the end of 2012, probably coinciding with the public launch of much awaited ‘Windows 8′.

For more details, see detailed coverage of Office 15 aka Office 2012

Microsoft is likely to gear up beta release of Office 15 by early next year as the timing will be perfect to showcase Office 15′s at CES 2012 along with the other big release by Microsoft, beta version of Windows 8. Then, Microsoft may proceed to releasing beta version of Office 15 later in the month of January.

The biggest news here is the strong probability that the popular, tile-based Metro UI is all over ‘Office 15′. Microsoft has arguably made extensive efforts to metro-ize the whole UI for Office users so that next version of Office productivity suite, not only cater to the legacy users of Office 2010 but also offer a touch-friendly UI for tablet users.

In fact, Microsoft is reportedly working on a tile based “Moorea” application that will work as a starting place for Office 15 users to quickly navigate to documents, pictures etc

All these efforts to develop and present a touch-friendly Office suite would be challenging enough but that will also define the future of office suite.

Office productivity suite is the second biggest cash cow for Microsoft and at no cost can Microsoft afford to let the authority of Office suite get diminished. It’s a rock-steady and trusted revenue stream for Microsoft.

We will track this news and report as and when more info emerges on this…Till then, stay tuned for more…!

GM, Customer Experience Engineering at Microsoft, Eric Hautala has officially confirmed the release timing of Windows Phone 7.5, a.k.a. “Mango” update for all the current user base of Windows Phones.

The biggest and most relevant update, dubbed ‘Mango’ will be hitting Windows Phone devices very soon. To be exact, it will be out as an OTA update within next two weeks. All manufacturers will be sending update to their respective device owners and therefore, you better shouldn’t install any unofficial Windows Phone software update, in case you were thinking of that.

Windows Phone 7.5 update is a major update, carrying along more than 500 bug fixes and feature improvements, as claimed by Microsoft Windows Phone team so this is an update that all Windows Phone owners will be eagerly looking forward to.

The timing is also perfect as iPhone 5 launch is approaching fast and Microsoft wouldn’t want to keep serving an obsolete, kinda buggy software OS to prospective buyers of smartphones who may choose an iPhone 5 over Windows Phone device, just because of the poor feedback from current Windows Phone users due to lackluster software.

Everyone is talking about it and even apple fanboys have admitted to being spellbound by Windows 8 and innovations brought by Microsoft to the table. Windows 8 will be a unified OS and will power desktop, notebooks as well as tablets.

In other words, it will be a single OS for all sorts of devices.

There’s tons of info on Windows 8 so we would rather recommend you to head over to Windows 8 news site and grab all the news you can!

Under this special section, Microsoft will be offering tons of discounts and freebies, exclusively for students. But this is subject to your verification of actually being a student prior to making any purchase. Verification could be through various ways such as ownership of some .edu email address.

Here are some of the highlighted customized offers by Microsoft to students:

- Student Exclusive Discount-Up your game for less: get a special price on Xbox LIVE from the Microsoft Store! : Special discount on Xbox LIVE for students

- Student Exclusive Discount-Office Professional Academic 2010- Full upgrade version at a special student only price: $99.95 from the Microsoft Store! : This is probably the best deal for students as it perfectly fits the need of students. Office Professional Academic 2010 full upgrade version is available to students for just $99.95. Students couldn’t have asked for a better deal than this.

- Buy a PC for College get an Xbox 360 for free from the Microsoft Store! : When you make a purchase of a PC through Microsoft Store, you will take away an Xbox 360 along with you for free!

- Student Exclusive Discount-take up to $100 off our top PCs from the Microsoft Store : Heavy discount on PCs is exclusively available for students

- Free Shipping on all Xbox Consoles and PCs from the Microsoft Store! : Microsoft is offering free shipping for students on purchase of Xbox consoles and PCs.

So, if you’re a student then you must avail these offers as soon as possible because all offers are subject to availability of stocks.

Microsoft has also announced couple of major milestones that they have achieved in the recent past.

1. Microsoft has sold more than 400 Million copies of Windows 7 operating system by now. They already announced sometime back that Windows 7 had been selling at an exorbitant pace of over 7 copies per second but with latest milestone of 400 million sales of Windows 7, it does appear that there’s no dampening of sales of Windows 7 operating system.

Another interesting fact is that Windows 7 is now installed on 30% of all PCs worldwide. This throws a lot of weight behind the adoption of Windows 7 by users who had been using Windows XP for ages.

2. Second big milestone hit by Microsoft is that Office 2010 has been sold to over 100 million users worldwide. This one is more crucial as Office 2010 is barely an year old office application suite and hence, Microsoft would definitely want to make Office 2010 even more successful in the years to come.

The major push in sales success of Office 2010 is certainly due to strategy of packaging pre-installed version of Office Starter 2010 with new PC and laptop sales.

For Windows Vista SP1 also, similar policy will be applicable and Microsoft will stop supporting users of Windows Vista who’re currently using Service Pack 1. For Windows Vista users, that may not have much effect as they can simply update their Service Pack version to Vista Service Pack 2 and keep enjoying Microsoft’s support for more time.

Microsoft offers two kinds of support to its software buyers: Mainstream and Extended support. Mainstream support lasts for 5 years from the date of product launch and extended support lasts for next 5 years after mainstream support ends.

During the course of 10 years of support from Microsoft, security patches and updates are made available during the entire tenure but non-security updates are only provided during first 5 years of support(mainstream). During extended support, non-security updates are provided to corporate customers who pay for those updates.

For those who’re running a Vista SP1, they can download 32 bit and 64 bit versions  of Service Pack 2 for Vista and install them to keep getting support. Office XP users are clearly out of luck and it would rather be wise for Office XP users to leap forward to Office 2010 and stop using a software that more than a decade old and has no innovation left anymore.

Buying Office 2010 will also ensure that you will keep getting security updates until 2020.

Stay tuned for more updates on this….

The very first Office 2010 Service Pack 1 was released last month itself and Office 2010 buyers can download Office 2010 Service Pack 1 from available download link.

The whole list of patches, bug fixes and enhancements that Service Pack 1 will bring along is quite exhaustive so it’s better you simply head over to downloading Office 2010 SP1 and enjoy better performance and usage experience.

Office 2010 Service Pack 2 Next In line

As Office 2010 Service Pack 1 has finally been made available for download, Office 2010 Service Pack 2 is next in line and there are good chances that Office team is already hard at work on the beta release of Office 2010 Service Pack 2.

We will be keeping a constant eye on the developments on further release of Office 2010 Service Pack 2 so stay tuned !

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Office 365, its high-tech, affordable cloud based solution for small and medium businesses to get the best of the server side productivity solutions, earlier affordable by large scale businesses only.

Office 365 is immediately available for SMBs and Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned to reach out to small and medium businesses to get more and more users on board.

With Microsoft Office 365, small businesses will have all the server-side technologies for collaboration and productivity such as

• Microsoft SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Exchange Online
• Microsoft Lync Online

in an always-up-to-date cloud service. Office 365 will be available as a subscription based service, billed on a per-user-per-month basis. The standard package starts from $6/user/month but the costs can get substantially lower(as low as $2/user/month) for large businesses.

Microsoft Office 365 poses direct competition to Google App for Business, the paid version of Google Apps for high end cloud productivity solutions.

The most alluring part about Office 365 is the seamless integration of Office productivity solutions across desktop(Office 2010), browser(Office web apps) and Mobile(Office Mobile 2010) and the transfer of maintenance and technical troubleshooting to Microsoft. Both of these things.

Now, as the month of June is approaching its end, there are two announcements that are expected from Microsoft within coming few days.

1. Release of Office 2010 SP1

2. Public launch of Microsoft Office 365

Release of Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 was long pending so existing users are dying to get their hands on the software update and get the whole bunch of patches and updates that will come along with Service Pack 1.

Launch of Office 365 will be very critical from Microsoft’s perspective as Office 365 is a direct answer to Google Docs, especially for enterprise customers, which mainly drive the revenues of Microsoft Business division through Office suite sales and buying other enterprise level services by Microsoft.

Well, stay tuned for more news this week…Office 2010 SP1 may be released anytime!