Office 2013 Intersects with the Cloud and Tablet Computing

As Microsoft prepares to release Office 2013, it is clear that some of the most compelling features and upgrades are designed with cloud, tablet and mobile technologies in mind.  Each of the products included within Office 2013 also received minor tweaks and additional functionality.  The ribbon is still in place, but features a flatter less three dimensional mobile and tablet friendly profile.  The result is a cleaner, simpler look that works well on whatever device the customer is using.  In a move designed to gain traction in the mobile/tablet market, Microsoft will be including Office Home and Student 2013 RT on ARM processor based Windows 8 devices.  For desktop users, a major new feature of Office 2013 is the integration of SkyDrive cloud based storage, which will save and sync files across multiple devices.  The Office 2013 suite itself will be available through the cloud as a subscription service.  Subscribers will receive updates automatically, are allotted more SkyDrive space and are allowed multiple installations for several users.  Users choosing this route can stream Office apps to a Windows PC with an internet connection.  Microsoft is clearly behind the game in productivity applications for tablets and mobile users.  For the first time Microsoft will offer touch and stylus features in Office 2013.  These features will function much like using a smartphone.  For example, you can swipe to move to the next page, write with your finger or stylus and pinch to zoom.  Outlook 2013 will convert handwritten emails using stylus or finger into text.  New in Word 2013 is the hugely helpful ability to edit PDF documents.  Word will treat the text in a PDF document as editable and allows insertion of multimedia.  This feature is pretty exciting.  Occasionally at work a patron will have a resume in PDF format that they want to edit.  Currently this requires expensive Adobe software.  Adding this functionality to an overall productivity suite is a small but powerful reason to think about upgrading at least one machine.  Further technological innovation in Office 2013 derives from combining productivity suite software with Skype and social networking tools recently acquired by Microsoft.

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