Microsoft Word has long offered artistic effects to add to your headings, but we welcome the new Text Effects as they make them easier to apply and also don’t convert them into some fancy graphical format – which means you can search on the words, just as with any text within your document.

The effects themselves won’t have Adobe Illustrator users fainting in awe, but they’re strong enough to add a bit of impact to newsletters or even the funkier company report. As ever, use sparingly.

This is one of those features I just happen to like: the ability to insert a screenshot quickly and easily into a document. So, you’re writing a report or some technical documentation. All you need to do is head to the Insert tab and click on the Screenshot button sitting in the Illustrations area. If you have a multitude of other applications open, you’ll see a screen rather like this:

You then just select your chosen screenshot and it’s inserted painlessly into the open document.

Part of the Backstage view, Microsoft has built in a handy little checker that will reveal which parts of your Excel, Word and PowerPoint files will cause problems for people with disabilities such as impaired vision. For example, it will tell you if pictures lack Alt text, highlight headings that are too long, and point out if the document doesn’t use heading levels in a logical way.

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If there’s one thing you’re bound to notice when using Office 2010, it’s the Backstage view. This is a unified set of commands and information that relates to the particular file you’re working on.

For example, forget pressing <Ctrl+P> and getting that boring old print dialog (shown right for comparison).

Instead, you’ll get something that looks an awful like the below, complete with an automatic print preview and an overview of all the settings. That not only looks nicer, it also makes it far easier to pick up mistakes (printing in portrait when you meant to print in landscape, for instance, or choosing A4 when you wanted A3).

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There were many good reasons why Microsoft Office 2007 earned a place on the PC Pro A List, but if we were to boil it down to one then it would be the Ribbon. While not everyone welcomed the new interface, it made it much easier for the vast majority of users to create professional-looking documents. And quickly. Microsoft Office 2010 would always struggle to have the same impact, but there are a number of nice new features that make this the best version of Office 2010 yet.

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In the final part of our attempt to convert a Mac user to Windows 7, Chris Brennan reveals whether Microsoft has done enough to tempt him away from Apple’s wares

I’m now at the end of my Windows 7 experiment and I have to return the PC users’ suit and tie to the PC Pro cupboard and put on my blue jeans, black turtle neck jumper and New Balance trainers.

It’s been a steep learning curve for me, but not in the ways I thought it would be. I had Windows up and running with all the applications I needed to do my job much more quickly than I thought. I’d arranged my desktop, partitioned the hard drive and worked out the basics in less than a day, and that includes installing the software.

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Back in August, I told you how two of us in the PC Pro office had been struck down with an irritating Windows 7 chkdsk bug.  The fault saw the check disk utility spring into life every sodding time Stuart Turton and I booted our PCs, yet report a clean bill of health once it had completed its laborious scan.

Well, it appears the problem isn’t going away. A recent flurry of comments on the August blog reveals that the chkdsk flaw isn’t restricted to the beta software we were running at the time. The problem appears to be afflicting users of the final Windows 7 code, and in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours. A number of people leaving comments on both our blog and the various web forums discussing the issue pointed the finger at Avira’s free antivirus software (which both Stuart Turton and I were running), but there’s a groundswell of non-Avira users reporting the issue too, so that appears to be a case of mistaken identity.

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The comparison between any smartphone with a large touchscreen and an Apple iPhone has become a cliché, and one we honestly try to avoid, but this time it’s 100%, completely and utterly unavoidable. What’s more, our early impressions are that the HTC Touch HD2 is in many ways better than the iPhone. And that’s despite the use of Windows Mobile 6.5, aka Windows Phone. Read more

This has been an interesting week for the USB key.

No really; the ubiquitous key, which has been implicated in incidents of corporate data loss around the world, now occupies a central role in Microsoft’s view of corporate security.

Far from being the main means by which secrets slip out of your organisation, the Microsoft security technique depends on carrying your BitLocker keys around on a USB stick.

This is a great leap forward, and I can foresee lots of corporates finding themselves strongly obliged to take up BitLocker, especially when you consider the surprising hard line being taken by the Information Commissioner, as reported in this BBC article. Let’s put the headline conclusion up here so you bear it in mind: if your company loses data, then it’s half a million quid as a fine.

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There are lots of smartphones vying for our attention right now, but despite the underwhelming nature of its improvements, Windows Phone is generating some interesting handsets. The latest is Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X2 – the follow up to the distinctly average X1 we reviewed last year – and we had our first chance to play with one at the launch event last night.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a very similar handset to the X1, boasting a sliding hardware Qwerty keyboard, and an ingenious mechanism that kicks the screen up at an angle so it’s more comfortable to view while typing. It does so with a satisfying snap, too.

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