Office 2010 Reaches RTM!

From: Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering (The official blog of the Microsoft Office product development group)

I am very excited to share some great news with you. Earlier today we reached the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) milestone for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010!

RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone. It is also an appropriate time to re-emphasize our sincere gratitude to the more than 5,000 organizations and partners who have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products. Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version – that’s more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads! The feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped the set of products we’re excited about, and that I’m sure will delight our customers.

Our Volume License customers with active Software Assurance (SA) on these products will be one of the first to receive the 2010 set of products. They will be able to download the products in English via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27. Customers without SA will be able to purchase the new products through Volume Licensing from Microsoft partners starting May 1. 

Earlier this year we announced that we will officially launch Office 2010 to our business customers on May 12 with Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, delivering a keynote as part of our virtual launch. Our virtual launch will allow people from around the globe to participate in our launch by going to http://www.the2010event.com. The virtual launch site will showcase product demos, customer and partner testimonials, and interviews with product managers and executives, and we hope this will give you another great way to explore, learn, and get excited about the 2010 releases.

Office 2010 will first become available in retail stores in June in the US, and customers can pre-order these retail versions of Office 2010 at http://store.microsoft.com/OfficePreorder today to receive Office when it becomes available.

On behalf of the Office team, I want to thank all of the customers and partners who have helped us reach this milestone. We look forward to continue learning from you and all the great things you will do with our products!

-- Takeshi Numoto
Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office

Under Sea Cable

A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 percent of the country's Internet network. The ministry said in a statement it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal. India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage.

"There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India," Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider, said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable.

India said it had lost more than half of its capacity. "There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters. He told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.

 

With iPads in the wild, buyers react

Already the iPad has been estimated to have outsold the original iPhone in opening weekend sales. After waiting in line or for UPS to deliver, the first customers are unboxing their new iPads, and their reactions to the gadget are beginning to come in.


There seem to be few complaints from new owners though one issue did come up almost immediately. Some users who have connected their iPad via USB are getting a notification that says "not charging." Apple's support site says some USB ports--typically older computers or USB hubs--are not powerful enough to charge the iPad while it is in use, or may do so slowly.

Apple told MacWorld that it's recommended to charge the iPad via the included USB wall charge adapter because you can still use it while it's charging. However, if using a lower-power USB port or hub, the iPad will still charge, but only while it's in sleep mode, not while in use.

Otherwise, reactions seem pretty positive. A search of "iPad" on Twitter revealed almost 1,000 new mentions of the device every five minutes. Most were positive, including some saying the iPad was a "big hit at Easter dinner."

Roman Mittermayr of Seattle was spotted trying out his new iPad in a San Francisco Starbucks on Saturday. He said his first experience with the device was positive, but said he could already foresee some drawbacks to not having purchased the 3G version.

"Wi-Fi only is fine for coffee shops, but I travel for business, and hotel Wi-Fi you usually have to pay for. So that could be an issue," he said. He also said he was not a huge fan of the case, which can be used as an iPad stand. The case does not provide the most comfortable viewing angle, he said.

Gizmodo found some issues typing on the virtual keyboard, calling it "serviceable but not without strange moments."

The more curious among us couldn't just be satisfied swiping, pinching, and typing on their new iPad. iFixit did a teardown of the device Saturday, revealing what the tablet looks like on the inside.

And the members of the iPhone Dev Team, whose mission is to unlock the software of every new iPhone OS version, have turned their attention to the iPad. The team claims to have jailbroken the iPad after one day.