Comparison of Office 2010 & Office Starter 2010

Office 2010 is scheduled for release in June of this year, along with it Microsoft will be offering lightweight ad-supported version called Office Starter 2010, which will be free for lifetime. This version will not be providing the full functionality and has less features, today we will be putting some light on what you will be missing in Microsoft Office Starter 2010.

Microsoft Office Starter 2010 will be featuring only two applications; Word and Excel.
Take a look at the both versions of Word 2010.

You may have noticed from the screenshot that several tabs are missing, To give you the complete details of what is missing Office Starter, we have made a comparison sheet.

Take a glance at Excel 2010 and Excel Starter 2010.

The detailed difference in features can be seen in the table below.

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Free Microsoft Office 2010 Starter

Microsoft has revolutionized the way you have been using Office apps. In Office 2010 you will see a lot of new feature and functionality. In coming June, Microsoft will debut Office 2010 which will include a version called Starter that will be available for free. Microsoft also announced that it will be giving Starter version in the newly purchased computers.

Using Starter version would be bit annoying for users because of stretched window and the ads pane which can be seen at the right side of Office applications. Adding more to it, it will be a stripped-down version of final Office version coming down the line, containing minimal feature, functions and featuring only Word 2010 and Excel 2010.
You can see the detailed comparison sheet between the Office final and Starter version here.


Microsoft’s plan is to include Office Starter 2010 in all computers. Once released, it can be downloaded from the official Office 2010 website. The big question here is, will you give it a shot? Will you recommend it to your family and friends who cannot afford to pay for Office 2010? Do you think Microsoft will be successful in grabbing the last remaining  market share from OpenOffice? Let us know your thoughts.
Personally, we believe Microsoft wants to dominate the online space as well, which is currently dominated by Google Docs. What better way to do it than providing users with the free version of Office that has the ability to upload the documents and spreadsheets directly to SkyDrive and then providing users with tools to edit and share them online? Yes, we are talking about Microsoft Office Web Apps. Like we mentioned before, it is all plan of Microsoft to make SkyDrive the central storage destination for everything.

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Microsoft Introduces Outlook.com, New Email Service with Metro UI

We all know that Microsoft is upgrading all its services and products to match with Windows 8 Metro UI. Recently we saw it in upcoming "Office 2013" Customer Preview version and now its turn of a new announcement from Microsoft.
Microsoft has introduced a brand new email service Outlook.com. We all are aware of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express products. Microsoft Outlook is a part of Office suite and is one of the best and widely used email Desktop client for Windows. Outlook Express was a part of Windows but it was discontinued by Microsoft in Windows Vista.
Outlook.com is a new email service from Microsoft which comes with a clean interface inspired by Windows 8 Metro UI. Windows 8 also comes with a built-in Mail app which looks very similar to Outlook.com UI.
Since its a new service, chances are you'll get your desired username for your email account. If you already have a Hotmail or Live email account, you can upgrade it to new Outlook.com UI using Options menu.
Outlook.com comes with many interesting features such as integration with your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and SkyDrive accounts.
You'll not see any annoying ads in this new email service and its UI has been optimized to provide more reading space for your emails. It uses Exchange ActiveSync which helps you in accessing your emails, calendar and people experience on your smartphone, tablet and Outlook 2013.
Following is a preview of Outlook.com UI:

How to apply?
According to Microsoft, if you're a Hotmail customer and want to upgrade to the Outlook.com preview, just click "Upgrade" in the options menu of Hotmail. Your email address, password, contacts, old email, and rules will remain unchanged, and you can send/receive email from your @hotmail.com or @msn.com or @live.com address. You'll experience it all in the new Outlook.com preview user interface. You can also add an @Outlook.com email address to your account if you want.
If you don't have a Hotmail account and using Gmail, Yahoo, or another email service, you can create a brand new email account by going to following URL:
Create New Email Account at Outlook.com

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LibreOffice Productivity Suite another open Office

LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. There is a large base of satisfied LibreOffice users worldwide, and it is available in more than 30 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, ...).
You can download, install and distribute LibreOffice freely, with no fear of copyright infringement.

What's outstanding about LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is a feature-packed and mature desktop productivity package with some really great advantages:

• It's free – no worry about license costs or annual fees.
• No language barriers – it's available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually.
• LGPL public license – you can use it, customize it, hack it and copy it with free user support and developer support from our active worldwide community and our large and experienced developer team.
• LibreOffice is a free software community-driven project: development is open to new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a large and devoted user community; you, too, can get involved and influence its future development.

LibreOffice 3.4.5 Final (2012-01-16)

Before downloading, please check the system requirements for your computer. You might also like to look at the release notes and read about the new features in this version.

LibreOffice 3.3.4 Final (2011-08-17)

Before downloading, please check the system requirements for your computer. You might also like to look at the release notes and read about the new features in this version.

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Ultimate Collection of Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Outlook Email Client

Almost all of us have one or more email accounts and most of us check our Inbox regularly using either web browser or a dedicated email client.

Now-a-days almost all email service providers like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc provide so many advanced features in their web interface which makes the use of email desktop client negligible.

But personally we prefer using an email client over web interface. Most of the people who use an email client, prefer to use Microsoft Outlook which comes bundled with Microsoft Office suite but Microsoft Office is not free.

 

Today in this topic we are going to share some free email clients which can be used as an alternative to Microsoft Outlook:

1. Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail is our favorite email client and that's the only email client which we use. It provides all basic and advanced features which you need in an email client. Our favorite feature in this email client is the "2-line vertical view" which is not present in any other email client except Postbox (not free) and eM client.
Windows Live Mail also comes with calendar, RSS feed and newsgroup support.


Download Windows Live Mail

2. Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is one of the most popular email clients. Its developed by Mozilla and can be used in Windows, Mac and Linux. Thunderbird and Firefox both are based on same Gecko engine so you'll find lots of similarities in both applications.
Similar to Firefox, Thunderbird also supports extensions and themes which makes using Thunderbird a fun.
Download Thunderbird

3. Zimbra Desktop

Zimbra Desktop is another free email client which allows you to meld the online and offline worlds - storing and synching your email, calendar, contacts, files and documents in the cloud, yet having them locally accessible when on the road. Zimbra Desktop aggregates information across accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) and social networks (Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.) to help make communicating & sharing information easier than ever.
Download Zimbra Desktop

4. eM Client

eM Client is another free email client which can be installed in Windows XP, Vista and 7. It comes with full support for all email services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. It also comes with Calendar and RSS feed support. It can also be used as an instant messenger.
Download eM Client

5. Pegasus Mail

Pegasus Mail is a free email client suitable for use by single or multiple users on single computers or on local area networks. It has served millions of users since it was released in 1990. It is extremely feature-rich and powerful, yet remains small and fast.
Download Pegasus Mail

6. MultiMi

MultiMi is a new free application developed by Zbang in association with AVG (one of the most popular free anti-virus company). MultiMi makes sharing and socializing across your email accounts and social networks a breeze. Chat, swap photos, update your status, check your inbox and calendar… all in one safe place.
Download MultiMi

7. SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey is a web browser, email client, newsgroup reader, RSS feed reader, IRC chat client and much more. Its based on the same Mozilla source code which powers Firefox, Thunderbird and other Mozilla programs.
SeaMonkey can be considered as an all-in-one Internet application suite.
Download SeaMonkey

8. Spicebird

Spicebird is yet another free email client which provides integrated email, calendaring and instant messaging with intuitive user interface. It can be used in Windows and Linux and can connect to any standards based email and calendar servers that support IMAP, POP, Caldav protocols. Its also based on Mozilla Thunderbird source code.
Download Spicebird

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Download Full Version of Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition Free

 

DISCLAIMER: Microsoft Office 2010 Starter edition is only available for OEMs to put in new Windows PCs. We don't recommend to download and install it in any other computer system. If you like Office 2010, you should purchase it.

We all know that Microsoft Office is one of the most used software for Windows OS. But the sad thing is that its not free, you have to purchase it to be able to use it.
We have shared a few free alternatives to Microsoft Office which can be downloaded from following topic:
Ultimate Collection of Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office Suite
But did you know there is a special edition of Microsoft Office 2010 which is absolutely free? Surprised? Actually, its true. Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition is a stripped-down version of Office 2010 which comes with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel applications. This special edition is ad-supported. A small rectangle ad is shown at the bottom-right corner of the task pane in running program.
This Starter edition comes with some reduced functionality as well like you can't customize Quick Access Toolbar, etc.

 

Although this Starter edition is free from Microsoft but its not available for download from Microsoft. Starter edition is only available for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and comes pre-installed in new Windows PCs only.
Now the good news is that Microsoft stores the setup files of Microsoft Office Starter 2010 on their servers and you can directly download it using that direct download link.

Download Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition Free

PS: You can replace the locale string en-us in the above URL with your own locale string like fr-fr for French, de-de for German, es-es for Spanish and so on to download your localized version.
Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition can only be installed in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows XP or Windows 8 are not supported.
Starter edition doesn't require product key, so you will not need to enter any product key at the time of installation.
The best part of Starter edition is that it also allows you to create a portable version of it which can be carried on USB drive to use in other computer systems. Just launch "Office Starter To-Go Device Manager" from "All Programs -> Microsoft Office Starter" menu. It'll take approx. 400 MB of your USB drive.

 

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Ultimate Collection of Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office Suite

Almost all Windows users install Microsoft Office suite in their computer system. Microsoft Office is one of the essential software which are installed immediately after a fresh installation of Windows OS.
We use Microsoft Word to create documents, MS Excel to create spreadsheets, PowerPoint to create slides for meetings, etc. But the sad part is that Microsoft Office is not free and you need to spend lots of bucks to purchase it.
Many people download or purchase illegal pirated copies of Microsoft Office to use. Wouldn't it be great if you could get an absolutely free Office suite which works similar to Microsoft Office and can be used as an alternative to Office suite?

 

Today in this topic, we are going to share a few free Office suites which can be used as alternative to Microsoft Office:

1. OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is one of the most popular open-source office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.
Download Link

2. Kingsoft Office Suite

Kingsoft Office Suite is a complete Office suite which provides a UI similar to Microsoft Office 2003. Its very light on resources and runs very fast. It comes with Kingsoft Writer (Microsoft Word), Kingsoft Spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel), Kingsoft Presentation (Microsoft PowerPoint) and Built-in PDF converter. Its highly compatible with almost all Microsoft Office file formats.
Download Link

3. SoftMaker Office

SoftMaker Office is a full-featured office suite that comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation-graphics program. SoftMaker Office comes with TextMaker (Word processor), PlanMaker (Spreadsheet) and SoftMaker Presentations (Presentation graphics). You can download a fully functional version of the SoftMaker Office 2008 office suite using following link:
Download Link

4. IBM Lotus Symphony

IBM Lotus Symphony is a richly-featured set of productivity tools like Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. Lotus Symphony is based on the open source OpenOffice.org code and supports the Open Document Format (ODF) standard, which means you're not locked into proprietary file formats, software licensing agreements and upgrades.
Download Link

5. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is the power-packed free and open source Office suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.
Download Link

6. KOffice

KOffice is another free Office suite which comes with KWord which is an intuitive word processor application with desktop publishing features, KCells which is a fully-featured spreadsheet application, Showcase which is a powerful and easy to use presentation application, Kivio for diagram­ming and flowcharting and Artwork for drawing vector graphics.
Download Link
Please let us know your opinion about these free alternatives to Microsoft Office suite. Which one do you like the most and why? Feel free to share other free alternatives if you know...

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