Author Archive
March 8th, 2010 | 
Author: As we inch closer to the “First Half of 2010” release date Microsoft had previously announced for Office 2010, more and more details are being announced. Last week, Microsoft announced a key date for the Worldwide Launch.
For pretty much any new product release I’ve seen from Microsoft, they tend to announce guarantees so if you buy the current version now, you will get the newer version when it’s released. This guarantee is usually announced at or around the same time Microsoft releases the ship date for the product. Sure enough, the Technology Guarantee and launch dates are posted.
In April 2010, the products will be released to manufacturing (or as Microsoft calls it RTM’ed). Microsoft Office 2010 will hold the Worldwide Business Launch on May 12. It does not say exactly when you can download the software, but I would assume it would be a few days before/after May 12. The final products will be released to consumers sometime in June 2010.
To get more details on the Technology Guarantee and release dates, visit the Office 2010 Engineering blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2010/03/04/get-office-today-or-tomorrow.aspx
-Bill
At the top of the new year, it is very common for most of us to step back and think about what we will do different the next twelve months. Given the economy we live in right now, it is a great time to learn or fine-tune our skills. My company (Pcubed) and Versatile Training have teamed with MPUG – the leading MS Project User Group – to provide free training on Microsoft Project. This is a great opportunity to pick up a new skill using the most popular project management software in the world, well, perhaps next to Excel 
.
We are offering a four-part series on using Microsoft Project, which will start with a beginners course and work its way up to more advanced topics. These free courses are web-based, 90-minute courses and will be presented in the form of a presentation, online demonstrations and live Q&A. Each course will offer 1.5 PDU’s (Professional Development Units) with a total of 6 PDU’s if you take all of them. We are looking at offering more in the near future and are excited to see what the turnout looks like for these upcoming courses.
If you are interested in signing up, you can learn more here:
http://www.mpug.com/Pages/MPUGCertificate2007.aspx
And sign up for the events here:
http://www.mpug.com/Pages/Home.aspx
The courses are titled “Microsoft Project 2007 Essentials”. Here are the direct links to sign up:
Session 1 (1/20/2010): Training presented by myself and includes Q&A with special guest Sam Huffman
Session 2 (1/27/2010): Training presented by Sam Huffman and Q&A between Sam and myself
Session 3 (2/3/2010): Training presented by Sam Huffman and Q&A between Sam and myself
Session 4 (2/10/2010): Training presented by myself and includes Q&A with special guest Jack Dahlgren (a fellow Project MVP)
The sessions will all be held at 10:30AM Eastern/7:30AM Pacific. We understand these time zones are not ideal for some and we will attempt another live re-broadcast at 6:00PM PST for those of you in the Asia/Pacific regions. If there are difficulties in any of the presenters making the second event, there will still be a live Q&A with Myself, Sam or Jack.
Please sign up for these free events and I will make sure they are re-posted as the sessions get closer!
-Bill
In this gripping epic, we follow a heroic Project Manager in dire need of a plan to communicate progress. When The Boss informs our intrepid PM that more details and a Executive overview are required, a new approach needs to be taken. The PM quickly puts together the plan in Project 2010 and outputs an Executive report. Well that pretty much gives away the plot and the whole story line but I still suggest you watch it because there’s fun music. Enjoy! -Bill
When Microsoft released Office 2007, a number of applications no longer used drop-down menus. Instead, they used a new interface called the Ribbon. With Office 2010, Microsoft made an effort to make sure all their applications used this new interface, which has been renamed to the “Fluent UI”.
The link below is a short 10-minute introduction of the new Fluent UI in Project 2010. Since the product is still in beta, please be aware that the final product may be different. Enjoy!
Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL00SINtO-M
NOTE: Apologies up-front as I decided to start using YouTube as a mechanism to share my free videos. The lackluster production quality appears to be due to YouTube reducing the quality when uploaded to save space. I’ll work on improving them in the future. If you have any tips for me, please do hit me up!
While I was testing the pre-beta versions of Microsoft Project, the nice team at Microsoft created virtualized test environments to easily do testing and not worry about installing things and pre-beta software breaking your computer. When the software was in good enough shape, our IT Department made the software available for use in a similar way.
Now that Office 2010 Beta is out, I want to use the products regularly as part of my desktop to start adopting the technology. At the same time, I cannot afford the downtime associated with beta software potentially impacting my work schedule by crashing, a feature not working or other programs not being compatible with it. Also, I have a decent computer – a DELL D630 to be exact – but to run a secondary virtual machine on top of my computer is way too cumbersome and will slow things down tremendously.
What I really want is a dual-boot environment so I can run the beta software locally and if need be, reboot into my standard desktop. Moreover, I do not want to worry about my C: Drive being filled up with software that needs to be cleaned up later. Until recently, the thought of meeting these requirements was pipe dream.
Enter Boot from VHD… If you are running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, you can now create a virtual machine file (one file!) and boot from it. This means you can run Windows 7, reboot your computer and run a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine as if it was installed on the computer as a completely new copy of the operating system (you can also Run WS2008R2 and boot to a Windows 7 VM).
If you have a 64-bit computer with 4-8GB RAM and want to use the Office 2010 Beta as your desktop but still want your regular desktop as a backup, I highly recommend the VHD boot option. It will basically work like you just booted an operating system from your C: Drive and will still allow you to access all the physical drives, USB devices, networking hardware, etc on the computer.
To learn how to set up your computer to boot from a VHD, follow this really nice link to “Keith Comb’s Blahg” — not sure why the spelling but guessing he is from Bahston
-Bill
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