If you really love Microsoft Office, Redmond is giving you a chance to try out new versions early. It’s called Office Insider, and it’s only available for Office 365 subscribers.
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team, announced the new program in a blog post today, along with a few new features.
Office Insider, according to the blog post, “allows Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers to opt in to pre-release builds of Office 2016 for Windows.”
So this is not like the Windows 10 Preview, which was free to anyone willing to try out the new operating system — this is for paying users only. The idea is that you’ll try the software out and provide Microsoft with valuable feedback. Sure, you might run into a few bugs, but you’ll also be the coolest kid in your office!
What kind of new features does the program offer? Well, one mentioned is the new PowerPoint designer feature, which makes it dead-simple to combine a photo and text to make an attractive slide.
There’s also a new Morph effect, which you can use to transition between slides . Excel users can try out a template that scans your calendar and gives you insights about it, like how many hours you work each day and how much time you spend in meetings. OneNote users can embed online videos in their notes. And more tweaks will come shortly.
All of these features will end up in Office eventually, but if you want to try them now you need to join the Insiders program. Do that and you’ll get new things to play with…erm, work with…once a month.
Right now the program offers previews for the Windows version of Office, but don’t worry, Mac users. Microsoft says the program will include test versions of the Mac software as well. There’s no word on mobile yet.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.