Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit announced this week the roll out of new and enhanced functionality for its Macintosh Office for OS X suite of applications. In the new release, Microsoft has added Exchange client functions to Office's e-mail and PIM component, Entourage. The update, which is compatible with Exchange 2000 and aimed at OS X corporate users, has been rolled into Entourage's Account Setup Assistant allowing end users to synchronize contacts and calendar events with Exchange servers. This also allows Entourage users to send and receive Exchange e-mail, continuously synchronize with the server, employ shared calendaring to view another user's schedule and improve readability of e-mails sent from Outlook for Windows. In addition, Exchange's Global Address List database is available when addressing messages and an Exchange inbox and subfolders will appear in the folder list.

The new version, designated Office X Version 10.1.4, also incorporates improvements and bug fixes to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These include improved stability when copying nested tables in Word and when working with multiple custom views or page breaks in Excel. PowerPoint will now be more stable when using Windows presentations that include links to missing files. According to the product manager Excel now has the ability to import Excel 5.0 for Windows 95 files that contain modules with double-byte characters, and save them as Excel X documents.

Office v.X for Mac now comes in three editions — Standard, Professional, and Student and Teacher. The Professional Edition will include Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 which Microsoft acquired when it bought Connectix earlier this year. While the main Office applications are not being updated Microsoft dropped the prices of the new packages.

For more information on the new Office V.x packages...

back to top

Apple's latest and greatest, the G5 series, are set to ship this month. With the level of interest that we have seen, we anticipate that the demand will be high - this usually translates to a waiting period before all orders can be fulfilled. You need one as soon as possible? Then this is the time to put in your pre-order. This will reduce the amount of time you will have to wait to get yours (and, no, you can't have mine). So give us a call today at 301-459-3522 to get your order in. Remember - the early bird gets the G5.

back to top

Our Mac OS X classes have begun for the summer and we are currently enrolling students. As classes tend to fill up pretty quickly please call well in advance to reserve your spot. Classes are scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They are offered at our Washington and Baltimore locations and run from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Monday and Friday classes are tailored to designers and production professionals while the Wednesday classes are tailored to non-designers. For more information call us at 301-459-3522 or email us at training@macmedics.com

back to top

back to top

Though it is common knowledge that Macs are less susceptible to the viral woes of our PC cousins nevertheless these days we all need to maintain a constant vigil. With some of the stories that are making the headlines, an ounce of prevention is worth a couple of pounds of cure. Most of us conduct our business while connected to the Internet - a huge convenience but at the same time being connected (and for some of us that connection is "always-on") exposes us all to the more nefarious elements out there. There are two cases you should be aware of as you go about your daily business - the first is the case of a man in England who narrowly missed being sent to jail for a long time. It seems that while connected to the 'net a virus from a visited website (at least this is what is being speculated) found its way onto his machine and started to download material of a highly illegal nature onto his machine. Before long the authorities showed up on his doorstep and hauled him away. Luckily for him his defense team was astute enough to engage the services of a computer security expert who on performing a forensic examination of the computer in question found it riddled with a number of virii commonly referred to as 'Trojan Horses' (remember your Greek mythology?). This story has a happy ending (if you can call it that) in that he was absolved of any wrongdoing and acquitted - but not before his life was thrown into utter chaos and his reputation sullied.

The second case involved a couple of New Yorkers who frequented and used public computer terminals at a popular copy facility (one of which is probably near you.) It seems an enterprising young man installed 'keystroke loggers' (programs that record every keystroke entered on a computer for later retrieval) at a number of terminals, had the data forward to his terminal at home. Subsequently, he managed to obtain extremely sensitive information (Social security numbers, credit card information, passwords and the like) which he then used for personal gain and in some cases he sold that information to other like-minded individuals on the Internet. He was caught because one of his victims was vigilant - he noticed that his computer was being controlled from the outside - over the Internet - but not before his hard drive had been rifled through and his personal information was compromised.

Though standard virus protection software will catch most software nasties, 'spyware' such as the one described above, usually slip through as they appear to be remote administration utilities rather than virii. Contact us to discuss options for detecting, isolating and removing this potential danger. I am sure there are many more horror stories out there but I think these two examples are very illustrative of the dangers that lurk out there. So for now - let's be careful out there!

For more detail follow this link

Here's another example of what can happen...

back to top

Frequently while working with several applications open (as I frequently do) the desktop often gets lost in the shuffle. To get a clean view of the desktop normally requires two steps. If you are already working in an application you do this by switching to the Finder from the active application then choosing the 'Hide All' option from the application menu. A power user, on the other hand, would opt for a quick, one-step method for getting a clean view of the desktop. This is how you accomplish it - press the option key every time you switch applications. The option key works with multiple switching methods – choosing an application from the Applications menu, clicking in another application's window, or clicking in the Application Switcher palette of Mac OS 8.5 and later.

back to top

Washington, DC
Phone: 888-4-DC-MACS
e-mail: dcinfo@macmedics.com

Baltimore, MD
Phone: 866-MAC-MEDICS
e-mail: info@macmedics.com

Philadelphia, PA
Phone: 877-626-MEDICS
e-mail: philly@macmedics.com

Download issue as PDF Jump to another issue: -------September 2004August 2004July 2004June 2004May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 June 2002 April 2002 web macmedics

back to top