Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg - 1

Living in Honolulu, Hawaii, it is not easy to think about going to Europe. However, as we go even eastward to India, sometimes, it does not feel too tough to go to Europe. In order to visit Budapest, we had to go via San Francisco, Newark, and Munich.

We took off from Honolulu at 10:55 after our son, daughter-in-law and their dog Oliver dropped us at the airport, a mere 20 minutes from where we live. We reached San Francisco the morning of June 16 at 9:00 AM just in time for a breakfast at airport.

We hung around in the airport as our flight was in the evening at 8:00 PM. It was quite a wait. It so happened that our flight from San Francisco was delayed more than 2 hours and we barely made it to Newark. Newark airport has changed a lot with lots of new construction. We barely caught the shuttle to the departure terminal. We reached Munich somewhat late (around 11:00 AM) on June 17. The arrival/departure gates are such that it takes effort to board the plane as you need to change the terminal using the shuttle. We literally ran like crazy to board the shuttle. The escalators at Munich Airport are really steep and run fast like at other airports/subways in Europe compared to those in USA.

Again we hustled to board the plane from Munich to Budapest where our tour begins. We reached Budapest a little after mid-day and to our chagrin the suitcases did not accompany. We had to do some paper work and the girls at the Lufthansa kiosk attending the lost baggage were very efficient. Good show!

We were met by our tour director, a very friendly and outgoing guy. He seems to have had lots of experience as tour director in Europe as well as North America. He was presently living in Salzburg, Austria. He spoke fluent German and English but I am not sure how well he spoke Hungarian (a tough nut) and Czech. He being originally Czech, I am sure he spoke Czech like any other native.

We were going to stay (for the following three nights) at the Radisson Beke in Budapest and after check-in we attended the tour orientation for a short while with a glass of champagne and had dinner at the hotel. I assume either the food was good or folks were hungry, I could not tell. Being vegetarian it is not my place to make a comment. I did observe though that the waiters appeared to have been preoccupied. I later found that the Europeans were playing football and surely they had the game on their mind.

  Although we were dog tired, decided to take a short walk and followed some of our tour buddies.

The photos we took are in the video hosted on google docs slides.
Partially filled slide pictures were taken with iPhone 6S and the full screen pictures using Microsoft Lumia 950.



Day 2:
Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg -2

Microsoft Office Suite is ubiquitous and universal

Microsoft Office Suite is out of the windows into the wide world.

Microsoft Office Suite is (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) now available on not only Windows but also on iPads, and Androids. It first started on Android tablets early this year and a smart phone preview in May. This is similar to what is now available for iPads and iPhones. If you want to use more mobile features or want to use the desktop version you will be better of getting an annual subscription for Office 365.

This availability of Office on platforms other than Windows makes it ubiquitous and may discourage other contenders who have tried hard to break into this market. Although this should have come earlier, it is never too late. This move also highlights Cloud as the future like Apple, Oracle and others. I also believe that subscription model will also discourage pirating of software.
I have a monthly subscription for Office 365 but certain features I wanted on Excel are not available such as Power Pivot. In order to use Power Pivot I have to have the add-in which is not available for my subscription.

comaddin.png

I am mostly using it for Word and a little less for others. 

Where is Google Docs going? What about Libre Office and other similar products?
Here is what Libre office advertised:

"LibreOffice is an office suite that will provide you with almost every office tool that you could possibly need. The difference between LibreOffice and some of the big boys though is that LibreOffice is completely free and open source. No longer do you have to spend hundreds of dollars just to own an office suite."

Well, LibreOffice has still few more items not on Office suite and it may still be attractive especially if you are the true believer in Open Source.

OneDrive goes overdrive to provide 15GB free storage

Smart Phone cameras, videos, documents and apps have created an unprecedented appetite for storage more than ever before. Both free and paid storage options have surfaced. Besides storing the stuff the companies like Microsoft and Google have other stuff from which they want to make money. Ideally they want all your stuff in one place and you use the other services to work with your content assets. They all provide syncronization; upload/download features and sharing.

Beginning July 2014 Microsoft increases free storage from 7G to 15GB, an equalizer-move to match Googles 15 GB. The paid storage of Office 365 users can now look forward to 1TB instead of the 20GB, that's a big jump. The paid storage limits of non-Office users is also increased.:
Read the full story here of this post,"Massive increase to OneDrive storage plans: 15 GB free for everyone, 1 TB for Office 365 subscribers"
https://blog.onedrive.com/new-onedrive-storage-plans/

Apps that work with OneDrive:
https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/apps-that-work-with-onedrive/

As of 13 March 2014, storage plans offered by Google are as follows(source: Wikipedia)
Storage
Price
15 GB Free
100 GB         US$ 1.99 per month
1 TB              US$ 9.99 per month
10 TB            US$ 99.99 per month
20 TB            US$ 199.99 per month
30 TB            US$ 299.99 per month
Free storage may come with some restrictions as to image resolution, video size, document type etc.Of course if you are paying you will certainly read the fine details.
 

Microsoft Piggy backs Microsoft OFFICE 365 on iPads - Bravo

I believe this was an excellent move to improve the Microsoft bottom line.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238570/Office_365_subscriptions_furnish_4_of_Microsoft_s_Office_division_revenue

I am not as sure as Simon Phipps blogging that Microsoft has taken a step towards (partially perhaps) embracing Open Source, I believe it is to make the best of the breed of Microsoft's product available on the best of breeds Apple product.

Read Simon Phipps article here:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/microsoft-and-open-source-two-steps-forward-one-step-back-239451?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_pm_2014-04-01

I think it profits both companies and probably diminishes the appeal of Google trying to get into this lucrative business and a hedge against falling PC sales.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/review-microsoft-office-365-vs-google-apps-233667?source=fssr

Now as we speak, Microsoft is doing better than it did before, that is marketwise.

You could use Office 365 on your Android phone and it is just as easy.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-suite-help/use-office-365-on-your-android-phone-HA103787372.aspx
 

LibreOffice gets launched to the cloud

LibreOffice Writer is a wizard driven, On-line (you can have a shortcut to the APP on your desktop/phone) word processor and publishing tool similar to other similar word processing products (MS Office etc.).

There were to Office related products on tne cloud, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs. Now there is a third one. Will it make substantial difference to MSFT it is hard to tell in the long run but probably just one more program on the internet for now.

Key features noted from the web site  are the following:

•    Templates and styles
•    A spelling and grammar checker
•    Word and character count
•    Page-layout methods, including frames, columns, and tables
•    Embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects
•    Built-in drawing tools
•    Master documents—to group a collection of documents into a single document
•    Change tracking during revisions
•    The ability to import and edit PDF files.
•    Database integration, including a bibliography database
•    Indexing
•    AutoCorrect and AutoComplete

Here are some details of the shortcut.

You need to spend $0.99 to try it out