Given that Microsoft is in real danger of ceding substantive market share to the likes of Google Docs and the free-of-charge OpenOffice in the coming years, it's unsurprising that it's thrown quite so much at Office 2010. Along with Windows, Office has traditionally been the big money-maker for Microsoft, and here, it's shaped the product to give it maximum appeal to the business market.
We've been taking a look at the Home and Business SKU of Office 2010, which brings together Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Word 2010, OneNote 2010 and Outlook 2010. Differing versions of the software cater for different sectors of the markets, from the entry-level Home and Student Edition, through to the top-end Professional version. Each has price tags that match their target audience, and thus is seemed wise to plump for the version in the middle to see how it fared.
First things first, then. The ribbon interface, which was brought in - and still divides opinion as a result - in Office 2007 is now present across the full suite of tools. Yet elsewhere there's no dramatic overhaul that's taken place this time round. Microsoft has instead built on the foundations of Office 2007, and generally done so perfectly well.
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As such, there's little working difference in Word, for instance, which was ribbon-enabled last time we met it too. There's OpenType support built in for those who require it, and it's slightly better when applying effects to text and images. But the guts remains a strong word processing package, which for many is the most-used application in the suite. Excel too hasn't undergone much in the way of changes, with just minor nips and tucks after the overhaul the product received last time around.
Powerpoint has benefited from more work, and for the first time, you can embed web videos directly into a presentation. This works as easily as you'd hope. We grabbed YouTube embed code, and from there, we were free to format and position the video as we chose. Obviously in a presentation scenario it requires a web connection, but that's not the problem it once was. You can also export your Powerpoint presentation now as a video.
Outlook has benefited from the ribbon interface for the first time, and given that communication and collaboration (which we're coming to shortly) is at the heart of Office 2010, it's understandable that it's had quite a lick of point. It's borrowed an idea from Gmail, in allowing you pull together all mails from one conversation together, and you can put together quick steps - pseudo-macros in old language - to automate certain tasks. Some are pre-provided, but you can put together your own easily enough.
Outlook and Powerpoint have migrated nicely since we met them last, and Microsoft's OneNote utility has come along too. This has been a rarely used function of the Office suite, although we can't honestly see that changing dramatically this time around. It's basically a notebook of sorts that can be shared between users and applications, and it can be useful if several people are reviewing the same document. That said, collaboration tools are built into each of the applications anyway, although multiple users are still not supported in Excel. There are Web Apps provided here, though, and they're a very clear sign of which direction Microsoft is heading, and making commendable progress towards.
Office 2010 is a smart, tidy evolution of the tools that gelled well together in Office 2007. There's still a compelling argument, for those who just want to do a few spreadsheets and type up some work, that it's a bit overkill. Office 2010 is certainly more polished than something like OpenOffice 3, for instance, but the core features that most people demand work perfectly well in either. Furthermore, for the person still using Office 2003 as a basic suite, there's no killer change to force an upgrade.
But there is a professional and strong suite of tools here, that work well together and, in a business environment in particular, have sharp collaboration options. Office 2010 is no perfect beast, but it is a solid improvement to an already impressive collection of applications.
วันศุกร์ที่ 4 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2553
ASUS - Eee PC 1005PE review
Kalypso - Pole Position 2010 review
Games reviews > Strategy game reviews > Kalypso Pole Position 2010
an F1 team management game with a distinctly unfinished vibe (03/06/2010)
Why is first place on the grid called pole position? Because it's named after Sir Bertie Barkington-Pole, who won every single event in the 1807 Dung Hill Harness Racing Stakes. Alternatively, it may have been an old term borrowed from horse racing, whereby the horse on the inside - usually the number “1” - would be nearest the pole that marked the starting line. Hence pole position. We prefer the Bertie story, though.
As the ultimate finisher, Sir Barkington-Pole wouldn't have been too impressed with Pole Position 2010. There's a number of problems here, the main one being that the game hasn't been finished properly. It's not even a simple matter of a lack of polish: the problems run deeper than a good turtle-waxing would solve. Indeed, this management sim has a rushed out feel to it pretty much across the board.
The tutorial marks the first tell-tale sign. The enterprising but clueless newbie F1 team manager is presented with a few pop-up screens, which are basically slightly rejigged paragraphs taken from the instruction manual. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the manual was actually well written and informative, but instead it's overly concise, and doesn't attempt to explain anything in any real detail.
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You're left to fiddle around and discover the mechanics for yourself, although that's okay in some respects, as a lot of the game is fairly easy to figure out anyway. However, sections such as car setup and research are trickier to get a handle on. Absolutely no guidance is given on how to set your front tyre camber, or how suspension should be adjusted for the various tracks.
When it comes to researching a new rear wing, do you want to make it longer, a bit wider, or give it more height? No design help is offered whatsoever, and you're very much blundering around in the dark. So we went for something that we thought would look groovy (although the game wouldn't let us add shark fins).
However, after our initial confusion, we soon got the distinct impression that many of these details don't actually matter that much anyway. Car setup didn't seem to make much difference, and on most tracks we just kept the same fairly low set wings; even twisty-turny Monaco didn't seem to reward higher wing settings to any noticeable degree. We never really tuned the other more complex variables like tyre cambers at all, and our team still did well enough.
The game also lacks impact in the decision making department, because there isn't much to weigh up. Sponsors chuck huge lumps of cash at you, even if you're managing a smaller racing team, meaning it's possible to hire all the best staff and buy up pretty much everything you want, with no real fear of going in the red. In terms of depth it all feels rather shallow, and matters don't improve when it comes to track day.
Race tactics seem pretty much redundant, unfortunately. Beyond fuel and stop strategy, you can give a small selection of orders to your drivers, such as “attack”, “hold position”, or “conserve fuel”. When our top ranked driver with superior skills was in second place, and our other driver in the lead, just a second ahead of him, we told the latter to drive conservatively, while giving the former instructions to attack and overtake. Fifty laps later, our secondary driver took the chequered flag, leaving us scratching our heads as to exactly how a much better driver, ordered to press hard, managed to trail his junior on a go-slow for almost an entire race.
But it's really not so surprising when you've spent a while with Pole Position 2010, as you realise a lot of elements seem to be broken. When training our drivers - they're all ranked in various stats - we scheduled a bit of fitness training to keep them in shape. So their fitness plummeted, naturally. After a couple of weeks, the game informed us that the fitness statistic of our lead driver had gone down a whopping ten points, when in actual fact it had increased by seven points.
Races are depicted in a simple isometric track view, with occasional 3D graphical “highlights” shown when drivers overtake. These are thrilling three-second clips of one car driving past another on a straight, with the rest of the chasing pack mysteriously vanishing to aid rendering. Call us cynical, but we reckon they're mostly in the game so Kalypso could put a nice 3D race shot on the back of the box. They seem buggy, too, as sometimes the names of the drivers involved don't appear, making these cameos even more pointless. At the start of one race we had to sit through about fifteen clips, back to back, which was quite frankly bewildering... or possibly a bug.
We could go on and on about the bugs. The spelling mistakes, the menu text which runs over the next column, the fact that when you type a “z” in a saved game name, it comes out as a “y”. Why indeed? Or the flaws in the reality of the game: one of our drivers put in a lap time a minute slower than the other, yet on the race track graphic he clearly remained right behind him. Obviously he must have hit some sort of temporal warp at the Hotel Mirabeau corner.
When you witness obvious flaws like this, you wonder what other mistakes are occurring in the game engine that you can't see. And then you start to lose faith in the whole thing completely. Pole Position 2010 is clearly in need of a good patching at the very least, but we think it would have to be stripped down and rebuilt before we could be persuaded to return for another season
Games reviews > Strategy game reviews > Kalypso Pole Position 2010
an F1 team management game with a distinctly unfinished vibe (03/06/2010)
Why is first place on the grid called pole position? Because it's named after Sir Bertie Barkington-Pole, who won every single event in the 1807 Dung Hill Harness Racing Stakes. Alternatively, it may have been an old term borrowed from horse racing, whereby the horse on the inside - usually the number “1” - would be nearest the pole that marked the starting line. Hence pole position. We prefer the Bertie story, though.
As the ultimate finisher, Sir Barkington-Pole wouldn't have been too impressed with Pole Position 2010. There's a number of problems here, the main one being that the game hasn't been finished properly. It's not even a simple matter of a lack of polish: the problems run deeper than a good turtle-waxing would solve. Indeed, this management sim has a rushed out feel to it pretty much across the board.
The tutorial marks the first tell-tale sign. The enterprising but clueless newbie F1 team manager is presented with a few pop-up screens, which are basically slightly rejigged paragraphs taken from the instruction manual. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the manual was actually well written and informative, but instead it's overly concise, and doesn't attempt to explain anything in any real detail.
Get the latest Dell Coupons and other computer coupons at CheapStingyBargains.com.
You're left to fiddle around and discover the mechanics for yourself, although that's okay in some respects, as a lot of the game is fairly easy to figure out anyway. However, sections such as car setup and research are trickier to get a handle on. Absolutely no guidance is given on how to set your front tyre camber, or how suspension should be adjusted for the various tracks.
When it comes to researching a new rear wing, do you want to make it longer, a bit wider, or give it more height? No design help is offered whatsoever, and you're very much blundering around in the dark. So we went for something that we thought would look groovy (although the game wouldn't let us add shark fins).
However, after our initial confusion, we soon got the distinct impression that many of these details don't actually matter that much anyway. Car setup didn't seem to make much difference, and on most tracks we just kept the same fairly low set wings; even twisty-turny Monaco didn't seem to reward higher wing settings to any noticeable degree. We never really tuned the other more complex variables like tyre cambers at all, and our team still did well enough.
The game also lacks impact in the decision making department, because there isn't much to weigh up. Sponsors chuck huge lumps of cash at you, even if you're managing a smaller racing team, meaning it's possible to hire all the best staff and buy up pretty much everything you want, with no real fear of going in the red. In terms of depth it all feels rather shallow, and matters don't improve when it comes to track day.
Race tactics seem pretty much redundant, unfortunately. Beyond fuel and stop strategy, you can give a small selection of orders to your drivers, such as “attack”, “hold position”, or “conserve fuel”. When our top ranked driver with superior skills was in second place, and our other driver in the lead, just a second ahead of him, we told the latter to drive conservatively, while giving the former instructions to attack and overtake. Fifty laps later, our secondary driver took the chequered flag, leaving us scratching our heads as to exactly how a much better driver, ordered to press hard, managed to trail his junior on a go-slow for almost an entire race.
But it's really not so surprising when you've spent a while with Pole Position 2010, as you realise a lot of elements seem to be broken. When training our drivers - they're all ranked in various stats - we scheduled a bit of fitness training to keep them in shape. So their fitness plummeted, naturally. After a couple of weeks, the game informed us that the fitness statistic of our lead driver had gone down a whopping ten points, when in actual fact it had increased by seven points.
Races are depicted in a simple isometric track view, with occasional 3D graphical “highlights” shown when drivers overtake. These are thrilling three-second clips of one car driving past another on a straight, with the rest of the chasing pack mysteriously vanishing to aid rendering. Call us cynical, but we reckon they're mostly in the game so Kalypso could put a nice 3D race shot on the back of the box. They seem buggy, too, as sometimes the names of the drivers involved don't appear, making these cameos even more pointless. At the start of one race we had to sit through about fifteen clips, back to back, which was quite frankly bewildering... or possibly a bug.
We could go on and on about the bugs. The spelling mistakes, the menu text which runs over the next column, the fact that when you type a “z” in a saved game name, it comes out as a “y”. Why indeed? Or the flaws in the reality of the game: one of our drivers put in a lap time a minute slower than the other, yet on the race track graphic he clearly remained right behind him. Obviously he must have hit some sort of temporal warp at the Hotel Mirabeau corner.
When you witness obvious flaws like this, you wonder what other mistakes are occurring in the game engine that you can't see. And then you start to lose faith in the whole thing completely. Pole Position 2010 is clearly in need of a good patching at the very least, but we think it would have to be stripped down and rebuilt before we could be persuaded to return for another season
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