Office 2007 SP1 was released on Tuesday, correcting most of the bugs & performance issues and fixed security loops, but with no significant add-on.

Excel 2007
Several stability, general usability, and compatibility improvements have been incorporated into Microsoft Office Excel® 2007.
- Office Excel 2007 no longer stops responding in some instances when opening a workbook containing calculations.
- Office Excel 2007 workbooks that are saved in Page Break Preview mode and opened in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 no longer produce an error when switched to Normal view.
- When inputting calculations that should result in numbers 65,534 through 65,536, Office Excel 2007 no longer returns the display error of 100,001.
- Office Excel 2007 now retains custom colours on shapes in Excel 2003 worksheets.
- Office Excel 2007 no longer misplaces or wraps labels in charts when the workbook is reopened.

Outlook 2007
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 benefits from a number of fixes and enhancements that make the popular messaging client more stable and easier to use.
- Office Outlook 2007 no longer closes unexpectedly when the junk e-mail rule is set to null.
- Body content in HTML-formatted e-mail messages now appears properly in the preview pane or when the message is opened.
- Items moved from an offline folder file (.ost) to a personal folder file (.pst) now display properly in the preview pane.
- In search folders, Office Outlook 2007 now shows the accurate count for unread items that are hidden.
- When scheduling a resource such as a meeting room in meeting requests, the public free/busy information for the resource is now complete and visible in Office Outlook 2007.
- When users forward plain-text e-mail messages with attachments, the body text is now retained.
- If the Mailbox Cleanup wizard starts while the user is dragging a message into a folder, Office Outlook 2007 no longer closes unexpectedly.

PowerPoint 2007
Fixes in Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 make the presentation application even more reliable, especially when used in conjunction with Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, Web sites that use forms authentication, or event macros.
- Users who have started an event macro in Office PowerPoint 2007 can now advance slides by right-clicking and then choosing Next or Previous.
- When users try to open a presentation in Office PowerPoint 2007 from a Web site using forms authentication, the presentation will now appear properly.
- Users can now open presentations in Office PowerPoint 2007 from e-mail attachments in Office Outlook Web Access.
- Office PowerPoint 2007 no longer crashes when the user programmatically accesses the parent property of the Hyperlinks Collection Object in the Office PowerPoint 2007 object model. - Text formatting now behaves similarly to previous versions of PowerPoint, where new text retains the formatting of the deleted text instead of using the formatting of the character to the left.

Visio 2007
Microsoft Office Visio® 2007 now properly redraws shapes when users apply a dynamic connector that is part of a group of shapes in Office Visio 2007.

Word 2007
By taking care of several small stability and usability details, Microsoft Office Word 2007 is a more useful and reliable tool for everyday document creation tasks.
- With Office Word 2007, users can now open and edit embedded objects that contain other embedded objects.
- When using smart documents in Office Word 2007, the Document Actions task pane no longer disappears when moving the pointer into the Reviewing pane. Additionally, task panes opened earlier no longer appear unexpectedly.
- Office Word 2007 properly creates and updates a table of contents in unprotected sections of documents that also contain sections protected for forms.
- Office Word 2007 no longer prints an extra page when users choose a printer with the duplex option enabled.

Download Office 2007 SP1 (218.3 MB)

Download Vision 2007 SP1 (102.3 MB)


Windows XP SP3
Microsoft have made public a Release Candidate (RC) test build of Windows XP SP3. The final version is expected to be released in the first half of 2008.

XP SP3 is primarily a collection of fixes and updates that Microsoft has released over the past few years since it rolled out XP SP2 in 2004. XP SP3 also does include a few brand-new features, like black-hole router detection; support for Network Access Protection (NAP) security-quarantining; enhanced security for administrator and service policy entries; inclusion of the Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module; and Windows Product Activation modifications.

& we can’t forget the overhyped 10% performance increase promised with Windows XP SP3…

[via blogs.zdnet.com]

Windows Vista SP1
The RC build of Windows Vista SP1 is expected to be released during this week and it seems that both XP SP3 and Vista SP1 will be released at the same time next year.

Windows Vista SP1 promised to be the “real” Vista everyone expected but it has also removed the Windows Genuine Activation – that sends a non-activated copy of Vista into reduced functionality mode (the infamous kill-switch) and replaced it with only the irritating notifications.

The new SP1-era WGA code is designed to detect two of the most common Vista cracks: one tries to fool Vista into thinking that it’s an OEM copy with a matching OEM BIOS; the other rolls the mandatory activation checks ahead to 2099 or some other ridiculously distant date. Both the OEM BIOS and Clock Timer hacks are detected when SP1 is installed; the goal, says Microsoft, is to alert innocent or naive consumers who’ve been ripped off by crooked system makers or who purchased hacked Vista copies from shady online vendors. But even those known fakes will run indefinitely if you choose to ignore the messages.

& for users who have installed a pirated copy of Vista, they get discounts from Microsoft for their efforts! (They can make their Vista legal by purchasing original keys from Microsoft!)
Windows Vista Home Basic, $89
Windows Vista Home Premium, $119
Windows Vista Business, $145
Windows Vista Ultimate, $199

[via blogs.zdnet.com]