Endless Solutions Inc – Susan R. Davis

Microsoft Office 2010 is coming very soon, and Microsoft is offering their usual deal again. If you make a qualifying purchase of Microsoft Office 2007 now, you can be eligible to get Office 2007 upgraded to Office 2010 for free.

If you purchase and activate qualifying Office 2007 products from Microsoft or a qualifying reseller between March 5th and September 30, 2010, you can receive a free download copy of the corresponding Office 2010 product when Office 2010 is released. You can also purchase a product disc for a fee. You will have until October 31, 2010 to request your product upgrade.

The new Office 2010 is chock full of performance-boosting features. To be honest, I didn’t think too much of the 2003 to 2007 upgrade, but I certainly think they’ve done an excellent job with the 2010 upgrade.

My Favorite Features in the new Office 2010:

1. Enhanced Ribbon feature:  the Ribbon is better than ever and it now works across all apps with special contextual features based on which application you are using.
2. Powerpoint will now allow you to do static graphic image editing and video editing right in the program so you’re not constantly flipping in and out of Powerpoint to get the job done. Adobe is going to hate this one!
3. Shared use on documents is finally here. Lightweight web-browser versions of Office Web Apps are here, and Microsoft says that formatting will be preserved in these documents. Now you can collaborate with others more easily. If you have a Windows Live SkyDrive account, it is integrated with Office Web Apps and you can view and edit documents through a web browser. Office doesn’t even have to be loaded on your computer – even on a Mac. This is going to give Google Docs a big run for their money.
4. Revamped Print Dialog box:  Now you can tweak settings like margins right in the Print Dialog box and see a preview copy of the changes side-by-side with the various settings. I absolutely love this one. It’s about time Microsoft did this.
5. PDF creation is now native to Office – no add-on required – another big Ouch for Adobe.
6. Screen Clips in all applications:   now you can take screenshot clips of things on your desktop and insert them into Office documents. No special screen capture program is required, and you don’t have to use the clunky Print-Screen option.
7. Paste Preview:  this cool little tool allows you to see what your resulting content will look like using different Paste options. Never have to “Paste Special” over and over until you find the one you want.
8. When you open an email message inside Outlook 2010, it will show you related information such as email attachments, pictures, meeting requests and all previous email messages that you may have exchanged with that person – neatly displayed in a preview pane below the message.
9. Outlook also has two other features to improve your workflow. QuickSteps in Outlook allows you to create a combination of steps bunched into one command (for example “Reply and Delete” or “Send and Archive”). And Outlook now has a cool feature that allows you to eliminate email noise in your workday. You can tell it to ignore past and future emails on a particular subject line, and the entire thread will no longer bother you. Vanished. Poof.

Microsoft has finally started concentrating on features that will improve user productivity and stopped fussing with “pretty” changes. One of the biggest problems I’ve always had with Office products is their tendency to be very rigid in terms of usability. I think that Office 2010 is going to break free of that particular problem.

Has anyone else used the beta of Microsoft Office 2010 yet? Share your experience here with the rest of us.

Tags: Microsoft Office 2010, New Office Features, Save on Office 2010

Tax season is here, and it’s time to equip yourself with the best information and software you can. Improve your productivity with software that helps you find the best deductions, and even things you might have missed. And it does the math!

This is my second year using TurboTax software for my corporation and my personal taxes, and I’ve got to say I love it. It founds two deductions this year that I totally would have missed, and I’m no newbie at doing accounting and taxes.

If you’d like a great source for tax products this season, check out Buy.com Tax Center for low prices on tax software, books and more. I think they’ve got it all, and their prices are pretty hard to beat. Might as well save a bit of money up front to help you save money on those pesky taxes. Why give it to the IRS anyway? Thanks to their help this year, I knocked a good $1,000 off of my tax bill, which I can honestly say is no small peanuts.

Even if you’re not the studying type who loves to devour books on such terrible topics as taxes, at least get some nifty software to help you dig out good deductions, save money on taxes, and alert you to possible audit risks so you can set your mind at ease about a call or letter from you-know-who.

Nobody I know likes giving the government more money than necessary, so go on the offensive this tax season and slash that tax bill! Do you have any good tax tips or advice to share with readers?

As someone who has been around the block a few times preparing taxes, there is one thing I can tell you for sure. Absolutely, positively, do your own research before having someone else prepare them. No tax preparer is perfect, and none of them are you, with your in-depth knowledge of your life and your spending habits.

Go to the IRS site and look at the forms and their instructions that you usually file, like the 1040 form. Also check out the instruction booklets for types of deductions you think you might qualify for. Then make sure to look through documents and receipts in your life and compile some kind of a list of the things you think you qualify for. This will help a paid preparer to better identify areas to look for deductions in.

I know you probably hate doing this kind of thing like you hate going to the dentist, but think of it this way. Every little bit of research increases your chance of keeping your money instead of tossing it at the government. Think about being able to protect your money and spend it on something you want.

Tags: Save on Tax bill, Tax Information, Tax Software

It’s coming up on that time of year again. Maybe you haven’t actually started thinking actively about your taxes, but as soon as you get that W-2, I’ll bet it comes to mind. In the past, filling out your tax return was painful and tedious. All those paper forms, the pencil – since you were worried about errors – and lots of typing on your calculator keypad.

Well, if you haven’t done it already, you should seriously consider e-filing your taxes this year. I’ve been doing it for the past several years, and I love it. There are several advantages to online preparation and e-filing that save you a lot of time.

Advantages of E-Filing:

• Faster refunds by filing electronically
• Quicker than doing it by hand on paper
• Fewer errors
• Saves time
• Easy to use interface with questions to guide you
• Integration with State Tax return (don’t have to do 2 returns separately by hand)

So, give it a shot this year. E-filing is easy to do and getting that refund sooner is a great way to boost your mood in this nasty economy.

Do you e-file currently? Do you like e-filing? Where do you e-file? Are you a TurboTax fan?

Tags: avoid tax return errors, e-file, fast tax refund, prepare taxes