Tag Archive: Starter

Microsoft offers PC makers Office Starter for $2, but with Bing bar

Posted May.11, 2010 under Microsoft

Microsoft is planning to offer PC manufacturers $2 per copy of Microsoft Office Starter 2010, if they pre-install the Bing bar and Windows Live Essentials, according to ZDnet.

PC makers can also opt to not install the Bing bar and Windows Live Essentials, but will pay $5 per copy of Microsoft Office Starter 2010.  A significant price difference when PC makers are purchasing licenses in very large quantities.

Microsoft strategy is to get their Bing search engine and other Windows tools, found in Windows Live Essentials like Movie Maker, Live messenger, Mail, Writer, etc onto PCs, increasing their marketshare for their products.  The installation will also set the default search engine on the users browser to Bing, and MSN as their homepage.

Note the acryonom use, OPC is OEM Partner Central, H&S is Home and Student, H&B is Home and Business, Pro is Professional. OPK is OEM Preinstallation Kit, the Office single image that OEM manufactures use to pre-load Office 2010 onto new PCs.

Microsoft will also be releasing Microsoft Office 2010 single-license key cards, which won’t actually contain any data on them, other than a serial key.  These key cards will be available in major retail stores, which will active Office 2010 on customers PCs.  Microsoft Office Starter 2010 comes with an ad-based version of Word and Excel, with limited functionality.  Users can unlock their copy of Office at any time.

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Windows 7 Starter Edition allows wireless connection sharing

Posted Dec.07, 2009 under Windows 7

Windows 7 Starter Edition is known for being a cheap and rather limited version of Microsoft’s operating system. It was believed that, amongst the features disabled, wireless connection sharing was cut, also. However, it’s now been discovered that the feature is quite simply hidden, and not completely disabled.

The hidden feature was discovered by Rafael Rivera, on his Within Windows blog, as he was digging into some open source software bundled with netbooks, from an unnamed OEM. He explained, “This week, I was disassembling software that a major, to-remain-nameless OEM, put out for their netbook customers. I was ready to call them out on code that deliberately bypassed a licensed feature check in Windows, enabling ad-hoc wireless networking… but when I booted up an Eee PC, ad-hoc wireless networking worked out of the box.”

Rivera continued to state that apparently you’re still licensed to use the feature, but not licensed to use the shortcut to it. In order to get an ad-hoc network running on your Windows 7 Starter machine, you’ll have to go through the tedious process of typing ‘adhoc’ into the Start Menu search bar.

It’s believed that this is a mistake, and now that the news is out in the open, a fix will arrive shortly to help patch up the irregularity.

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Microsoft Office Starter 2010 beta invites sent out

Posted Nov.12, 2009 under Microsoft, Windows

Microsoft has begun sending invites to the Office Starter 2010 beta program today according to the I Think Different blog.

The invites are the latest clear indication that Microsoft plans to release an Office 2010 public beta shortly. Last week Microsoft sent out an email update to Click-To-Run Technical Preview participants.

According to the email:

“All you need to do is use Office Starter 2010 Beta at home over the next few months, and let us know what you think. Office Starter 2010 includes Microsoft Word Starter 2010 and Microsoft Excel Starter 2010, which are great for basic tasks like writing letters, editing your resume, or creating a family budget.”

Microsoft confirmed the existence of Office Starter 2010 last month in a company blog posting. Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs; its goal is to provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box. Office Starter 2010 will include Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010, with the basic functionality for creating, viewing and editing documents, essentially replacing Microsoft Works, with an opportunity to upgrade to a fully comprehensive version of the Office suite.

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