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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 5/31/2006 |
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Another reason
to wait if you’re thinking of buying a new pc - just have a nice Summer .... Last week
I talked about how you should wait until next Fall or later if you’re
thinking of buying a new pc. The
reasons were: 1. The
Intel Corporation has announced a new generation of microprocessors, the
Intel® Core™2 Duo processor is the new brand name for the
next-generation energy-efficient
performance desktop and mobile processors, which is targeted to be
available in new pc’s by the Fall. 2. Microsoft
has announced its going to be introducing its new Vista operating system
later this year. This
means if you buy a new pc today, in just a few months it’s going to be
outdated in terms of hardware and operating system software. You lose
all bragging rights about your new pc when someone says “Oh, you
probably bought the last model of the old Pentium chip .... “ or “You’re still running Windows XP?
That been replaced by Vista, you know ... “ And now a
3rd reason to wait is that in addition to their new Vista
operating system, Microsoft is also introducing an entirely new version of their
Flagship suite of Office products, which will be Office 2007, supposedly
quite a radical change from Office 2003, or Office XP. One of the major rumored differences
is in the operation of Microsoft Word, which is probably the #1 Microsoft product actually used by people. You see,
over the years, Microsoft has reluctantly unbundled their Office Suite. From
their marketing perspective, they wanted to sell all their major office
applications in a single package, which included Microsoft word, Excel,
Outlook, Access, Powerpoint, Front Page, and Publisher. But users objected to
buying a suite of office products, most of which they would never use, so
Microsoft begrudgingly started offering smaller combo packages, and also
products ala carte. I
don’t think I’ve ever worked with a single company that actually used all of
the Microsoft programs. Most
people use Word and Outlook. After that probably is Excel, which
many business number crunchers still faithfully use. From there usage really falls off.
Front page is an also ran now among all the other html generating programs to
create websites with. Publisher
can do some nice things, but if you’re really serious about desktop
publishing, there are other high-end programs that can do much more. And if
you actually do presentations, powerpoint is a nice simple tool, but most
people don’t do presentations. And at the back of the pack is Access,
which is a good database, but it’s rare to find a company actually
doing programming now, with so much software to do virtually anything
available off the shelf for vertical markets. Probably
the best package of Microsoft Office programs now is their Microsoft Office
Basic, which includes Word, Excel, and Outlook, which is what most people use. The cheapest way to buy this is when
you get it installed on a new pc, like a Dell, where the package will only cost
$ 160.00. So
that’s 3 reasons to hold off buying a new pc until later this year, or
early next year. So despite what buys you see on existing pc’s today, you’ll be buying
way behind the technology and power curve, and also looking at expensive
upgrades to just get current again. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2006 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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