Microsoft Office 2007

Some links discussing how Office has changed from the previous versions.

Wikipedia

MS "Fluent" user interface

CPU - Processor overview

This article has a great overview of the various processors that are available for home computers. It isn't comprehensive - it leaves out the laptop-specific processors, for example - but does a great job anyway.

http://www.itee.adfa.edu.au/help/spike2007guide/spike07-6-cpu.html

In-class presentation grading

I realize some of you won't care becuase it is exam week - but some of you will!, so here is the rundown of how the inclass presenation was scored.

This email is going to be crossposted to the class blog so you can access it whenever needed.

In WebCT, for the in-class presentations, you'll see some numbers like this:


35 22


The first number is how many points (out of 36) you earned from me. The second is the average number of points you received from your fellow students who were grading you. I have also pasted in any comments your fellow students (and myself) made about your presentation.

Here's the details.
---------------------------------------------------------------

I took the grades from your fellow students and averaged them.

Could you understand the presenter?
The Slide Designs guided your eye.:
The presenter made it interesting.
Overall Design works to support the message:
You learned something from this presentation.

There were 25 points possible. (5 pts. each)


------------------------------------


I was grading you as well. It was based on the following:

36 Points Possible
5 Slides: 8 + Title + Biblio + Jobs: All, 8+2, 8+1, 8+0, <8
3 Sound: Well, Badly, Not
3 Graphics Well, OK, Poor choices, Not much, none
4 Slide Transitions Present, well done, average, badly
2 Master Slide Two, One, None
3 Points built up Well, AVG, Badly
3 Speaker Notes Yes, no
5 Interesting Slides 5,4,3,2,1
5 Interesting Present 5,4,3,2,1
3 Research 3,2,1

------------------------------------------

To calculate your grade:
1. Average up all the student responses.
2. Calculate the percentage.
3. Calculate the percentage of my grade.
4. (Student percentage * .25) + (Instructor percentage * .75)

That's your grade.

Excel WebCT project comments

As I'm grading the Excel WebCT projects, some comments come to mind.

1. I am deducting for format issues - i.e. the intructions call for a total to be in a specific format, but you didn't follow that instruction. Why? Because in real like, formatting matters. The way data is presented really makes a difference on whether it will be readable, understandable, and make an impact.
2. Never Ever manually type in a conclusion - for ex. look at a column and type in that highest number. Have Excel calculate that for you ALWAYS (even if it's easiy to glance at the data) - because you never know when the data will change.
3. Use your common sense - if a result doesn't make sense, then you've probably made an error somewhere. For example, the average of 15, 20,25 35, is probably NOT 1500!
   

Home network Possibilities

A quick description of the network I have at home. I will hopefully flesh this out later. The purspoe is to demonstrate the possibilities - and reasons to setup an home network. "Outhouse" is an outbuilding I have in the backyard, wired for electricity and phone.

Machines:

1. mac mini in outhouse
2. iMac DV inhouse
3. WinXP machine in outhouse
4. Apple laserwriter select in outhouse
5. HP inkjet printer inhouse
6. Apple powermac in outhouse
7. playstation 2
   

The need: Get everything talking to each other so any machine can print to either printer, and all can access the highspeed itnernet from Cox. The cable drop is, of course, 30 feet away from the nearest computer.

Networking hardware: I'm using powerline adaptors from macWireless.com to connect the outhouse, inhouse iMac, and the playstation to the highspeed internet. The outhouse machines are all connected to a gigabit switch I got cheap on eBay, which is in turn connected to a powerline adaptor. The playstation 2 and the cable modem are connected to a second gigabit switch. The inhouse iMac DV is connected direct to one of the powerline adaptors.

The wrinkle: I need to be able to work on the Win XP box for class, but there is no physical space to really put it anywhere convenient. So I use Remote Desktop Connection - free from microsoft. This allows me to sit at one of my Macs, connect to the Win XP box, and control Windows as if I was sitting there. in fact, this entry is being typed on a 5-year old iMac DV machine, controlling the Win XP box - which is running Firefox over the highspeed connection.

Fairly cool, if you like this sort of thing!

Microsoft Office alternatives, Threats

1. This article from eweek.com discussed alternatives to Microsoft Office that may be interest to you. It won't help you in this class (which requries Office) - but this inof may still be useful to you.

Some of these alternatives are free!

2. There are several ways Office can be attacked by malware. Read this article, from eweek.com, about how some of them. BTW - keep your copy of Office updated!

The first disk drives

There is a photo gallery at
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-31979-1.html

showing the first hard disk drives. My, how far we've come in terms of storing data.

50 of these platters could hold 2 iTunes songs.


There is more info HERE on a Yahoo news site (original article from PC World). (Thanks, Michael, for passing this on).

The original pricing:

Prices have dropped dramatically. The RAMAC 305's cost per megabyte was approximately $10,000--that's about $70,000 in today's value. Today, a typical desktop hard drive can deliver that same megabyte for 3/100 of a cent.

Notice that's $/meg.