Faster Forward Archive: Productivity

Microsoft to Replace Works With 'Office 2010 Starter'

One of the older products in Microsoft's stable will be put out to pasture next year when the company ships the next version of its Office productivity suite: Microsoft Works, its low-end, somewhat-simplified bundle of word processing, spreadsheet, database and calendar tools. Works -- which dates back to the days...

Intuit to Buy Mint, Collecting a Competitor

Two of the bigger competitors in the growing category of Web-based personal-finance software will become properties of the same company: Intuit announced yesterday that it planned to buy Mint.com, perhaps the best-known provider of these services -- and my own favorite among them. Intuit's press release outlined the basic terms...

Personal-Finance Apps Fade On Disk, Flourish On the Web

Today's column may look a little familiar to regular readers. In it, I try out the same three Web-based personal-finance applications--Mint, Quicken Online and Wesabe--that I tested last May. Why return to this topic so soon? Since last spring, three things have changed. First, these three applications have all seen...

Microsoft Previews Office 2010--Including Free Web Version

Yesterday, Microsoft announced some important details about Office 2010, the successor to its current, Windows-only Office 2007 due to ship sometime in the first half of next year. Half of Microsoft's news constitutes what you'd expect out of any update to its widely used, perennially profitable productivity suite. Office 2010...

Microsoft To Run Out Of Money (The Program, That Is)

One of the oldest two-program rivalries in the personal-computing business ended yesterday when Microsoft announced that it would stop selling its Money Plus line of personal-finance applications after June 30. With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need...

Microsoft Updates Office 2007 With "Service Pack 2"

This week brought a major update to Microsoft Office 2007 -- Service Pack 2, a free download that fixes bugs, improves performance and adds a few new features in the company's bundle of productivity applications (see my review). This update should arrive automatically if you use Windows' Microsoft Update option,...

Older Entries in This Category »

Google Earth Goes Into the Past, Underwater--And Deep Into Your Computer's System, Rob Pegoraro , February 13, 2009

iReview iLife, iWork, Rob Pegoraro , February 5, 2009

Intuit Finds Customer Complaints Too Taxing to Endure, Rob Pegoraro , December 15, 2008

Google Checks Off "Add To-Do List to Gmail" , Rob Pegoraro , December 9, 2008

Nuance and MacSpeech's Spoken-Word Performances, Rob Pegoraro , November 6, 2008

OpenOffice 3 Is Here. Can You Tell?, Rob Pegoraro , October 14, 2008

Microsoft Thinks, Sells Outside the Box With Money , Rob Pegoraro , August 12, 2008