Samsung Galaxy Note Pro review: Android's bid to replace Windows in the office

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro (Model SM-P900) $750.00 Spending $750 for an Android tablet seems exorbitant. But the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro offers a larger screen, excellent battery life, and access to the Android and Samsung app stores.

When one considers the wealth of inexpensive Android tablets available, the idea of paying $750 for a 12-inch Android tablet seems inconceivable. But if now isn’t the time for consumers to start thinking of large Android tablets as legitimate Windows laptop replacements, that day isn’t far off.

That’s right: a Windows laptop replacement. That’s the only way to consider the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro, a massive tablet that, like the Microsoft Surface, works best on a desk. Samsung’s 12.2-inch Galaxy Note Pro (7.95 mm thick, 1.65 pounds) is virtually identical to the Galaxy Tab Pro, save for the addition of an S-Pen stylus.

This is not a competitor to smaller tablets like the Nexus 7. Indeed, if last year’s Galaxy Note 3 smartphone doubles as a reporter’s notebook, then the new Galaxy Note Pro is something akin to an electronic legal pad. And with a surprisingly complete selection of productivity apps in both Google Play and Samsung’s own app store, this massive Android tablet can help you get real work done.

The Galaxy Note Pro lacks an integrated keyboard, and the cover, which does double duty as a stand, is a little flimsy.

The Note Pro is available for either $750 for a 32GB model, or $850 for 64GB of onboard storage. So far, Samsung has yet to announce the price for a model with an integrated LTE WLAN chip. According to Samsung, the Wi-Fi version of the Note Pro houses a 1.9GHz quad-core ARM Cortex A15 chip, powering Android 4.4 (KitKat). Our performance tests produced a Sunspider score of 0.97 seconds (which hits the upper echelons of the tablet market), and a PeaceKeeper score of 815. For the sake of comparison, the iPad 3 managed 516 in PeaceKeeper, and the Dell XPS 10 hit 324 (higher scores are better).

It’s not much of a stretch to consider the Note Pro as Samsung’s response to Microsoft’s Surface 2 Pro, which starts at $899 for 64GB of onboard storage. Both the Note Pro and the Surface Pro 2 ship with foldable keyboard covers; the Note Pro’s can be configured so that it wakes up and unlocks the tablet when flipped back. But while the Note Pro’s cover actually doubles as a stand, it’s not immediately obvious that it does so.

The Note Pro also lacks an integrated keyboard, such as the Surface’s Type and Touch Covers. In fact, to use it as a laptop replacement, you’ll need to buy a Bluetooth keyboard and possibly a mouse. That completely eliminates its use as a “lap top” computer.  

Physically, the Note Pro looks like a Note 3, flipped on its edge. The tablet is designed to be held in landscape mode, with the physical home button mounted between the back and applications buttons. Near the top sits the 2-megapixel front-facing camera, with an 8-megapixel camera at the back. (Unfortunately, the cover lacks a rear camera cutout, so when thumbing the camera button, you’ll have to awkwardly hold up the cover.) Volume and power switches sit on the top, while an all-important microSD card slot sits on the side. 

Like the Note 3, the Note Pro uses the new USB 3.0 connector, collecting juice through a high-output charging plug. Charging the Note Pro takes about three to four hours, but battery life is excellent: You’ll see two, possibly even three days or so of casual use from its integrated 9,500 mAh battery, and our looping video test ran down the battery in 8 hours, 37 minutes. That’s on par with the Dell XPS 10 tablet.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use the Note Pro on long flights. The tablet, its stand and a Bluetooth keyboard will take up too much room on a seat-back tray. But you can still use the tablet for mid-flight video playback in your hands. The 12.2-inch display boasts a 2560x1600 resolution and 247 ppi pixel density, and you can even hook up an external monitor care of an optional external HDMI dongle for $39.99.

One of the problems with Samsung’s latest devices, beginning with the Galaxy S4 smartphone, is their overwhelming number of largely extraneous features, such as the “smart pause” feature that supposedly pauses video playback when you look away. You’ll see a number of these still hidden deep within the Note Pro’s settings menus—but thankfully turned off.

Mark Hachman

Feel free to mix and match entertainment and work apps—the Note Pro can handle both.

The default home screen contains a giant reminder widget for S Note, so that you don’t forget the S Pen. Equally useless New York Times and Twitter widgets can be tossed out. And, fortunately, a collection of news and entertainment apps, such as WatchON and a version of Samsung’s Flipboard-like My Magazine app, are confined on the peripheral screens. 

Mark Hachman

You can use the pen to draw your own windows, as I did, using the S Pen.

As with the Note phones, pulling out the S Pen triggers several options, including an Action Memo; the ability to save content into a Scrapbook; and my favorite, the Pen Window. The Pen Window lets you run a second app inside a window, providing Android with a desktop-like multitasking environment. You simply draw a box, and when it’s done, select the app you want to fill the space.

Samsung, however, now has a better option: Multi Window mode, which Samsung has made available on only the largest Galaxy Tab and Note tablets. To trigger Multi Window mode, you swipe in from the right-hand side, via a list of supported apps. (YouTube is supported, for example, but Angry Birds is not. And, inexplicably, Chrome is not supported by Pen Window mode, but it is under the Multi Window view.)  Dragging one app to the main screen fills it. Dragging a second  “snaps” the screen into two halves—and so on, up to a total of four screens. On a smaller tablet, this is a gimmick, but on a larger tablet like the Note Pro, it’s surprisingly useful.

Mark Hachman Mark Hachman

Multi Window can show four apps at once, or you can snap two. This is amazingly useful.

More impressive are the numerous productivity apps that are either available via the Note Pro itself or via Samsung’s own app store. Apps such as Cisco’s WebEx, a Samsung Remote PC app (an alternative to Microsoft’s own Android app, Microsoft Remote Desktop), and the Hancom Viewer are all included. On Google Play, Hancom’s Hanword, a word processor, cost over $17 at press time, but on the Note Pro, it’s free, as are similar apps to view and edit PowerPoint and Excel documents. 

The Hancom apps ship in both “viewer” and editable versions, and the Note Pro tends to open files in the “viewer” version first without an option to choose the editing app, which is annoying. Google’s own Quickoffice is also installed. Aside from some possible font compatibility issues, the Hancom apps seemed to work surprisingly well.

Keep in mind one thing: With the Note Pro, these productivity apps are free. If you purchase a Surface Pro 2, you’ll also need to pay for a subscription to Office 365 or a standalone copy of Office 2013. That pushes the long-term cost up.

Hancom’s app suite makes the Note Pro a viable productivity tablet.

Samsung inexplicably omitted the VPN app that it included on the Note 3, meaning that you’ll need to search out an Android version, such as Cisco’s Easy Connect, on the Play Store. In all, though, I found Android versions of virtually every productivity app I wanted from either the Samsung or Google Play, giving me a PC-like experience on an Android tablet.

This is the bottom line. Windows PCs and Macs represent the power-user extremes of the computing experience, owning everything from Adobe Photoshop to the latest first-person shooters. But tablets are for centrist users: Android tablets and iPads dominate casual gaming, and more and more light-productivity apps are being written for those platforms.

The sum of its parts—a large screen, excellent fantastic battery life, multi-app windows, and equivalent PC software—not only make the Note Pro a viable choice for a tablet enthusiast, but a jumping-off point for an adventuresome road warrior to leave the Windows world entirely. If only Samsung could knock another $150 or so off the price.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

How to Disable the Office 2013 Typing Animation

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Green gadgets keep your home office humming

Each year, the list of "green" gadgets gets longer, from solar-powered coasters or networked light bulbs. But some are a lot more useful than others. If you're looking for more than a novelty item, we've spotted ten devices that can save your company money by improving its energy efficiency. Some of them offer nifty, time-saving automation features and mobile apps too. Whether you're working from home or in a high-rise headquarters, these tools can put some energy dollars back in your pocket.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Foxit PhantomPDF 6 shines in the paperless office

Foxit Software's PhantomPDF (in both Standard and Business editions) make a good choice for basic office needs, but it suffers from an identity crisis once you get to the high-end features. Foxit's download page makes the bold claim that it is "Better than Adobe Reader and Acrobat," but a more accurate statement would be that it might be better, in very specific circumstances that may or may not apply to you.

Many years (and jobs) ago, I was a Tier 2 technician supporting Adobe Acrobat. I am an Adobe Certified Expert in Acrobat 6.0 Professional. What I want you to take away from this is that I am a veteran in dealing with both Acrobat and PDF files, and that I understand that the #1 question people want answered is, "Will this $130 software do what I would normally have to spend $299 or $449 to do with Acrobat?" The answer depends entirely on what you would use Acrobat for. I've formed my opinion comparing Foxit PhantomPDF against Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.5.

The claim is hiding in the title bar, but it's there.

At a glance, Foxit PhantomPDF more or less has feature parity with older versions of Acrobat: They both have basic annotation tools, interactivity elements such as links and buttons and forms, and basic editing features like adding/removing pages. There are minor differences in how some of the features work, but the differences really aren't that interesting, nor are they so one-sided as to make one a vastly superior experience over the other.

Where things get dicey is when you get to the advanced feature set. Foxit seems to have added a number of features that are only available in the Pro edition of Adobe Acrobat as a marketing tactic, rather than as a holistic design decision, which ironically makes it harder to recommend based on those features.

The advanced editor looks fancy, but isn't all that functional.

The most prominent example of this has to do with working with standards-compliant PDF documents. PhantomPDF can recognize and validate PDF/A (archival), PDF/X (press), and PDF/E (engineering) documents. But it can't createthem. There is an automatic conversion option, but if you don't like the result there is no way to fix it. The best the PhantomPDF printer driver can offer is PDF/A1-b support, but forget about CMYK or image resolution controls. The PDF/E conversion option is especially puzzling, considering that PhantomPDF doesn't support embedding the 3d models or dynamic content that the PDF/E format was created for in the first place.

Another example is the "Advanced Editing" mode. At first glance, this seems like something that might be useful if you need to fix a PDF right now, you don't have the original document, and it was due at the printer yesterday. However, the advanced editor is very difficult to use with precision, it cannot create CMYK objects, nor can it convert RGB objects to CMYK. This makes its current incarnation more of a novelty than a useful tool.

Watch the second line of text in the paragraph, and the kerning on the letters.

The PhantomPDF printer driver has other quirks on its own. Documents that use common typefaces such as Times New Roman tend to look worse because Adobe's software substitutes their high-end version of Times for the comparatively low-end version that is pre-installed in Windows. Line spacing can vary significantly, which could prove frustrating when precise layout is important, such as a template or newsletter. Character spacing was very subtly different, but didn't affect anything significant like line breaks in my tests.

To put it another way: The areas that PhantomPDF overlaps with Acrobat are about even. PhantomPDF doesn't do anything that Acrobat doesn't cover. If you're trying to get high-end Adobe Acrobat features at a low-end price, it's a good idea to download the 30-day free trial of Foxit PhantomPDF and perform a formal analysis to make sure the software does everything you need for your business.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Nathanael is a freelance writer who lives with his family in Caldwell, Idaho. Besides writing about software, he also specializes in eBook conversions.
More by Nathanael Strong

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

How to Convert Office Files to Google Docs on Your Chromebook

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

6 Telepresence Robots That Bring the Office to You

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Review: MindView 5 makes mind maps first-class citizens in the Office ecosystem

Some alternate realities are exciting to imagine: What would have Apple looked like had Steve Jobs never made it back? And what sort of world would we live in had the Internet remained strictly for academia and the military? Others are less so: What if Microsoft built a mind-mapping tool into Office? Still, that's one I think I can answer: It would look just like Matchware's MindView 5 ($279, 30-day free trial).

MindView makes it simple to attach a note to any node in your mind map.

Just like recent versions of Office, MindView 5 has a Ribbon instead of a traditional menu. The Ribbon is styled just like the one in Office 2013, but clicking File still pops open a menu rather than taking you to the clunky new Backstage view. Other than the Ribbon, MindView feels like an ordinary mind-mapping utility, with a core that's not much different from free ones such as Blumind. You create nodes and sub-nodes, drag them around to rearrange and nest them, and can add notes or linked information to each node.

One interesting MindView feature is that you can have more than one root node in your mind map. That's something even sophisticated tools like TheBrain don't let you do: Every node usually has to be the child of another node. Using multiple root nodes effectively does take a bit of getting used to.

Just like SimpleMind, MindView lets you easily theme your mind map with several ready-made styles. I didn't find the prepackaged styles to be visually impressive, mainly because the background stays white by default. But changing colors isn't the only way to restyle your mind map: MindView lets you quickly switch between three different layout styles and present your information as a traditional mind map, a top-down hierarchy, or a left-right structure.

For hierarchical information, MindView's top-down view works well.

Once you're done crafting your mind map, it's often time to present it to others. MindView has a Presentation Mode that removes the Ribbon, leaving your mind map in center-stage. It comes with large, easy-to-click buttons for moving through the nodes, making it easy to jump from node to node in a logical sequence.

Creating a mind map can also be a good way to brainstorm a writing outline, and MindView lets you export a mind map directly into Microsoft Word. The resulting file is well-structured, with an automatically generated table of contents based on your mind map. The hierarchy of the mind map is preserved, and you get sections and subsections according to the structure of the map. MindView also has an import feature, but it failed to interpret the simple outline I tried importing.

One area in which MindView is notably lacking is collaboration. Where online tools like MindMeister shine with concurrent editing and sophisticated History features, MindView feels more like a single-user tool–a bit like the difference between Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

MindView comes with several simple themes, all based on a white background.

In general, I wouldn't say MindView 5 is a very exciting tool, mainly because of the price tag. Before you spend $279 on a desktop mind-mapping utility, you would do well to try out the free options out there, and the subscription-based online products, too.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: MindView 5 makes mind maps first-class citizens in the Office ecosystem

Some alternate realities are exciting to imagine: What would have Apple looked like had Steve Jobs never made it back? And what sort of world would we live in had the Internet remained strictly for academia and the military? Others are less so: What if Microsoft built a mind-mapping tool into Office? Still, that's one I think I can answer: It would look just like Matchware's MindView 5 ($279, 30-day free trial).

MindView makes it simple to attach a note to any node in your mind map.

Just like recent versions of Office, MindView 5 has a Ribbon instead of a traditional menu. The Ribbon is styled just like the one in Office 2013, but clicking File still pops open a menu rather than taking you to the clunky new Backstage view. Other than the Ribbon, MindView feels like an ordinary mind-mapping utility, with a core that's not much different from free ones such as Blumind. You create nodes and sub-nodes, drag them around to rearrange and nest them, and can add notes or linked information to each node.

One interesting MindView feature is that you can have more than one root node in your mind map. That's something even sophisticated tools like TheBrain don't let you do: Every node usually has to be the child of another node. Using multiple root nodes effectively does take a bit of getting used to.

Just like SimpleMind, MindView lets you easily theme your mind map with several ready-made styles. I didn't find the prepackaged styles to be visually impressive, mainly because the background stays white by default. But changing colors isn't the only way to restyle your mind map: MindView lets you quickly switch between three different layout styles and present your information as a traditional mind map, a top-down hierarchy, or a left-right structure.

For hierarchical information, MindView's top-down view works well.

Once you're done crafting your mind map, it's often time to present it to others. MindView has a Presentation Mode that removes the Ribbon, leaving your mind map in center-stage. It comes with large, easy-to-click buttons for moving through the nodes, making it easy to jump from node to node in a logical sequence.

Creating a mind map can also be a good way to brainstorm a writing outline, and MindView lets you export a mind map directly into Microsoft Word. The resulting file is well-structured, with an automatically generated table of contents based on your mind map. The hierarchy of the mind map is preserved, and you get sections and subsections according to the structure of the map. MindView also has an import feature, but it failed to interpret the simple outline I tried importing.

One area in which MindView is notably lacking is collaboration. Where online tools like MindMeister shine with concurrent editing and sophisticated History features, MindView feels more like a single-user tool–a bit like the difference between Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

MindView comes with several simple themes, all based on a white background.

In general, I wouldn't say MindView 5 is a very exciting tool, mainly because of the price tag. Before you spend $279 on a desktop mind-mapping utility, you would do well to try out the free options out there, and the subscription-based online products, too.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: MindView 5 makes mind maps first-class citizens in the Office ecosystem

Some alternate realities are exciting to imagine: What would have Apple looked like had Steve Jobs never made it back? And what sort of world would we live in had the Internet remained strictly for academia and the military? Others are less so: What if Microsoft built a mind-mapping tool into Office? Still, that's one I think I can answer: It would look just like Matchware's MindView 5 ($279, 30-day free trial).

MindView makes it simple to attach a note to any node in your mind map.

Just like recent versions of Office, MindView 5 has a Ribbon instead of a traditional menu. The Ribbon is styled just like the one in Office 2013, but clicking File still pops open a menu rather than taking you to the clunky new Backstage view. Other than the Ribbon, MindView feels like an ordinary mind-mapping utility, with a core that's not much different from free ones such as Blumind. You create nodes and sub-nodes, drag them around to rearrange and nest them, and can add notes or linked information to each node.

One interesting MindView feature is that you can have more than one root node in your mind map. That's something even sophisticated tools like TheBrain don't let you do: Every node usually has to be the child of another node. Using multiple root nodes effectively does take a bit of getting used to.

Just like SimpleMind, MindView lets you easily theme your mind map with several ready-made styles. I didn't find the prepackaged styles to be visually impressive, mainly because the background stays white by default. But changing colors isn't the only way to restyle your mind map: MindView lets you quickly switch between three different layout styles and present your information as a traditional mind map, a top-down hierarchy, or a left-right structure.

For hierarchical information, MindView's top-down view works well.

Once you're done crafting your mind map, it's often time to present it to others. MindView has a Presentation Mode that removes the Ribbon, leaving your mind map in center-stage. It comes with large, easy-to-click buttons for moving through the nodes, making it easy to jump from node to node in a logical sequence.

Creating a mind map can also be a good way to brainstorm a writing outline, and MindView lets you export a mind map directly into Microsoft Word. The resulting file is well-structured, with an automatically generated table of contents based on your mind map. The hierarchy of the mind map is preserved, and you get sections and subsections according to the structure of the map. MindView also has an import feature, but it failed to interpret the simple outline I tried importing.

One area in which MindView is notably lacking is collaboration. Where online tools like MindMeister shine with concurrent editing and sophisticated History features, MindView feels more like a single-user tool–a bit like the difference between Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

MindView comes with several simple themes, all based on a white background.

In general, I wouldn't say MindView 5 is a very exciting tool, mainly because of the price tag. Before you spend $279 on a desktop mind-mapping utility, you would do well to try out the free options out there, and the subscription-based online products, too.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Office showdown: Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps

The war between Google and Microsoft is heating up. Each tech giant offers a productivity suite serving the essentials for serious work online: word processing, spreadsheets, email, and calendars. Should you ally with Google Apps for Business, or root for Microsoft's Office 365 for Small Business?

My experience with both brands' productivity tools reflects the workflows many small businesses face. In 2007, with staff scattered across several countries, my editorial company started using Google Apps for Business. It offered email, plus shared text documents and spreadsheets all under our company domain name and logo. Meanwhile, on the desktop, we used Microsoft Word and Excel, particularly for complex documents that we shared with clients.

If we were starting over today, we would seriously consider Microsoft's desktop-hybrid Office 365 for Small Business. For years Microsoft wasn't putting significant functionality online, but next week's release of Office 365 Small Business Premium is a big step forward. In addition, Microsoft offers the full, rich Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other applications.

Google and Microsoft each allow personal and business use of their online platform, as well as simultaneous logins to multiple accounts in different browser tabs. Beyond that, however, their platforms differ greatly in usability, functionality, and mobile support. Read on to discover the standout features and surprising weak points of each suite, with a focus on how key tools operate in a Web browser.

Edits in the Word Web App aren't as elegant as hoped.

Google's word processor offers more features than Microsoft's Word Web App, and they work extremely well. Google's word processor can't create an index, but it has all the standard formatting, as well as hundreds of fonts. If I have a document pulled up in my browser while someone else is editing it on, say, their smartphone, I see the changes as they are typing them, letter by letter.

Google's word processor is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get app—unlike Microsoft's Word Web app. The way a document looks onscreen is the way it will look when downloaded to your PC as a Word or PDF file, when printed, or when published as a Web page. Critically important: Google saves your documents  automatically. Back in the old days—2008, say—you might lose all your work at any moment. Today, changes are saved instantaneously, and if you lose Internet connectivity, you're alerted immediately.

Google Drive can sync documents on multiple machines and in the cloud. If a Google document is edited offline, there's a potential for conflict with other editors, and again if users apply Word formatting that isn't yet supported by Google. If there are no conflicts, the document syncs automatically. Otherwise, either a brand-new document is created with the changes, or you can choose which changes to use.

Witness how the Word Web App isn't fully baked.

Microsoft Office 365 shares Google's synchronization problem when documents are edited locally. The Word Web App that comes with Office 365 has a bit less functionality—in addition to the real estate–hogging “ribbon” interface. But, most important, it lacks what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

Also, unlike Google, the Word Web App attempts to maintain a level of compatibility with the standard desktop version of Word, but it can't yet display all the formats. Say, for example, that you have white letters on a dark background. It looks fine when first uploaded and viewed in the Reading View. But click on Editing View, and the résumé sections are immediately misaligned, formatting commands butt into the text, and background colors all disappear. To make sure the edits look right, you'll need to switch back to the Reading View.

Editing the same sample résumé in Google is an easier matter, as this image shows:

Google's word processor: What you see is what you get.

With Microsoft's Word Web App, trying to edit the same document from multiple locations is difficult. There's a complex process of locking, unlocking, and reconciling files if multiple people edited them at once. If your employees need to do any serious editing, they'll need to use the desktop version of Word 2013.

Microsoft's mobile functionality is in place if you're using the well-built Office apps for Windows Phone 8, or if you've paid for Office desktop software for a Windows 8 tablet. There are no iOS or Android apps for Office 365, though third-party apps let you edit Office documents. Google, on the other hand, offers free apps for iOS and Android, but not for Windows mobile devices.

Winner: Google Apps wins. Microsoft's Word Web App isn't ready for prime time.

Next page: Spreadsheets, email, calendars, and costs...

Maria Korolov has been covering emerging technology and emerging markets for the past twenty years. She has reported from Russia, India, and Afghanistan, and recently returned to the United States after running a news bureau in China for five years.
More by Maria Korolov

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Microsoft Office 365 Now On Sale For $99 Per Year

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Review: Adobe Acrobat XI Pro advances the paperless office concept, but also highlights obstacles

Alan Stafford is a frequent contributor to Macworld and PCWorld.
More by Alan Stafford

In addition to being a lethal enemy of trees, paper is the enemy of businesses' productivity, according to Adobe. Adobe's new Acrobat XI Pro portable document format software aims to do both parties a favor by making it easier to work without using paper. Of course, the trees are probably all for this, but Adobe's implementation of a paperless workflow may not make it easy enough for businesses to change their ways.

Acrobat XI Pro's default interface looks much the same as it did in the previous version, though now you can create and save custom tool sets, export them, and distribute them across an enterprise. You can download custom tool sets that others have created, too.

While the Pro version, which contains all program features, is available for both Mac and Windows, the Standard version which lacks certain high-end features, is available for Windows only.

The ability to sign documents digitally isn't new, but now you can request, receive, and manage digital signatures using Adobe's recently acquired EchoSign website. Create your document in Acrobat XI Pro, then click the Sign button and then Send for Signature. Acrobat XI Pro uploads the document to EchoSign.com and then directs you to complete the transaction there.

John Hancock here, please: After Acrobat XI Pro sends your document to EchoSign, just enter your addressee, a document name, a message, and click Send.

You can send up to five documents a month with a free EchoSign account, or you can opt for account types that allow greater numbers of users and additional features—for example, corporate branding on all of your emails—at costs ranging from $15 per month to $400 per month.

If you're already logged in to EchoSign, you simply enter your recipient's email address, select a couple of options (email it back to you or fax it back to you), and click Send. Now the tracking, and the clock, begins: The website sends the document to your recipient and an email to you reporting that it has been sent, and then it sends you an email when the recipient either signs or refuses the document. Recipients do not need to have EchoSign accounts; they just have to click the link in the email sent by the system. You can see when documents were sent and the average time it took to receive them back.

Lots of signs on the wall: EchoSign shows you a dashboard of where documents are in the signature process.

The email that the system sends contains a general link and a link for mobile device users. Unfortunately, the link for mobile devices took me to a webpage with an image of my document that had been compressed so much that I couldn't read any body text, either on my Android-powered smartphone or on my Google Nexus 7 Android tablet. The page also contained links that allowed me to download the original PDF, and the PDF was quite readable in the mobile version of Acrobat Reader, but I could not sign my documents there; I had to return to the webpage to sign the document. You can digitally sign and forward documents in Adobe's EchoSign mobile app, but it is available only for iOS, not Android.

You are now leaving Acrobat: After you upload a document for signature to EchoSign, you're done with Acrobat XI Pro.

Furthermore, you don't need Acrobat XI Pro to use EchoSign. You can upload documents created with Microsoft Word, older versions of Acrobat, or other applications to EchoSign's website. The integration of the Acrobat XI Pro and EchoSign adds only minimal convenience; you can't send something out for signature directly from Acrobat XI Pro.

Signing my life away: Type your name into an EchoSign signature box, and the site converts it into pretty script.

For enhancing Acrobat's forms creation, Adobe took a different approach. Acrobat XI Pro comes bundled with FormsCentral, a separate desktop application that interacts with Adobe's FormsCentral.com website. FormsCentral.com isn't new, but its integration with Acrobat XI Pro—or rather, its integration with the FormsCentral application—is. Acrobat has long had stellar forms creation capabilities, but they were only for forms within PDFs; now with FormsCentral, you can create sophisticated, trackable Web-based forms.

You can create forms the old-fashioned way—staying in Acrobat XI Pro—but Adobe steers you toward FormsCentral. You can choose from 50 pre-formatted form templates, or you can build one from existing content or from scratch. You can customize any of these templates, of course, and save it as your own for future use, and when you're done, you can publish it either as a PDF or as a Web-based form.

Fully formed: FormsCentral's form builder is easy to use and creates PDF or web forms.

Previous versions of Acrobat allowed you to create forms that would interact with Acrobat.com to gather and tabulate form responses, but the forms could only be PDFs. With a Web form, you can link to your form on FormsCentral.com, or you can embed it on your own webpage or on a Facebook page. You can connect a PayPal account so that you accept payments, too.

But the most interesting part of FormsCentral is the data you get back. You can sort and filter submission results, add basic Excel-like functions (like Sum, Average, Count, Min and Max), and see a quick summary report complete with bar charts. You can export submissions data in Excel or .csv format so that you can import it into a CRM program or another application. You can make fields required, as I would expect, and require that input fields are text, numbers, currency, percents, dates, or email addresses, but unless you use drop-down menus, you cannot force formatting (such as dashes instead of parentheses in phone numbers), which means you may need to do some data cleanup before you import it into a database.

The results are in: FormsCentral gives you instantaneous results of forms submissions.

There are other ways to produce and manage Web-based forms, but most if not all come at a price. Some website content management system modules offer it, and some Web services—for example, Jotform—offer it, too. FormsCentral costs $15 a month for Basic service, which includes five forms per month and a maximum of 500 responses, or $144 a year for Plus service, which allows an unlimited number of forms and a maximum of 5000 responses per form.

But as with EchoSign, you don't need Acrobat XI Pro to use FormsCentral. For that matter, you don't need the FormsCentral application either, because the FormsCentral website looks and functions exactly like the app.

I admit that I often use Acrobat's rudimentary editing capabilities to modify a PDF rather than digging up the original document I used to create it. But Acrobat XI Pro allows much greater editing capability, so that you may not need to go back to those original documents, even for significant edits.

The creative director's worst nightmare: Now you can monkey with the text or images of a PDF without having to dig up the original document.

In addition to editing text in a line, as you could before, now, you can add, move, and resize text blocks and images, and you can change fonts attributes. Acrobat XI Pro does not have all of InDesign's precise text adjustments, but it does have vertical and horizontal line spacing and basic character spacing. You can find and replace text (but the application will not let you replace all instances in one swoop; you must click Replace as often as necessary).

On documents I created from Word, paragraphs stayed together, but on a document that had been created with Adobe InDesign, many of the lines of the document were seen as separate elements in Acrobat XI Pro, so to rearrange the page, I had to move and resize each line. Furthermore, if you move an image or text block to a spot where another element resides, the element won't move; they will overlap. Acrobat XI Pro does have an Arrange command to bring elements forward or send them backward, but it has no wrapping capabilities, so you must then resize or move the text so that it doesn't obscure the image. Acrobat XI Pro provides no tracking capabilities for the new editing features.

A new Action Wizard helps you create standardized groups of settings. You can use these settings for many different settings in Acrobat, including security; save the action to the Acrobat XI Pro's right-side toolbar, and then every time you click the button, the application steps you through the required settings. You can export the actions and distribute them organization-wide.

See what you're PDFing: Acrobat XI's revamped Combine Files box shows thumbnail previews of your documents and lets you omit pages within a document.

Acrobat XI Pro's merging capabilities have been enhanced, too. Now, not only can you see a preview of most documents, you can rearrange them around in a scalable icon view, see what every page of each document looks like, and you can set which pages of a document are included in the final exported file. You can also now transform PDFs into editable Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Taken together, Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, EchoSign, and FormsCentral have impressive capabilities, but the links for EchoSign and FormsCentral are just that—links; that is the extent of their integration into Acrobat XI Pro. They are separate components with minimal integration, and I suspect that having to deal with three different components will make the paperless office concept look good only on...paper.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Cloud-Friendly Microsoft Office 2013 Is a “Service First”

When designing the new Office, Ballmer said, Microsoft kept modern devices – and Windows 8 – at the front of their minds. Office 2013's mobile-friendly capabilities include touch support, the ability to annotate documents using digital ink, support for ARM devices, native Windows Phone 8 functionality and a visual style that closely mirrors Windows 8's Metro UI.

Microsoft’s CEO pointed out that Office 2013 represents a much greater departure from previous editions than just touch-friendly integration. The productivity suite fully integrates cloud storage (primarily using Microsoft’s own SkyDrive) and social networks (Microsoft recently purchased the enterprise-focused social networking service Yammer for $1.2 billion), with the goal of allowing users to access their documents and templates from any device and seamlessly collaborate with others.

Ballmer and his crew also showed off a few key features of the new suite. 

PowerPoint

Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer demonstrated PowerPoint on a Samsung tablet. Like all Office 2013 applications, PowerPoint features much more intuitive touch capabilities – with his fingers, Koenigsbauer used pinch-to-zoom and moved from from one slide to the next.

More impressively, the user interface has been designed with hands in mind – buttons to open and close option ribbons, for instance, appear large enough to press with your finger, without needing to use a stylus – although a pen or stylus can be used to write notes directly on slides, as Koenigsbauer demonstrated.

Outlook

Similarly, Outlook features large ribbons that can easily be closed and opened with the tap of a finger. Koenigsbauer showed the Quick Actions menu on the far right of the screen, which allows users to perform common actions such as Reply and Delete without having to open a cumbersome menu. Outlook also allows users to “peek” at sub-menus such as Calendar and People just by hovering over them (although this functionality likely only works with a stylus or mouse).

OneNote

After PowerPoint and Outlook, Koenigsbauer jumped to OneNote, Microsoft’s digital note-taking application. Using a stylus, he demonstrated how users can – in addition to using the mouse and keyboard) write notes directly into the application. A radial menu allows users to change the font, color, font size and other features of their notes. OneNote also features native camera integration, allowing users to take a picture using their phone or tablet, import the photo into OneNote and quickly crop and place the picture where they like.

Word

Office 2013's cloud and social network integration truly come to the forefront in the latest version of Microsoft Word. As Koenigsbauer demonstrated, users can sign into each service (Word, PowerPoint and others) to access their custom information; on Word, that means a user’s documents, templates and custom dictionary. Word’s cloud-based functionality also allows users work on a document from multiple devices, picking up where they left off each time.

Content is stored on SkyDrive by default; it wasn’t made clear whether or not other cloud storage platforms could be used.

As the demonstration continued, it became clear that Microsoft believes most Word documents will be read on mobile devices rather than on paper. In fact, many of the most dramatic additions support this very idea. Reading Mode (pictured above) automatically resizes documents for optimal viewing on any device, including phones and tablets. Users can also embed videos in their documents – a feature designed to appeal to users who read primarily on their mobile devices.

Excel

While the cloud and social integration wasn’t as immediately apparent during Koenigsbauer’s demonstration of Excel, it’s clear that Microsoft has aimed to make their spreadsheet tool more powerful and – at the same time – easier to use. Flash Fill, for instance, makes it simple to pull individual nuggets of information out of columns; the software can recognize if the user trying to pull out a specific type of word (names, for instance), and will automatically populate the rest of the column with the names found in the adjacent column. Quick Analysis, on the other hand, makes it easier to create tables and charts by giving users previews and recommendations.

Perceptive Pixel

The last piece of new technology demonstrated by Koenigsbauer was Office 2013's integration with Perceptive Pixel technology (PPI). Using a whopping 82-inch capacitive touch screen, Koenigsbauer showed how Office 2013 and PPI technology can be used to join video conferencing and online collaboration in a single application. Using this technology, users can view and annotate PowerPoint presentations simultaneously, or join common note-taking sessions using OneNote. Although Ballmer says Microsoft’s working to bring the cost of this technology down, he’s confident that it will be widely adopted by businesses.

The Microsoft 2013 preview is available as a free download.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Need Reliable Office Software at a Sub-Microsoft Price? Consider Kingsoft Office Suite

Business still revolves around the Big Three software applications: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. And Microsoft still charges an arm and a leg for Office licenses. What's a cash-strapped small shop to do? There are, of course, a number of freebie alternatives to Microsoft Office, most notably OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. However, OpenOffice faces an uncertain future, and LibreOffice is bogged down by a clumsy, outdated interface and iffy file compatibility. Allow me to suggest a lesser-known alternative: Kingsoft Office Suite 2012. Kingsoft offers Free, Standard (available here), and Professional editions, the latter two priced at $50 and $70, respectively.

Kingsoft's suite consists of three modules: the aptly named Writer, Spreadsheets, and Presentation. They're fully file-compatible with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; I had no trouble loading my existing documents or saving new ones in Microsoft formats.

On the feature front, it matches up pretty well--though there's one big ace up the Kingsoft suite's sleeve: a tabbed view for documents, something Microsoft Office still lacks. Each open document gets its own tab, just like different Web sites get tabs in your browser. That makes switching between them much easier than in Microsoft Office.

The only question is, which version of the suite should you get? My advice: Start with the free one. Its interface is immediately familiar to anyone fluent in Microsoft Office 2003, and the only significant feature it lacks is macro support. The free version also lacks the ability to save documents in Office 2007/2010 formats, though it can open them.

That said, if your employees are already accustomed to Microsoft's Ribbon interface, consider investing in Kingsoft Standard or Professional. Both give you a choice between the aforementioned Office 2003-style interface or one that looks straight out of Office 2010. In other words, it's a Ribbon knockoff, and a damn good one. (You can actually switch back and forth between the two, a nice touch.)

If you want to learn more, Kingsoft has a page devoted to the differences between Office Free, Standard, and Professional.

For the record, I've been using both the Free and Professional versions on different machines, and I've found both to be excellent. But I prefer Pro, mostly because I like the Ribbon-style interface.

And at $70, Kingsoft Office Suite Professional costs considerably less than Microsoft Office Professional 2010, which starts at $350. Granted, the latter also includes Outlook, Publisher, and Access, so it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison.

However, if you don't need those tools, but do need the Big Three, I definitely think Kingsoft Office is worth a look.

--Rick Broida

Kingsoft Office Suite Standard 2012 is designed to cater to the office need of users at home, school or company. It consists three parts: Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation. Using it, users can create, view, edit and save all document formats of Microsoft Office.Whilst, Microsoft Office can open all Kingsoft files even without Kingsoft Office being installed on that computer, so users don't have to worry about the compatibility problem.

The interface of Standard 2012 also adopts the 2012 interface design elements. The multi-tab feature and and sophisticated toolbar facilitate quick and convenient file management. The appearance of this interface is highly similar to Microsoft 2007.

The standard version has all the features which professional version has except the VBA macro function. These features standard version has are enough to match the daily requirements. The installation package of Standard 2012 is small and allow users to easily install and uninstall the software. Secondly, it offers a built-in spell checker to help check the documents. Thirdly, the built-in PDF converter allows convert Word, Excel and PowerPoint files into PDF formats. Lastly, offers a large number of templates in Presentation Standard 2012 that help users to easily and efficiently create slides directly by using these templates.

In addition, Kingsoft Office Suite Standard 2012 added several distinctive functions. The powerful paragraph adjustment tool allows users to edit paragraphs with ease. It supports dropping and dragging the paragraph directly. There is also a table style adjustment function that includes a useful add row or column icon. Simply drop and drag the icon when users need to add a row or column to a table.

With this update, it is now easier to protect documents. An encryption function is offered as part of Office Standard that allows users to better protect their files. There is also an online update function to help download the newest.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

CloudOn Puts Office on Your iPad for Free--For Now

The day after its January 5 debut, CloudOn became the number one app in the iTunes App Store, says CloudOn CEO Milink Gadekar. That's not surprising: It was the first app to let you run virtualized versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the iPad, and it was free. It still is, at this writing, but since CloudOn is paying software-as-a-service licensing fees to Microsoft, it will have to generate income somehow, so don't expect the free ride to last forever.

But even if users had to pay for it, CloudOn would get my endorsement for its simple, straightforward design and its seamless integration with the Web-based file-storage services Box.com and Dropbox. Setup is painless: You download the app, create an account, and link it to your Box or Dropbox account, and you're in business.

Launching the app brings you to a minimalist home screen with three top-level buttons. You get a button for choosing between tile and list views of files; one for accessing account settings, help, a tutorial, and a connection status checker; and one for creating a new Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. Below those three main buttons is a bar with a couple of navigation buttons (back, forward, home screen) and buttons for accessing open documents, sending the open document as an email attachment, and refreshing the screen.

Below those icons are your Dropbox documents and folders (displayed as either tiles or a list, depending on which view you choose). Clicking a document opens it in its native application (in addition to the Office apps, CloudOn now supports Adobe Reader and offers an image-file viewer); alternatively, you can create a new document from the main menu. You can also open attachments in the iPad's native mail app directly into CloudOn.

Working in an Office app with only your fingertips isn't always easy. CloudOn, however, has rearranged some of the buttons on Office's Ribbon interfaces to make them operate more smoothly on touchscreens. For example, the basic text-formatting buttons are much more spread out in the CloudOn version to accommodate fingertips rather than mouse pointers. The resulting button overflow appears on an Alignment tab that doesn't exist in the desktop version.

Compared with the Ribbon on the desktop version of Excel (bottom), the buttons in the CloudOn version (top) are larger to make the application easier to use on a touchscreen.

In my tests on an iPad, the apps were quite responsive; CloudOn says that it can run smoothly on connections of only a couple hundred kilobits per second.

I particularly like the Dropbox integration; thanks to this feature, you can edit a document on any device and save it to your Dropbox folder, and it will appear on all your devices without further ado. The only thing CloudOn lacks is printer support and a straightforward way of closing an open file (the File tab is grayed out, so you don't get any of those commands).

Still, between the thoughtful interface tweaks and the Dropbox integration, I found CloudOn to be a great way to work in Office on my iPad. Since it's currently free, CloudOn is a great bargain--but I'd definitely consider paying for the service if the price is right.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here