The first new application from Microsoft's Home and Retail division in several years, Microsoft Student 2006 aims to help secondary school students with tools such as a graphical calculator, Encarta encyclopedia entries, and book summaries. However, while most other Microsoft consumer software is useful by itself, Student is most useful with a recent version of Office—an expensive prospect for consumers, even with the lowest-priced Student and Teacher Edition. The Home and Retail division has also released annual updates to three other software products—Digital Image Suite, Encarta, and Money—and two new keyboards.

Student 2006: Most Useful with Office

Released in July 2005 in the United States, Student 2006 is intended to help students in junior and senior high school (grades 7 through 12) use a PC more effectively to complete their schoolwork.

The most prominent feature in Student is Learning Essentials, a set of templates and interface enhancements (such as new toolbars and menu items) for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These add-ons help students use Office applications to accomplish common school assignments. For example, students studying foreign languages will find that Word automatically recognizes when they begin typing in French, German, or Spanish and alters spellchecking and other functions accordingly. Another example: Learning Essentials adds the periodic table of elements and an editor for mathematical equations to PowerPoint to help students create science presentations. Learning Essentials also includes tutorials written by textbook providers, such as Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Prentice Hall, that guide students through tasks such as proofreading a paper or choosing the right type of Excel chart to represent a certain set of data.

Other features in Student include a graphing calculator, a full offline version of Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia (Encarta 2006 Premium), a one-year subscription to MSN Encarta (which includes features such as online homework help), book summaries, and an index of familiar quotations.

Student 2006 has a suggested retail price of US$100, but to use Learning Essentials, students will need Office XP or Office 2003. Thus, customers with older versions of Office (or none at all) will have to spend an additional US$149—the suggested retail price of Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition, the lowest-cost edition—to get the most out of Student.

Other Updates

Every fall, Microsoft releases updates to most of its consumer software products. As of the middle of July 2005, Microsoft had released updates for the following consumer software products:

Digital Image 2006. The latest version of Digital Image Suite adds support for RAW image files from Canon and Nikon digital cameras. ("RAW" is not an acronym, but a filename extension for images that come directly from a digital camera's sensor and have not yet been processed by the camera.) Some photographers prefer working with these images because they contain more color information and detail than TIFF and JPEG images. Professional photography applications such as Adobe's Photoshop often support RAW images from many different manufacturers, but they are considerably more complex and expensive than Digital Image Suite.

Other improvements in Digital Image Suite 2006 include support for storing videos in the same library as static images, a new version of Photo Story (which lets users create slideshows from digital photographs) with more on-the-fly photo editing features, and the ability to use the Windows Media Player 10 on the PC to synchronize images with portable devices, such as Portable Media Centers or Smartphones.

Digital Image Suite 2006 has a suggested retail price of US$100 with a US$30 mail-in rebate and an additional US$10 rebate for customers who purchase a digital camera within 30 days. Digital Image Standard 2006 costs only US$50, but lacks support for RAW files and has more rudimentary editing and correction tools.

Microsoft has also released a free RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer for viewing, organizing, and printing (but not editing) RAW images from Canon and Nikon digital cameras. In addition, the company has indicated it will include support for RAW images in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.

Encarta 2006. The newest Premium version of Microsoft's digital encyclopedia includes a new feature called Web Companion. When users conduct an Internet search from most major search engines (including MSN Search, Google, and Yahoo Search) in Internet Explorer, a separate Web Companion window will appear with results from Encarta. However, unlike the last version, Encarta Premium 2006 does not include a subscription to the MSN Encarta Premium service—instead, this feature has been moved into Microsoft Student. Encarta Premium, which also boasts multimedia entries, retails for US$50, while the Standard version costs US$25.

Money 2006. This incremental update lets users pay their bills from multiple bank accounts, track Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), and get easier access to current stock prices, among other improvements. It's available in four editions, Standard, Deluxe, Premium, and Small Business, ranging in price from US$30 to US$80. All four editions include two years of access to online services, such as online bill payment and the ability to synchronize offline Money data with information in the online MSN Money service.

Keyboards. Two new keyboards make it easier for consumers to work with digital media on the PC. The Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition is a wireless keyboard designed specifically for Media Center PCs, with features such as a volume control and single-button access to Media Center features like DVD playback and live TV viewing. The Wireless Optical Desktop 5000 comes bundled with Digital Image Standard 2006 and contains buttons to access features of that application, such as photo editing and photo printing. Each keyboard retails for US$105.

Resources

Microsoft's Student 2006 site is at www.microsoft.com/student.

The Digital Image home page is at www.microsoft.com/products/imaging.

The RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer is available for download at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d48e808e-b10d-4ce4-a141-5866fd4a3286&displaylang=en.

The Genuine Windows program is described in "Genuine Windows Pilot Expanding" on page 11 of the Dec. 2004 Update.

Money 2006 is at www.microsoft.com/money.

Encarta 2006 is at www.microsoft.com/products/encarta.

Information about the new keyboards is available at www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/.