Consumer Software, Keyboards Updated

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.