Microsoft Releases Office for iPad

News flash! Microsoft released Office for iPad this week, which includes PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. It’s free to view documents, but if you want to create or edit, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription.

From what we’ve seen so far, PowerPoint maintains formatting and animations across the board — great news for those of you who want to present on-the-go with your iOS device. We’re still giving the app a thorough review and will be posting more details shortly, so check back soon!

Considering a Tablet?

I came across this commercial the other day, and I thought you all might enjoy it.

We recently switched to using the Microsoft Surface Pro in our office, and we are really impressed. It’s a great hybrid of a computer and a tablet. Tablets running iOS or Android seem more like toys if you try to get them to handle anything more than watching movies, surfing the Web, checking email, or playing games. The Surface Pro is powerful and easily able to handle robust applications, making it a good choice for business productivity.

Here are three of the coolest features:

1. Size. It’s compact and portable. We really don’t miss carrying around a heavy, cumbersome laptop.
2. USB port. Most other tablets don’t have a USB port – with the iPad, a special adapter is needed to connect most peripherals. The Surface Pro’s onboard USB port means we can plug in a flash drive, a wireless mouse, or even a USB hub with multiple connections.
3. Runs all applications. Since it runs Windows 8, we can use the full version of the Office suite in addition to apps built for tablets.

PowerPoint is still the tool of choice for designing presentations, and tablets running Windows 8 are the only ones that can handle creating, editing, and displaying presentations with the same power as a regular computer. That means we can continue to develop amazing presentations while taking advantage of the portability of a tablet and the richness of a PC.

Have you considered switching to a tablet?