14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft released a free, Web-based test version of the new Office. "The online test drive offers the perfect opportunity for everyone to experience an easier and better way to work," the giant said. Microsoft sustained that more than 2.5 million people have downloaded the Beta 2 version of Office 2007 since it was released last month. Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes confirmed that Office 2007 is planned to be shipped to large corporate customers this year.
The web-base test version of Office 2007 is available here.
Same day, the company announced its plans for unified messaging, a service that will bring together e-mail, instant messaging, telephony and Web conferencing. It also presented some products scheduled for the next year that should support the release of this solution.
Unified Messaging contains a new version of its Live Communications Server presence engine, which allows companies show workers which of their colleagues is online and in what modes they can be communicated with. The software, renamed Office Communications Server, will add new features, such as Internet telephony.
On Tuesday, Microsoft launched a new version of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications and presented how to remove the antipiracy application. "The updated WGA Notifications package includes changes that respond to criticism Microsoft has faced over the software. It no longer checks in with Microsoft after each restart, for example. Our customers have told us that they were disappointed with their WGA Notifications experience, and we have made an effort to improve that with this update," a company representative said in a statement.
For people who don't want to use the product, Microsoft offers step-by-step removal instructions for the old version in a support article posted on its Web site.
"We have heard from customers that some wish to remove the software. Anyone who uninstalls WGA Notifications will still have the new release offered to them via Automatic Updates or Windows Update. Uninstalling the newest version using these instructions is not tested, supported or recommended," the company representative sustained. The main change is that WGA Notifications no longer checks in with Microsoft after each restart.
Same day, Microsoft announced that it plans to launch a community-building Web site where it will share code with developers.
"The CodePlex site will be a venue for Microsoft to provide programmers with tools available under its Shared Source licenses. These licenses allow people to view the source code of products", the software giant said.
The release of the code-sharing website is one of several moves Microsoft is making to adjust to the growing popularity of open-source applications and development practices. CodePlex was developed using Microsoft's collaborative development solution, called Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server.
On Wednesday, the giant updated a critical security patch to repair network connection trouble some people had with the first version of the fix. The first patch, released in security bulletin MS06-025, was launched by Microsoft on this month's Patch Tuesday. It fixes two high-risk security flaws in a Windows routing and remote access component that could enable an attacker control a vulnerable computer.
While Microsoft was working on the updated patch, computer code that exploits the flaw was launched on the Internet. That raises the urgency to fix and forced Microsoft to issue a security advisory earlier this week. Microsoft had advised users who use those types of affected connections not to install the security patch until it released a revised update.
On Thursday, Microsoft released the third and last beta version of Internet Explorer 7. "Security was the number 1 investment we made in IE 7, in terms of our development resources," Tony Chor, Microsoft's group program manager for the browser, said in an interview.
"We did not spend a lot of time working on the IE browser for a few years," Chor sustained. "The increase in security attacks and the threat that our users were under really necessitated a reinvestment in IE primarily around security." The Internet Explore 7 beta 3 contains some feature changes from the beta 2. The new product also offers reliability, compatibility and security patches, more than 1,000 bugs have been repaired in total, according to Microsoft.
"Of course we'd like to ship a product that is not affected by any vulnerability, but that's probably a lofty goal. I think it would be unrealistic to believe that any product would be 100 percent secure," Chor sustained.
On Friday, Microsoft blogger Ian Moulster, posted a message in his blog, announcing that access to Windows Vista Beta 2 download page will be restricted soon. "In case you weren't aware, we are only providing a limited number of copies of Windows Vista Beta 2 - either download or physical copies - and we're fast approaching the cut-off point. What this means is that if you want to get a copy, get it now (and I mean now). Because WE WILL BE WITHDRAWING ACCESS VERY SOON. Did I say that loudly enough?"
Microsoft launched Beta 2 of Windows Vista in May but didn't make it available to the general public until earlier this month. The entire blog is available here.
