Monitoring MSFT: Office for iPad, OneNote for All, More Win XP

So this is the week. Microsoft’s (MSFT) new CEO Satya Nadella is expected to announce Microsoft Office for iPad at an event in San Francisco on Thursday, March 27.  Meanwhile, Microsoft’s expansion of its OneNote application to all OS platforms for free dominated the news last week, prompting pundits to declare MSFT still is the king of the hill in terms of productivity apps. We’ll give you all those details and more below.

First, the Office for iPad news.  Last year it seemed as though the much longed for Microsoft productivity suite on Apple’s tablet was more than a year away at the earliest. But back then Microsoft was still finding its way with its own struggling Surface tablet and Steve Ballmer was still the CEO of the Redmond-based software giant for the foreseeable future.  Fast forward to 2014 and there’s a new CEO whose first press event is Thursday’s expected launch of Office for iPad.

OneNote free for everyone

The event and launch will follow another big one for Microsoft. Last week the company announced the release of OneNote as a free application on all platforms including Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android. OneNote is an Evernote-type personal document management system that is part of the Microsoft Office suite. The news unbundles OneNote, making it available a la carte without the purchase of the rest of the suite. Microsoft also unveiled the OneNote Service API to enable developers to create plugins. Already available are OneNote Clipper (one click web page capturing), Send email to OneNote (email clips to yourself), Office Lens (OCR capability), and IFTTT integration, and Feedly. The full list can be found on the OneNote Apps page.

More Windows XP

Who knew anything could overshadow the end-of-support Windows XP news? But speaking of that, here are the details of the most recent deal Microsoft is offering on upgrades. This one is a trade in offer that gives users $100 toward Windows 8 device purchases with an XP trade in.

Meanwhile, Avast promises to support Windows XP for three more years with changes to the Avast! 2014 product. More details on that here.

And for those looking to buy a new Windows PC, don’t miss this great blog by a top Microsoft journalist about her painful and frustrating search for a place where she could try out a laptop keyboard, test out a system’s speed, test out the weight of the device and otherwise make sure that her $1,500 investment was a smart one.  

Those are some of the past week’s top headlines, and now some quick hits you may not want to miss.

Quick hits

An overview of three Office 365 use case companies that presented at the recent SharePoint Conference.

Seagate CEO Luczo is leaving Microsoft’s board of directors.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet seems to have disappeared from the Microsoft Online Store

Mozilla has said it will no longer support its browser Firefox for Windows 8, citing low usage rates.

Tools

Microsoft updates its free remote desktop apps for iOS, Mac, Android

Better Troubleshooting for Office 365 with Updated Tool