Microsoft Office 2010 Web edition will be free for all to use

Since 2009, there are rumours and talks about there will be a web edition for the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010, and it would most probably be provided at no cost to users.

Now this seems to come to reality soon, as Microsoft just officially announced that there will be Office 2010 Web service to be made available to some 400 millions users of their free Windows Live online service.

According to the source, this Office 2010 Web service will also be free to enterprise workers, provided they are licensed for Office's software maintenance program namely Software Assurance.

You might have noticed that over the past few years, the monopolized market of Microsoft Office has been threaten by rivals such as OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, etc.

In order to counter the competition from OpenOffice.org, selling price of the current Microsoft Office 2007 has been dropping with "special discounts", especially on the Home & Students Edition (3 licenses in a box) which now selling at the price of RM1xx only.

Microsoft's move to provide Office 2010 Web for free is seen to counter the competition from the free Google Docs in the cloud.

This kind of competition is definitely good to us consumers, and we hope that the competition will sustain, so that we could get better quality software, better support, at competitive cost of ownership.

SRI Home Guard Set with fire extinguisher, smoke detector and fire blanket

It is always recommended (in fact, a necessity) to have some sort of safety and prevention against fire in our home. In fact, it is already a must for all business premises. During emergency, these fire fighting equipments could be our property and life saver.

In view of this, I've purchased an SRI Home Guard Set for RM168, which consists of 3 products in a box:

• 1x 1kg ABC powder fire extinguisher
• 1x battery powered photoelectric smoke alarm
• 1x (1.2 meter x 1.2 meter) fire blanket

The 1kg ABC dry powder fire extinguisher is non-toxic, harmless to skin and non-conductor to electricity (compared with water which can conduct electricity). The 1kg tank is pretty small and light, which can be easily operated by women or children. However, the fire must be put off within 7 seconds, or else the ABC powder will finish and you must quickly run away.

The battery powered photoelectric smoke alarm will sound when triggerred by smoke. Just install it to the ceiling, and it is able to cover an area of 60 meter square. It has a tester switch to test for its function. As it is a smoke detector, it should not be installed in areas such as near the stove or on top of the altar.

The fire blanket is made of non-flammable woven fiber glass material, which can be used to put off small fire by covering the fire with it, or to cover our own body when evacuating from fire.

Click here to visit the website of SRI. You can purchase the Home Guard set online there.

Most recent interest rates from commercial banks in Malaysia

For your information, the Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) makes available the most recent interest rates from commercial banks in Malaysia in their website.

The interest rates information covers:

• Fixed deposit rate (from 1 month to 12 months) of each bank
• Savings account interest rate
• Current account interest rate
• BLR rate (for lending)

It is not so straightforward to reach the information, if you don't know where is it located in the ABM website.

Well, here is its URL. You might want to bookmark it if you find it useful:

• http://www.abm.org.my/Interest_Rates_from_Commercial_Banks.aspx