Digital Cheat Sheet

The bread and butter of any kind of college experience is writing papers. Some get off with relatively few, but more often than not people end up writing dozens of papers throughout their time in school. Most essay prompts are as stated "the student is to write: 'x' number of pages in 12-size, type Times New Roman font, double-spaced". Occasionally some teachers will deviate from the formula, but more often than not that is the standard and accepted font, but why?

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For a few years now Microsoft has been running a little-known deal every year for college students. If you go to: http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx

This is a 91% saving according to Microsoft’s website and realistically you save about $90.00 if you had just bought Office Home and Student 2007 at the store.

Here are the included programs in Office 2007 Ultimate:

1. Word 2007

2. Excel 2007

3. Powerpoint 2007

4. Outlook 2007

5. Onenote 2007

7. Groove 2007

8. Access 2007

9. Infopath 2007

You can buy Microsoft’s Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for only $59.95 provided that you attend an a legitimate university and possess a valid .edu email address. What will happen is that after you provide your information Microsoft will verify it and then send you a product key. After obtaining your product key Microsoft will allow you to download Office 2007 Ultimate. This offer also extends to Windows Vista Ultiamte (Red Edition) as well as Visio Professional 2007 and Language Pack 2007 if you need them.

If you are a Mac user you are unfortunately up a creek without a paddle and essentially the lost sheep of Microsoft’s family. You get no deal and have to pay the entire $150 retail for Office 2008 Home and Student for Mac.

If you are a Linux user you are completely ignored by Microsoft and they do not currently have a version of Office for you to buy. Microsoft has disowned you and wants you to buy its operating system. If you are a Linux user you probably don’t care anyway. Just continue using your Openoffice and sticking it to the man.

Simple UI your grandmother could navigateFor years Microsoft has actually had its own antivirus in the form of Windows Live Onecare. Onecare started off as a great idea; Microsoft, knowing its own software inside and outside should have made an excellent antivirus program. The problem with Windows Live Onecare is that over the years it became rather bloated and slow. What started off as a security suite soon became a tune-up, a backup, and a PC management utility. Needless to say, Onecare has not been the hit that many envisioned it to be and corresponding with the Vista backlash Onecare got a bad wrap among consumers. I personally preferred Windows Live Onecare to other Windows antivirus programs because of it’s price, it was pretty-darn good protection, and it possessed some nice automated tuneup features.

This week Microsot reintroduced a stripped down Windows Live Onecare in the form of Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft Security Essentials is not a large program and after its install essentially replaces Windows Defender. From my testing of the program it is both lightweight and about as fast as Windows Defender is. The interface is simple, but clean with only essential tabs (Home, Update, History, and Settings). The settings are relatively limited to whatever you would see in a standard antivirus program with none of the bells and whistles that come with competing products like Norton or McAfee.

Taskbar iconAll of that being said, Microsoft security essentials appears to be a pretty decent antivirus. Only time will tell how effective the program actually is, but whenever it does come out officially should be a standard download for any Windows XP, Vista, or 7 machine. The whole point of this new antivirus is to give customers some kind of basic protection for free. I work for a computer repair store and from experience most PCs I encounter either have outdated antivirus protection or expired. I am saying download because currently Microsoft has no plans of releasing this software with Windows to avoid those nasty antitrust charges it has been dealing with for years. Although it will not be bundled with Windows Microsoft Security Essentials will be free for home and small business users and will be available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Unfortunately the beta is already closed up, but whenever Microsoft does release the final product I suggest you give it a try. Although this will not replace something like Nod32, Kapersky, Norton, McAfee, or other premium security software, but this should provide the essentials for any average computer user. I approve, good job Microsoft.

Nintendo should fear this. Just watch and you will understand why. I am pretty excited about it and I hope Microsoft really gets behind it.