Choto Cheeta Online » Computer

How to open Microsoft (MS) Office 2007 / 2010 (Word / Excel / Power Point) files in Office 2003 / XP / 2000

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:31:10 +0000

For a non technical user, saving files is like “File -> Save” and frankly that’s the way it should be.

Since MS office was launched, there was not much of a format change in the way how office used to save data, resulting a default file format compatibility between all versions of Office (98 / 2000 / XP / 2003).

The default extension for saving a file in MS office (98 / 2k / XP / 2k3) is like,

.doc for office word
.xls for office excel
.ppt for office power point

However, since Office 2007 (and for Office 2010 also) is introduced, a new file format has followed it.

.docx for office word (2007 / 2010)
.xlsx for office excel (2007 / 2010)
.pptx for office power point (2007 / 2010)

In Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010, the default save format is the new, above mentioned file extensions.

Off late, lot of business and home users are facing a common problem. Their contact and business associate may be using a PC running and new version of MS Office (2007 or 2010) where as they are still with the older generation.

So how do you open a file (.docx / .xlsx / .pptx) saved in Microsoft Office (Word / Excel / Power Point) 2010 or 2007 in older version of MS Office (2000 / XP / 2003) ?

To solve this incompatibility issue, Microsoft is offering a free compatibility pack for Microsoft Office 2000, XP and 2003.

One may download the Office 2010 / 2007 compatibility pack for free and install in a PC running any of these following version of Microsoft Office.

Microsoft Office 2000
Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Office 2003

Download the Compatibility Pack

It is also advisable that one should install the latest updates for the office suite they have.

Download the Free trial of Microsoft (MS) Office 2010

Choto Cheeta — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:43:39 +0000

Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is available for Free trail download.

Download Free Trail

Just put in your email address to obtain the product key and start the download (586 MB). It includes Microsoft Office Word / Excel / Power Point / Outlook / Access / OneNote 2010.

Steve Jobs addressing iPhone 4 networking issue…

Choto Cheeta — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:01:56 +0000

Its been blown way out of proportion..

We are not perfect and every other smart phone has similar issue with their Network reception

Apple cares for every single customer, and we wont rest till every single one of them is happy.

Free bumper / case for all

Full (incl TAX) refund for those who bought it already

30 Day no question asked money back for any iPhone 4

This was Steve Jobs, today at Apple’s press conference, trying to address the issue in a lighter way. Earlier Apple went on to post some videos, explaining, other brand’s smart phones to have similar reception issue, if they were held in a certain way.

Matter of fact, he also explains the issue was present in earlier iPhone’s too, but statistically speaking, over 80% users walked out with a bumper along with iPhone 3G or 3GS compare to 20% with iPhone 4. Steve Jobs also claimed that, even with present situation, the call drop rate of iPhone 4 is less than 1% (Network carrier stats) and 0.05% of iPhone users actually registered a complain with Apple help line about any network reception related issue.

Mean while Apple showing off network reception issue of phone’s belonging to other brands didn’t go well with those respective companies as Nokia and RIM (makers of Black berry) came out with some strong reaction.

Nokia was quick to point that how many man hours they have put in to study real time human usage details and to design their products based on the result of those studies.

Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Where as RIM thinks that Apple is trying to defame RIM with their claims and by which Apple attempts to shift the focus from Apple’s difficult time..

Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.

ConsumerReports.org nails iPhone 4..

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:22:55 +0000

One more blow for the Apple’s leading product, the iPhone 4. As one of the top review website, the ConsumerReports.org nails iPhone 4 with its signal reception issue.

ConsumerReports.org slams Apple for under mining the issue. Their tests indicate towards the flaw as being a hardware issue contradicting Apple’s claim of a software issue.

It also shows a simple duct tape can solve the reception issue compare to Apple’s USD 30 rubber band.

Mean while Mashable points towards few points on “What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleeding“.

Acknowledge That the Antenna Problem Is Real

Go into the Technical Details

Roll Out the Software Update

Make the Bumpers Free

No Matter What, Don’t Issue an iPhone 4 Recall

Orkut phishing attack – Free mobile recharge scam..

Choto Cheeta — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 06:46:24 +0000

It has been a common problem for orkut users to find their account getting hacked. Most of us blame Google (orkut) for the reason, thinking that they have lower level of security. However the truth is, passwords are never leaked from Google’s end, its us, the user caused actions leads to a password leakage.

One of those reasons are like falling victims of topic like this, poping up in communities.

Content of this type of topic is very clear, they lure you to visit a given URL from the same tab or browser window it self. The new URL asks you to copy paste a javaScript, which puts you back to orkut.

As soon as the script is executed, it steals the information present in browser cache and saved data along with the session details leading towards a compromised orkut account. Later, this same orkut account would be used to spam the communities where he / she is active in.

How to save your orkut account from hackers ?

One simple answer.. Dont lose your password..

How not to lose your password ?

Using proper and updated anti-virus software in your PC
Keep your browser up-to-date. (Latest Being IE8 / FF 3.x / Opera 10)
Try not to use unsecured public computer to log-in to your orkut account
If you must use a public PC, try to make sure you are changing your password periodically.
Avoid those Free Re-Charge type topics..

iPhone 4 signal (Network) issue…

Choto Cheeta — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:04:03 +0000

All the technology blogs are on fire with the news of new iPhone 4 and its network related issue. Its reported that you face network related issue with a certain way of holding. Infact apple has went on to issue a public letter on their website explain about technical aspect of the issue.

CNN tested this issue first hand and posted a nice simple video for users to understand the matter properly.

Couple of up-coming technology to look forward / Project Natal and AMD Fusion

Choto Cheeta — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:10:39 +0000

Microsoft getting a step closer to bridge the gap between virtual world and physical world. The Project Natal is going to change the way we use remote controls. Microsoft has set October dead line for the public release of the much waited project natal.

What is project Natal ?

Its a remote control unit where the user doesn’t have to hold any controller rather his/her/their motions are tracked via a motion scening unit to accept command based on the physical movement of the user.

The one of the very first implementations of the technology is going to be on the gaming platform via Microsoft XBOX 360.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM

Learn more at the official website of natal -> http://www.xbox.com/en-us/live/projectnatal/

AMD Fusion -- The future is here

Back in 2004 / 2005 range, AMD was booming and their solutions were out performing Intel by miles.
In 2005 AMD began to work in process to acquire the GPU giant ATI, which they were able to settle by 2006.

While Intel answered AMD’s advancement with their Core2 range products, AMD in 2006, right after purchase of ATI, gave us a dream called Fusion. It took AMD 5 years, but the dream is now about to be reality.

What is AMD Fusion ?

In basic, its an attempt to put CPU and GPU in same die.

There are certain work which CPU does good like serial processing where as certain tasks like parallel processing is done best by GPU so putting both the CPU and GPU on same die would mean a cheaper product with lot more processing power for multitasking.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmohnOtBY1g

AMD is expected to release the first wave of their Fusion based products by the end of this year.

Learn more -> http://fusion.amd.com/

Playing with the mouse – How much has it traveled or how many clicks have you done ?

Choto Cheeta — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:36:50 +0000

Ever wondered how many kilo meter does your mouse travel in each month inside your tiny computer screen or like how many times in total you have clicked it ? Most people are surprised to see that some time, their mouse pointer travels more than they do in a month’s time span.

Win-o-Meter (Freeware)

This small utility measures your computer activity.

It counts the keyboard / mouse presses and computes trajectory that you have arrived by your mouse.

You can easily set it up to be automatically loaded on startup if you would like to have captured all your activity.

Every day is saved into history, so you can make statistics of your activity (averaging..).

You can also export your whole history to a CSV file (comma separated values) which may be used later in e.g MS Excel. You can do it using the right click menu or directly from the command line (e.g. winometer.exe /exporthistory history.csv)

Download -> http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=w

OdoPlus (Freeware)

OdoPlus tracks the distance your mouse pointer travels on the screen. It also keeps record of how often you clicked each mouse button and in which part of the desktop.

Tracks overall and intermediate distance
Click counts for left, right, center buttons
Now supports wheel mice!
Graphical click distribution view
Only needs about 500K of your RAM
It’s Freeware

Download -> http://www.fridgesoft.de/odoplus.php

Microsoft it self doesn’t care about IE6 ?

Choto Cheeta — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:27:25 +0000

Browser compatibility is a big issue for them who are in web development related tread. Now days cross platform compatibility test and tweak takes more time than actual development process.

There are number of browsers in the market and those who work with CSS and style coding know how hard it becomes to make a website compatible with every browser.

Although Microsoft has stopped supporting IE6, but still a large number of web users, almost 20% to be exact, is still using IE6 hence for a web publisher, IE6 compatibility does matter a lot. Infact, Microsoft it self has bundled IE6 as in terms of Windows XP mode in its latest OS Windows 7, emphasizing on the ability to test web applications directly from present OS.

Recently, when I was trying to implement a new theme, I faced lot of issue while making it compatible with IE6. While I was spending few sleepless nights around it, I wanted to see how Microsoft’s own websites look in IE6. I didn’t had to look much, as links mentioned in Microsoft home page turned out to be IE6 incompatible.

Take a look at Microsoft Office 2010 Beta page in IE6. Which seems to be broken up while opened under IE6 browser.

There should be an universal layout standard to make the code work in all browser and web platform. And as for Microsoft, it seems, they them self aren’t interested in welcoming 20% of Internet users.

Google Chrome 5 is now in public beta

Choto Cheeta — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:36:33 +0000

Google Chrome team have released their latest browser to the public beta. You may get / download Google Chrome 5 beta via below mentioned beta channels,

Windows: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=betachannel
Mac: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac
Linux: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux

They have also released a video on how they / Google chrome team does speed testing of their product. Take a look as how your browser works faster than bullet.