The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Microsoft Software

Microsoft Office 2013

            For those of you upgrading from Microsoft Office 2007, you likely won’t find many major changes in Microsoft Office 2013.  If you are upgrading from a version of Microsoft Office prior to 2007, the concept of the ribbon, essentially a more visual-oriented version of your drop-down menus, and other cosmetic changes, may catch you off guard.  Rest assured, most of your favorite and essential functions are still there, alongside some new functionality tools to easily enhance your productivity.  Microsoft Office 2013 continues to provide users with maximum functionality while being more visual-based in the approach.  It is much easier to preview what things will look like before you commit to changes, and customize your files to be exactly what you want.  We’ll touch on some of the common changes among all of the Microsoft Office products, then do a program-specific breakdown for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

Categories
Microsoft Software

OneDrive

What is OneDrive?

Microsoft’s OneDrive provides one place where users can keep and share photos, videos, notes, documents, and surveys and be able to access them on any machine by just logging in.  If you’re using the most recent Office 2013 suite, or have a Windows 8 device, you have likely seen the OneDrive icon/save option, as it is built into most of Microsoft’s latest applications, for the convenience of the user. You need a Microsoft account to get started, but if you are already using Windows 8 or Office, you should have one set up.

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Operating System

The Cloud May Be for More than Just Storage

The idea of the cloud as a place to store files has become more and more mainstream lately, with services like Google Drive being used by more and more people as an easy and secure backup option. With access to fast network speeds becoming easier to come by the idea of moving all of a computer’s storage to the cloud is becoming more feasible (a computer with no substantial hard drive will be lighter and have a longer battery life). A newer movement that has only been adopted by “Enterprise” level businesses so far is to use the cloud to do the computational work usually left for the CPU (processor) installed in the computer. Its not an easy project, but could give even our smallest devices the power of a supercomputer to back them up.

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Apps iOS Operating System

iOS Apps: Comic Book Readers

XMEN

Reading comic books has been a cherished pastime since the 1900s, and comic strips  were even getting published as early as in the 1800s. As technology advances, the way we read comics changes – while some still buy physical comic books, many of us have opted to go digital. There are plenty of programs to use to read comics on your computer (check out this LifeHacker article for a few good recommendations), but what if you want to read comics on the go? There are a lot of options out there, but we’re going to go over a few that are widely considered to be the best iOS apps for reading comics.

If you’re an Android user, check out our article Android Apps: Comic Book Readers.