In an official Office Next blog post, Microsoft details the new Office Home & Student 2013 RT for Windows RT tablet devices. Not only does Office Home & Student 2013 RT deliver stunning battery life, but also great performance and responsiveness on the ARM platform.
“Developing Office Home & Student 2013 RT has been a ton of work but also great fun. You’ll find Office for Windows RT to be a full-featured member of the Office family. We hope the work we’ve done helps make Office a great part of your Windows RT experience,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post. Office Home & Student 2013 RT is similar to its Office 2013 counterpart, except that it is optimized for the ARM platform and automatically enables touch mode. In an effort to reduce CPU usage, Office for Windows RT stops blinking the cursor after a few seconds of being idle, to minimize the power impact. There is also a caching feature that improves performance and responsiveness, as well as improves battery life. “For example, rather than including large number of templates and clipart on the drive, we opted to put frequently used templates on the drive while making the more extensive collection available via the start center in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and also online,” Microsoft added.
Office Home & Student 2013 RT can’t be downloaded or purchased separately and is only available on Windows RT devices. Once the final edition of Office Home & Student 2013 RT is released, your Office RT installation on your Windows RT device will be automatically updated with the final edition for free via Windows Update. This update will roll out between November and January depending on the user’s language.
