Microsoft-Nokia Deal Goes Beyond Office Apps

Microsoft and Nokia outlined an extensive alliance Wednesday under which a wide range of Microsoft productivity, communications and collaboration software will be adapted to run on Nokia's smartphones.

Microsoft and Nokia executives, in a conference call, stressed the broad nature of the relationship. Published reports prior to the announcement indicated that the deal largely consisted of plans to port Microsoft's Office applications to Nokia smartphones running the Symbian operating system."It's the first time Microsoft will develop rich mobile applications for another smartphone platform," said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division.

The two companies also will be marketing Nokia phones with Microsoft applications to their channel partners. "This is much more than just putting Microsoft software on Nokia smartphones," he said.There are more than 200 million Nokia smartphone customers worldwide, the companies said.

Elop and Kai Oistamo, Nokia executive vice president of devices, noted that both Microsoft and Nokia have a combination of enterprise business and consumer expertise. The alliance builds on work Nokia has already done with Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync to improve access to e-mail through Nokia's smartphones, according to the two companies.

Starting next year Nokia will begin shipping Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on its smartphones, followed by other Office applications and related software and services. That will give Nokia smartphone owners the ability to view, create, edit and share Office documents using Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

The two companies also plan to make it possible for Nokia smartphone users to access intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft's SharePoint Server, and even perform IT management tasks using Microsoft System Center.

Nokia's Symbian operating system for smartphones competes with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. "Microsoft and Nokia compete in some areas and will continue to do so," Elop said, noting that the next release of that software, Windows Mobile 6.5, is about to hit the market in mobile devices from multiple manufacturers.

Symbian was originally developed by Symbian Ltd., which Nokia acquired in December.

The deal makes sense for Microsoft because the company is trying to make its Office suite as ubiquitous as possible in the face of increasing competition from open-source alternatives such as OpenOffice and browser-based applications, especially Google Apps.

Both Windows Mobile and Symbian are facing stiff competition from devices running other mobile operating systems including the Apple iPhone, RIM BlackBerry and devices running Google Android.

Habu™ Laser Gaming Mouse

Customizable Buttons

Two removable side button panels give you options for different hand sizes or preferences, and all seven buttons are programmable - store up to five profiles in mouse memory.

High Speed Sensitivity Switching

Adjust mouse sensitivity on the fly - up to 2000 DPI - for controlled sensitivity. The default is 800 DPI but is adjustable from 400, 800, 1600 to 2000 DPI with the toggle buttons.

High-speed motion detection

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Mouse Glide

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Wired Mouse

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3 Year Warranty

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Microsoft releases a keyboard and a mouse for windows 7

Microsoft has released their latest keyboard and mouse set—the Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000. Just to begin with, the new set is wireless, with both the keyboard and mouse using a shared USB 2.4GHz transceiver. They keyboard itself, aside from being Windows 7 ready, has a Comfort Curve layout with a soft-touch palm rest and low-profile quiet touch keys.

The mouse offers an ambidextrous friendly shape along with rubber side grips and uses Microsoft BlueTrack technology for tracking. Now, getting back to the Windows 7 ready features, the keyboard has a feature called Taskbar Favorites that will give users an easy way to access and open their applications. Other features specific for Windows 7 include Device Stage which gives the user easy access to common tasks as well as Windows Flip which will allow users to easily see a thumbnail preview of all open windows by pressing a single button.

The Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000 will retail for $80 when it hits stores later this month. However, if for some reason you feel the need to rush out and purchase this now, it is currently available for pre-order though Amazon.

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs

Microsoft Windows Vista

• Click Start, and then click All Programs.
• Click Accessories, and then click Run.
• Type regedit, and then click OK. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.
• In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
• In the right pane, click UpperFilters. Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 8.
• On the Edit menu, click Delete.
• When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
• In the right pane, click LowerFilters.
• On the Edit menu, click Delete.
• When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
• Exit Registry Editor.
• Restart the computer.

ways to power up Internet Explorer 8

When Microsoft was working on Internet Explorer 8, one of the objectives was to make real-world webbrowsing easier, so the team added features such as one-click access to Windows Live services and Web Slices to keep on top of your favourite sites. But it's capable of even more. There's a huge range of accelerators, add-ons and toolbars that make Internet Explorer 8 more useful.

1. Research and shop for products
The Research and Shop For Products accelerator enables you to highlight a product name and look it up on the shopping engine Ciao!, which features unbiased user reviews and a constantly updated list of the best online prices.

2. Get Facebook on your toolbar
You can use Web Slices to stay up to date with your Facebook friends' status updates, but the OneRiot toolbar takes things a step further by adding notification buttons below the Address Bar. These enable you to visit the various bits of Facebook (Home, Profile, Friends and so on) but more usefully they also let you see when somebody's sent you a friend request, whether you've any new messages in your inbox or whether anybody's tagged you in a photo. A version for MySpace is also available.

3. Get connected
If like us you're on loads of different social networks, Yoono can save you a great deal of time and effort. In much the same way that multi-chat software enables you to connect to different instant messaging services simultaneously, Yoono can connect you to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and FriendFeed, as well as AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, MSN Messenger and Yahoo. You can also share content with other Yoono users, for example by tagging web pages with "like" or "hate".

4. Define anything
If you've ever encountered an acronym and wondered what on Earth it meant, the Define Acronym accelerator will make your online life much more comprehensible. Simply highlight the acronym, select the accelerator and see definitions from the fields of IT, government, science, business and even slang.

5. Search visually
If you're a shopping addict on a tight budget, ASOS.com's search plugin will be right up your street. Simply use the arrow in the Search box to select ASOS, type in the kind of item you're looking for, and you'll see stacks of results including pictures and prices. It's a simple and very useful tool, so expect lots of other retailers to offer similar search tools for their own shops.

WINDOWS GENERAL SHORTCUT KEYS

shortcut keys are help to work more faster. some of the shortcut keys are

• Windows Logo (Display or hide the Start menu)
• Windows Logo+BREAK (Display the System Properties dialog box)
• Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
• Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
• Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
• Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
• Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
• CTRL+Windows Logo+F (Search for computers)
• Windows Logo+F1 (Display Windows Help)
• Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
• Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
• Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)
• CTRL+C (Copy)
• CTRL+X (Cut)
• CTRL+V (Paste)
• CTRL+Z (Undo)
• DELETE (Delete)
• SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin)
• CTRL while dragging an item (Copy the selected item)
• CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
• F2 key (Rename the selected item)
• CTRL+RIGHT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word)
• CTRL+LEFT ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word)
• CTRL+DOWN ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph)
• CTRL+UP ARROW (Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph)
• CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
• SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text in a document)
• CTRL+A (Select all)
• F3 key (Search for a file or a folder)
• ALT+ENTER (View the properties for the selected item)
• ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
• ALT+ENTER (Display the properties of the selected object)
• ALT+SPACEBAR (Open the shortcut menu for the active window)
• CTRL+F4 (Close the active document in programs that enable you to have multiple documents open simultaneously)
• ALT+TAB (Switch between the open items)
• ALT+ESC (Cycle through items in the order that they had been opened)
• F6 key (Cycle through the screen elements in a window or on the desktop)
• F4 key (Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
• SHIFT+F10 (Display the shortcut menu for the selected item)
• ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the System menu for the active window)
• CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
• ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name (Display the corresponding menu)Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu (Perform the corresponding command)
• F10 key (Activate the menu bar in the active program)
• F5 key (Update the active window)BACKSPACE (View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer)
• ESC (Cancel the current task)
• SHIFT when you insert a CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive (Prevent the CD-ROM from automatically playing)

Customize or Disable Windows 7’s Action Center

Windows 7's Action Center does a great job of compressing all of Windows’ update/alert/whatever notifications into one icon, but it takes some tweaking to make it show what you want, or disable it entirely.At the How-To Geek’s home away from Lifehacker, his partner in serious Windows customization, Mysticgeek, details the process of defining exactly which kind of system message get displayed through the Action Center’s little white flag icon. It’s all done through the Control Panel and right-click options, no registry hacking required, but the process might not be apparent to Windows 7 newcomers. And for those who don’t want their system to bother them at all, there’s a simple fix for disabling the Action Center for real.

Windows 7

Microsoft has completed the development of Windows 7 and the software code is ready to be delivered to PC makers. Brandon LeBlanc,Windows Communication Manager for Microsoft, mentioned dates for Windows 7 RTM availability for the relevant parties at the Windows Team Blog. The general public availability of Windows 7 is October 22.Codenamed Blackbomb and vienna,being developed and marketed by Microsoft. This operating system will succeed Windows Vista and is supposed to be much-much better crafted that the windows vista. It is being said all those things that were missed by Vista are being included in this operating system, so Windows 7 is more feature enriched than Windows Vista. So certainly Windows 7 is going to have an advantage over Windows Vista in all aspects.