Advice of the Day

Learn Excel early on in your life. It's really not a hard program to use, but it's like learning a foreign language - if approached a young age it's incredibly easier to decipher and command.

Everyone should be required to have working knowledge of all basic Microsoft Office programs before graduating from college regardless of major. I distinctly remember only making one PowerPoint presentation and creating one Excel workbook in college. Meanwhile, I wrote nearly 200 papers. Those papers helped hone valuable skills that I use everyday. However, taking crash courses in PowerPoint and Excel on the job can lead to some interesting (often painful) results.

On a related note, props to Microsoft for planning to release free versions of its office suite with Windows 2007 (to be released in 2010.) The spokesperson did add a caveat about the online programs not functioning as well... as an explanation on how they plan to recover for any losses in the software revenue. They probably should have cleared that comment with Marketing, but they have nothing but time to develop and provide top quality products. As much as I trust Microsoft and its ability to innovate and adapt to meet the times (both in its business and technology), it always seems to drag its feet which is not beneficial to its image - especially to web-savvy clients who, for some reason, often favor Macs. Still, kudos for effort and for officially embracing Cloud Computing.