If you want to access to your MS Office files which were created years back then you should think again because now all the MS Word applications save the file in a new format called as DOCX and this is the same reason if you edit or create a new MS Word file now you cannot access the same on your older versions of MS Office like Microsoft Office 2000, 97 & 2003. In order to access these newer versions of files you need to convert them to compatible versions using different options. Here is a small list of the same.

Microsoft had a bad weekend as around 20,000 hotmail accounts were hacked and their passwords were posted on October 1 by an anonymous user on pastebin, a website used by programmers to share code snippets. The page was removed soon after (even the cached page by Google).

How were the accounts hacked?

The most probable reason for the accounts getting hacked is phishing. Wikipedia defines phishing as:

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as user-names, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

I feel my account is hacked, what should I do?

• You can fill the reset password form and request for a new password.
• If you feel that you account was on the list posted on pastebin, you can fill out this form to reclaim access to your account.

You should also take the following safety precautions so that you account doesn’t get hacked in the future:

• Reset you account’s password every 60-90 days.
• As phishing sites can also pose additional threats, please install and keep anti-virus software up to date.

Microsoft is joining the free brigade. First offering a free computer security suite in the form of Security Essentials, now it plans to sell Office 2010 for free. Just before I was about to do happy cartwheels I read the proverbial small print about how exactly is Office 2010 free.

Starter Office 2010

• Office 2010 Starter will be pre-installed with new computers exclusively. That means you cannot get freeware version and you have to most probably buy a new PC. However that might be just a initial tactic.
• It will support advertisements and that idea is  not so innovative but quite a time tested way to keep things free.
• Microsoft’s official product development blog mentions that Office 2010 Starter will also have reduced functionality. It does say you can view, edit and save files but leaves out exactly what reduced functionality will mean.
• The Office 2010 Starter will only have Word and Excel. So that means no PowerPoint and no One Note.

Why free?

One reason Microsoft is offering this free is to get new PC users hooked onto Office right from the time they buy a new computer. Hence the focus on it being pre-installed on new PCs. The rise of Google Docs without Google really marketing
it aggressively means that the idea of creating and storing documents online for free is something that people are demanding.

Mostly Microsoft has been a champion of paid software and not free software, but on the other hand US and Europe has fined Microsoft record amounts because Microsoft did exactly that by giving people free Internet Explorer along with Windows in the 90s.