Office 2013 Upgrade Now Available

The next version of Office is now available for those of you who bought Office 2010 and are looking for your Upgrade Guarantee.

Click on Redeem now and fill out Country, Product Key, Accept and Verify:

You are ready to download?? And therein lies the rub… there is a catch, sure there is. You need to sign up for Office 365 for 3 months, whether you want that or not. So no, you don’t just get the stand-alone application.

You have to Sign In to a Microsoft account to continue, so I used an old hotmail account and clicked on Select.

I selected my Country and Language and had no choice but to agree to additional marketing from Microsoft: Microsoft Office will be contacting you with surveys, promotions, tips and advice for using our products and services. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information on our communications options, please see our Privacy and Cookies Notice.

And finally, the INSTALL.

It dropped a 585kb “Click To Run” exe and that’s all you get. I’m sure once you click on the Setup.exe, it will install Office 2013, but I am waiting to implement Office 2013 with Windows 8.

UPDATE! I found where you can download the software. It is under your account settings under frequently asked questions.

That appears to be a continuous loop and you can only order a disc for $15.11. Ok, that’s enough nonsense for me this morning.

UPDATE: I have gone back to the account and am now able to download the *.img file.

Lync 2010 for Kindle Fire

I have used Google Chat and Windows Live Messenger, but since I am paying monthly for Office 365, why not use Lync 2010.

Microsoft® Lync® is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform. With Lync, users can keep track of their contacts’ availability; send an IM; start or join an audio, video, or web conference; or make a phone call—all through a consistent, familiar interface.  Lync is built to fully integrate with Microsoft Office. The Microsoft Lync 2010 desktop client is available for Windows and for Mac and mobile versions are available for Windows Phone, iPhone/iPad, and Android devices.

Anything enterprise-ready is something I can use!

So how to get it on the Kindle Fire when Microsoft specifically states:

The current release of Lync 2010 for Android smartphones is not supported on Android media tablets or on other non-phone Android form factors (hardware models). For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
2691382 Android smartphone devices that are supported for use with Lync 2010 for Android

First, you need the APK file from XDA Developers, download it to your desktop and then move the file to your Kindle Fire. (See comments for a way to get the APK file from your Android phone)

You have to change the DEVICE setting to Allow Installation of Applications from unknown sources before you click to run and install the APK file.

Almost done! Before you Sign In to Lync 2010, Click the menu button on your Kindle Fire, Click on Options and change the Server settings to:

Internal discovery address: https://webdir.online.lync.com/Autodiscover/autodiscoverservice.svc/Root
External discovery address: https://webdir.online.lync.com/Autodiscover/autodiscoverservice.svc/Root

That’s it. Signed in and worked for me!