As regular readers will know I’m a big Microsoft fan, even if sometimes for no other reason than to annoy all my friends that use Macs. For the last month I have been testing out their new version of Microsoft Office 2010 and thought I would share what I think are the top ten new features. Office has more than 100 new and improved features, and has already been downloaded over 7.5 million times for the beta version alone. Office 2010 is now on general release at all computer shops everywhere, click here for a price guide, or here to go the Office 2010 site and try it out yourself.
Top 10 Office 2010 New Features

There are a whole host of other upgrades and features, such as being able to preview copy and paste edits. To put it simply though, if you are looking for a full office suite then Microsoft office is still the only way to go and with 2010 they have just made it better and more user friendly. Click here for a video look at the new Office.

To find out more on Office 2010 click here.

Yesterday Microsoft announced some seriously game changing news for the console industry. The launch announced that Kinect (formerly known as “Project Natal”) will be available worldwide on November 4th. Kinect (pictured right) is a gaming motion sensor device that is compatible with all Xbox 360’s, and allows you to use your body as the games controller ! see the video above for some examples. At release there will be at least 8 Kinect games available but expect that number to rise quickly as developers get to grips with the new technology. The new revamped Xbox 360 console (see pics) was also announced at the E3 expo at the Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles. It’s now slimmer, virtually silent, and comes with built in WiFi for easy access to online functionality such as Xbox live, and has a 250GB hard drive as standard. The new Xbox 360 will be available this week at $299.99 RRP. Last but not least Microsoft also announced and previewed epic upcoming games launches of “Halo: Reach,” “Call of Duty: Black ops”(exclusive Xbox levels and maps) and “Gears of War 3”, and “Fable III”. Also if Xbox Live (now 25 million users strong) is your kind of thing, and you currently live outside of the official supported zones, good news, it will be coming to South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Russia by Christmas 2010. Cant Wait to give Kinect a go and get my hands of some of those epic games later this year.     P.S. To read the full press release click here, and hat tip Steve Clayton, for reminding me about this and to MajorNelson’s Flickr site for the pics.

Yesterday Microsoft announced the release of two new phones aimed at online social network addicts. The range is called “KIN” (See pics below) and consists of the Kin 1, and the Kin 2.

The Kin 1 has a 20×240 screen, 5 megapixel camera, VGA video recording and 4GB of non-expandable storage. The Kin 2 is larger and has a 480×320 screen, 8 megapixel camera, 720p video recording, and 8GB non-expandable storage. Both are touch phones and contain the Zune software to handle music and video. They both have Facebook, Twitter and Myspace built into their cores to make sharing and networking as easy as possible. The Kin’s also have a cloud based website called the Studio where all contacts, music, pictures and social network updates are synced and kept up to date !

To read more on the phones go to www.kin.com. The KIN will be available from @Verizon in the US this spring & from @VodafoneUK in the UK, Germany, Spain & Italy by autumn 2010. (Prices TBC)

To launch the phones Microsoft and Agency Two Fifteen have set out to answer the question “Are your friends really your friends?”. To find this out they found a young, non actress,  lady called Rosa.

Rosa has 824 friends on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace and has been sent across the states to visit her social network in person. A film crew will be following her as she sets out to meet the so-called “friends” in her online social media circle.

The first episode will go live on the 3rd May. Visit the dedicated Kin Facebook, twitter and YouTube pages to stay up to date as Rosa’s journey continues.

The Call of Duty franchise from Infinity Ward has to be one of the most epic games series to come out over the last 6 years. To celebrate the release of the new Modern Warfare 2 game, The Martin Agency on behalf of Walmart has come up with the above hilarious ad spot. Cant wait to dust off my Xbox360 again and get to play this little number. The game is released on the 10th November worldwide. Preview copies my way are welcome. (hat tip: AdFreak)

For the last year I have been using a Dell M1530 XPS laptop as my main computer, meanwhile all around me my other friends have been converting to the dark side (Apple ). Above is a new promo video for windows 7 from Dell (via friend and legend Steve Clayton)

Here are a few reasons why I’m happy to stay a PC guy:

• As a chap that helps run an education company for online marketing, I feel it’s helpful in numerous ways to use the same brand of operating system that over 90% of the people that we teach use themselves.
• Windows 7 has been a pleasure to use for the last 4-5 months even in release candidate version. It’s much faster than Vista and in my experience XP, and even some friends Mac’s, its easy to use, visually nice, and works with all my numerous random bits of software.
• Microsoft have now finally released a fantastic free antivirus software suite called “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Have been using it now for a few months and its the least intrusive (both notification wise and processing power wise)  anti virus software I have used.
• Great software, mostly free such as Windows Live Writer (for blogging), Photosynth, Silverlight, Microsoft Tags, and Live Mesh, inspire me and give me great hope for an even brighter future for the company.

Feel free to disagree but I’m one happy PC.

This is the first in a line of soon to be released ads for Windows 7 by everyone’s favourite ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky. Windows 7 is due for release on October 22nd and the above spot is due to air in the USA later tonight during CW‘s prime-time premiere of "Vampire Diaries”. Windows 7 has already been received very well by established on and off line media outlets. Personally I have been using it for about 4 months on my main laptop. I think they have made giant leaps forward with this new and improved OS. It boots fast, looks great, is very easy to use, and you don’t need a hugely powerful processor and lots of RAM to make it run well (I tried it on a 3 year old laptop and it worked great). For more details on Windows 7 click here. If you’re currently running Vista or XP I highly recommend the upgrade, you will love it, promise. (ad spotted via)

Loving this epic new trailer for the upcoming Halo 3 ODST game. The spot is filmed as though its a movie release, featuring real actors playing out in game action. Microsoft and Bungie partnered with ad agency TAG SF (Follow them on Twitter here) and the short was directed by Rupert Sanders with MJZ productions, the director of the award-winning original  “Halo 3” ad spot “Believe”. By the way ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The game is a prequel to Halo 3 and is being released on the 22nd of September.

Really enjoyed these spots for Windows Live Photo Gallery. In this ad we see a 7 year old vs a 70 year old in a timed contest to see who can perform a photo stitch and print it the fastest. Great work from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. You can also see an 8 year old vs an 80 year old and even a  9 year old vs a 90 year old. They also have some fun “I’m a PC” spots from little peeps aged 4, 5, 7 and 8 (Just click on the links to view the other ads). Click on this link to get Windows Live Photo Gallery for yourself, its free. I’m a PC too by the way.