Feature
While much was made about the release of Office 2010 in May, the announcement that Microsoft intends to make an Office release for Mac in October has been relatively quiet. Also this week there has been a number of releases that aim to make PDF conversion much easier.
Office 2011 for Mac in October
With all the fuss last May about the release of Office 2010 there was a tendency to forget that at that time Mac users were getting nothing.
However Microsoft (news, site), which at the time said it was working on something for Mac, has just announced on the Office Mac blog that they will be releasing a new version of Office for Mac at the end of October.
Depending on what type of user you are, there will be two editions available to buy from retailers: Office for Mac Home and Student 2011.
Microsoft has also said that if you are thinking about upgrading now, you don’t have to hold off until then as starting this week, if you buy Office 2008 for Mac, you will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 when it is available at no additional cost through the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.
In addition, probably reflecting the fact that the economic rebound still hasn’t really impacted on home or small business users, the new editions are relatively cheaper than previous editions and come in at:
- Office for Mac Home & Student Edition 2011 (Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac and Messenger for Mac 8)US$ 119.00 US ERP (1 install), or Family Pack US$ 149 for 3 installs
- Office for Mac Home & Business Edition 2011 (Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Mac 8) US$ 199 for one install and multi-pack, or US$ 279 for two.
There will also be aspecial edition for third-level education calledOffice for Mac Academic Edition 2011 whichincludes Word for Mac, PowerPoint for Mac, Excel for Mac, Outlook for Mac and Messenger for Macfor US$ 99.
If you want to find out more you can get as many details as are available on the blog. Watch this space for further updates between now and October.Check out the video to find out more.
Newgen Upgrades High-End Doc Mgt
Meanwhile, business process management vendor Newgen has just announced a major release of its document management software: OmniDocs v7.0.
The company said OmniDocs 7.0 provides enterprise archiving and retrieval of documents in a high-performance environment based on a unified repository for securely storing and managing enterprise content.
It integrates seamlessly with most of the major enterprise content management systems including Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle UCM and SAP, providing them with a scalable enterprise platform that stores and manages billions of digitized documents. It also enables long-term archival by using open standards like PDF/A. If you want more on this check out the Newgen website.
New PDF Converters Released
In the PDF space there has been a lot of movement recently, especially the release of a three of new converters in the past week alone.
Nuance Communications
The first of these is from Nuance (news, site) which provides speech and imaging solutions, and which has announced an upgrade to its desktop PDF software, Nuance PDF Converter Enterprise 7.
The company says it can deliver all the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat, but at about a third of the price -- a claim not to be sneezed at if true.
New features in this release include visual document assembly, which makes it easier to combine paper, PDF and Microsoft Office documents into a single PDF, and a Web PDF toolbar that puts the product directly into leading Web browsers.
For the paperless office there are new scanning capabilities, including one-click scanning with scan-and-mark-up capabilities. Collaboration and workflow functions are enabled by connectivity to Microsoft SharePoint and other enterprise content management systems.
It also comes with support for Microsoft Silverlight rich media within PDF files, Windows 7 jump-lists for frequent PDF tasks, direct access to Microsoft SharePoint and the Web PDF toolbar for Internet Explorer.
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Nuance PDF Converter Enterprise 7 is US$ 149 with volume discounts available through the Nuance Open License Program, while PDF Converter Professional 7 for individuals and small workgroups is US$ 99.
GIRDAC Ultimate Converter
Another new PDF converter, this time from GIRDAC, converts PDF files into Word, Excel, and HTML as well as 100 image file formats. It converts scanned PDFs in English through OCR technology and can create PDF documents from over 300 Windows applications.
Creating PDF documents from any printable file, Ultimate runs on Microsoft’s Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit and comes with support for 60 user interface languages.
The trial version available from the website converts up to three pages for 20 PDF documents and can be accessed for free. Users of earlier versions of PDF Converter Ultimate can upgrade their version free of cost. This really is an extensive converter with too many functions and capabilities to list, but it is well worth checking out.
SmartSoft ‘s Smart PDF Converter
From Bulgaria, SmartSoft, a vendor of OCR, document capture and conversion software solutions, has also upgraded its converter product Smart PDF Converter. The latest updates in version 5.0 include a significant boost in accuracy as well as enhanced capabilities for layout and format recreation, the company says.
This converter also enables users to convert PDF documents to editable formats, including all document formats as well as HTML. The Pro version also allows users to convert the file back to PDF format, which makes it very convenient for quick and easy document edits.
And for business users, it is likely that Pro will prove to be the best of SmartSoft's option. Smart PDF Converter Pro manages status documents, project documents and internet documents that come into PDF format. HTML abilities include:
- Conversion to single HTML page
- Conversion to single HTML page with Next and Previous buttons for easier scrolling
- Conversion to multiple HTML pages option for each PDF page
It also supports any printable document format and can also be downloaded for a free trial.
Atalasoft Revenues Jump
For those that might be wondering about the success of the viewers that were either released or upgraded with the SharePoint 2010 release in May, Atalasoft’s (news, site) recent figures give some indication.
As a provider of .NET Imaging SDKs and a universal viewer for SharePoint, Atalasoft has announced record revenues and strong growth across all product lines for the first half of 2010. Second quarter 2010 figures were the best in the company's 8-year history, up over 56% from 2009 with the first half of 2010 year-to-date sales 36% higher than 2009.
Atalsoft has attributed it success to its policy of allowing ISVs to license their document imaging technology for a low fixed yearly fee without reporting or paying royalties, which has led to strong growth in Atalasoft's toolkit business.
Atalasoft doesn’t appear to have released what its figures are but revenue growth of 56% is significant enough to make a fuss about it.
