REDMOND, WASH.-BASED MICROSOFT CORP. has been busy these past few months in rolling out new software and hardware. There’s a lot to explain to technophile financial advisors who like to take advantage of the latest productivity tools.

First up, the most exciting of all is the new hardware that Microsoft has just launched in two broad categories: smartphones and hybrid laptops.

Microsoft had fallen behind in the smartphone stakes. The firm’s 2014 purchase of Nokia Corp.’s devices and services business proved ill-advised, and Microsoft wrote off the US$7.6-billion acquisition a year later, realizing that it didn’t want to be involved in the cutthroat, low-margin smartphone business. Microsoft has scaled down its smartphone production to just a few models.

In early October, Microsoft unveiled two new smartphones: the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, with 5.2-inch and 5.7-inch screen sizes, respectively. These smartphones sport the hardware features you’d expect in a flagship smartphone, including a 20-megapixel camera that you happily will use in place of your point-and-shoot model.

These new smartphones also will be the first to support Continuum, a Windows 10 feature that lets users run applications across all of their Windows-enabled devices using the same interfaces. The upshot of this ability is a smartphone that can function as a PC. Plugging your Lumia smartphone into a Microsoft Display Dock lets you hook up your Lumia to a PC monitor and use the mobile device like a Windows 10 PC.

Aside from the apps, another thing that carries over from the smartphone to Microsoft’s larger-format devices is Windows Hello. This system identifies a user visually. The result: a computer that wakes up and logs you in when it sees you, based on what you look like. Say goodbye to passwords.

Lumia smartphones scan your iris using a front-facing camera designed for this very purpose. And the new hybrid laptops that Microsoft introduced incorporate high-end 3D cameras using Intel Corp.’s RealSense technology to recognize their users.

New Surface models

With the introduction of the Surface in 2012, Microsoft tried to reinvent the tablet by making it powerful enough to replace a laptop. Fans of the device eagerly awaited the launch of the next version of the Surface; in early October, the firm unveiled the Surface Pro 4.

There are some cosmetic innovations. The new model features a slightly thinner frame with a marginally larger screen (12.3 inches instead of the Surface Pro 3’s 12 inches). But the real innovations are under the hood. The new device features the next-generation Intel Core processor family, nicknamed Skylake, which gives the Surface Pro 4 30% increased performance over its predecessor.

Microsoft also has beefed up the new device’s display, offering 2,736 x 1,824 pixels over the Surface Pro 3’s 2,160 x 1,440 pixels. This could be a mixed blessing, though; when sharing work with people on a Surface Pro 3, I kept getting requests to zoom the screen size, because text was just too small – a drawback that will be compounded by the Surface Pro 4’s screen resolution.

The Surface Pro 4’s keyboard will impress users who have gotten used to the Surface Pro 3’s typing cover. The new device features backlit keys with wider spacing and better keystroke travel, making for a more laptop-like typing experience.

The real “wow” factor is reserved for the Surface Book, Microsoft’s first homemade, bona fide laptop – which promises to be the device that tech-heads always wanted. But whether advisors will need the level of power it offers remains to be seen.

The device offers a full laptop keyboard with a detachable 13.5-inch screen that turns into a Surface tablet. This feature will come in handy if you’re planning to show presentations to clients – and draw on them with a pen. Detachability also will provide that extra sense of luxury when you’re reading on the couch.

Under the hood, the Surface Book features the same processor family as the Surface Pro 4, but also offers separate, non-integrated graphics. This feature will appeal mostly to creative graphics types, and most advisors will do just fine cranking out their PowerPoint presentations on the Surface Pro 4’s integrated graphics processor. Separate graphics processor capability can come in handy when driving multiple computer displays or for playing a quick video game during your downtime.

The Surface Book also features a longer battery life, offering a maximum of 12 hours, compared with the Surface Pro 4’s nine hours. For advisors who plan to be on the road all day without access to power, that’s a definite plus.

These new smartphones and hybrid laptops are the first truly designed to work with Windows 10 and, as such, are supposed to offer a unified experience. Apps written to specification will run the same on all device formats, meaning that you can work on that PowerPoint presentation or Word document on your smartphone or your Surface.

Office 2016

It’s no coincidence that Microsoft released the PC version of Office 2016 in September for subscribers to its Office 365 service. This software suite includes several new features designed to make life easier for advisors, including the “tell me what to do” text box at the top of the screen. This lets you ask Office for certain commands, such as “record a macro” or “insert a picture.” Anyone who has had to tussle with the often confusing Office ribbon menu will be grateful for this.

Other features include a research pane that brings up Wikipedia definitions and other information on selected words. But perhaps one of the most important features for many advisors will be the several new graphs included in Excel, which may help to communicate financial planning information to clients more easily.

On the collaboration side, you can share and edit documents with others simultaneously; with built-in Skype integration, you can talk about a document at the same time. And those with Office 365 enterprise accounts can take advantage of a Groups service in Outlook that enables groups to share files, calendars, contacts and messages.

Microsoft is attempting to revitalize its end-user devices and software offerings with this raft of new releases. The hardware is expensive, though. The Surface Book, for example, is a premium product and a fully loaded model will cost more than $4,000 after taxes. As well, reports suggest that no Canadian wireless carrier will offer the Lumia smartphones, which means that if you truly want a full-spectrum portfolio of Microsoft products, you’ll have to buy an unlocked Lumia phone from Microsoft with no carrier subsidy. Feeling rich?

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