Paul's Picks

Summaries of in-depth product reviews on Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows
www.winsupersite.com

Office Live Small Business 2
Pros: Small-business-in-a-box functionality; simple setup; elegant Web site designer; can add functionality as needed; supports Mozilla Firefox
Cons: Search marketing tool supports only MSN/Live Search and Ask.com
Rating :
Recommendation : The first major update to Microsoft Office Live Small Business service for small businesses is well implemented, with a friendly new pricing model and useful new features. Now, instead of offering the service with tiered pricing, Microsoft is offering the free version to all customers, then tacking on additional features on an a la carte basis so you can purchase only what you need. Some of the new features are quite well designed: The Storage Manager is a shopping-cart application that lets you sell products from your own Web site or via eBay. And the Web-based Web page designer is surprisingly full-featured. Sadly, the search-marketing tool is a weak link: It can’t place your ads on Google or Yahoo!.
Contact : Microsoft • 800-426-9400 • www.microsoft.com
Discussion: www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_sp1_rc1.asp

Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 1
Pros: Interesting new functionality; Webstandards adherence; performance improvements
Cons: Beta 1 is for developers only and incomplete; rendering changes may break internal sites
Rating : n/a
Recomendation : Microsoft is doing a huge about-face with Internet Explorer (IE) 8.0, so any businesses that are relying, knowingly or not, on rendering quirks of previous IE versions will want to test intranet and external sites on the first IE 8.0 beta right away. Microsoft is abandoning its so-called Quirks Mode rendering model in favor of a default Web-standards rendering mode that should work like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and other standards-based browsers. IE 8.0 is aimed solely at Web developers, but that’s the right user group this early in the schedule. Ladies and gentlemen, start your browsers: It’s time to test those sites.
Contact : Microsoft • 800-426-9400 • www.microsoft.com
Discussion: www.winsupersite.com/reviews/ie8_beta1.asp

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