Microsoft's next surprise is free Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android | The Verge

Microsoft announced today that non-commercial users of their mobile Office apps will no longer require an active Office365 subscription in order to edit documents.  By "non-commercial," they mean anything not stored on OneDrive for business or Dropbox for business.  For anyone that has had to look into licensing their Office365 product, this should come as no surprise.  Why anyone would pay their exorbitant licensing fees simply to have edit functionality in a mobile app when there are plenty of free and low-cost solutions out there simply mystifies me.  I could see the argument for some desktop users, but who is really going to work on a complex spreadsheet or powerpoint on a mobile device?

Microsoft's next surprise is free Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android | The Verge

The Benevolence of Microsoft

I really must hand it to Microsoft.  For all of the bad publicity and general ill will that a lot of people harbor toward them, they still want to help the little guy out - even when that little guy is running Linux.

(Just for clarification, this does not involve the real Microsoft.)

A few minutes ago I received a call to my cell phone from a rather nice, if somewhat hard to understand, gentleman who informed me that Microsoft had received highly unusual traffic from my computer.

 "How did they get my number," I thought to myself.  "Must be some lucrative agreement with the NSA."

Directing my attention back to the kind soul on the other end of the line, no doubt a descendant of those long oppressed by the British Empire in their search for the perfect curry blend, I asked for more information.  He went on to say that the insidious network traffic was being sent as we spoke.

Ever heard of grammar check?

Just saw this in an email from our MS Exchange admin.  Apparently Microsoft only makes a product with grammar check, but doesn't bother using it!