Microsoft's Surface tablet, which runs Windows RT
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Consumers who own tablets running Microsoft's Windows RT operating system
will get a new version of the software giant's widely used e-mail program,
Outlook 2013 RT, later this year.
At the Computex computer trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft said Wednesday
that the e-mail program will be included as part of the Windows
8.1 update announced last month. Outlook 2013 RT will be
available as a free update for tablets running Windows RT, the scaled-down version
of Windows 8, and will be included in Windows RT devices going forward.
When Microsoft rolled out Windows RT last year, it included other Office
applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, but not Outlook.
Speculation mounted in recent months that the e-mail application was on its way.
"We're always listening to our customers and one piece of feedback
was that people want the power of Outlook on all their Windows PCs and
tablets," senior marketing manager Chris Schneider wrote on Microsoft's Office blog.
Outlook 2013 RT is
slightly different from Outlook 2013. In the version created for the
full-featured version of Windows, developers can use tools such as Visual Basic
for Applications to write and run macros and other custom programs. But Visual
Basic for Applications is not available for Outlook 2013 RT. The RT version of
Outlook also does not include data loss prevention capabilities, nor does it
support so-called Group Policy Objects, which corporate IT administrators use
to centrally manage deployments of Office software.
Outlook 2013 RT also
won't integrate with Microsoft's Lync video conferencing and instant messaging
software, since it requires the beefier 64-bit version of Windows. And last,
Outlook 2013 RT users will be able to read emails sent with information rights
management, used to encrypt documents. But users can't create emails with the
information rights management feature.
The new Outlook is
built for touch computing. In his post, Schneider said it includes "a
streamlined user experience that reduces clutter." Some of the new
features include the ability to respond to email with inline reply, and being
able to peek at the calendar and contacts in Outlook without have to manually
switch between tabs.
Microsoft
also announced that its Surface tablets will get new hotkeys with an update in
about a week. Users can press the function and caps keys at the same time and
it will lock the F1 through F12 keys into being function keys. Users will also
be able to press function and spacebar to print their screen, the function and
delete bar to turn the brightness up, and the function and backspace bar to
turn the brightness down, among other new key combinations.(source: cnet)
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