14 DAY TRIAL // Back in November 2006 and in January 2007, Microsoft accompanied the business and consumer launches of Windows Vista with the release of the Office 2007 System. In mid 2007, as Vista Service Pack 1 was delivered to testers, the first service pack for Office 2007 was also made available, pointing to another synchronized release, in the first quarter of 2008. But, the fact of the matter is that Office 2007 Service Pack 1 has beaten Vista SP1 to the market. Microsoft pointed to December 11 as the official availability date for Office 2007 SP1 and lived up to its promise. Well, not quite, but by the end of today, Office 2007 users will be able to upgrade to SP1.
"Today SP1 ships. It's not up there yet but should be later today. Looking down the list of fixes, here are some that caught my eye: communicator won't let you IM a distribution list any more for security reasons; icons for presence have been modified so that red/green colour blind people can tell the difference between available and busy by looking at the icon rather than the text next to it; the Excel bug with 65,534 getting shown as 100,001 is fixed; SharePoint works on Windows Server 2008; ASP.net AJAX supported on SharePoint for web parts and Outlook delays with opening large psts eliminated", revealed Darren Strange, UK Product Manager 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Strange explained that the work that went into building the first Service Pack for Office 2007 was focused on the areas of the System, where user feedback as well as the automatic input received via the error reporting tools, pointed to various issues. As such Office 2007 SP1 is designed to enhance stability, performance and security. As I have already said, Office 2007 SP1 is not available for download yet, but just keep your eyes on Softpedia and you'll get it as soon as it will come out.
"Service Pack 1 eliminates distractions and performance issues that disrupt workflow, allowing employees to be more productive in the work that they do. SP1 is also an important milestone for deploying the 2007 Office system, making it easy to deploy the most secure and reliable version of Office to date. Initially, SP1 will be available as a free download. SP1 will be made available via Automatic Update in the next 3-6 months, and we'll issue 30 day advance notice prior to delivering SP1 via automatic update", Strange added.