Microsoft is not always the bad guy

One of the nicest features of the upcoming release of Microsoft Office 2007 is the ability to save files from any Office program to PDF format natively. I've been using this feature in the current beta version of Office 2007 and it works great. This is one of those things that a lot of our Clients have been asking for over the last couple of years. Last week Microsoft announced that it is removing this feature from Office 2007 due to a threatened lawsuit by Adobe, the owners of the PDF technologies.

Adobe has stated in the past that the PDF format is open. This means that anyone can utilize the standard to create PDF content. I guess that means anyone except Microsoft or anyone else that Adobe may feel threatened by. Microsoft has said that they will remove the feature but offer it as a free download. Adobe wants Microsoft to charge for the download, presumably to ride the coattails of the extremely popular Office product.

This doesn't speak well for Adobe. Going back on public statements is never a good thing. There are several free programs on the Internet that allow you to print to PDF. Why hasn't Adobe gone after them? Perhaps they will now.

I Like Internet Explorer 7

I've been using IE7 Beta 2 on a couple of my computers and so far I really like it. I have yet to run into a problem. IE7 Beta 1 had several issues some of which were rather serious.

I really like the tabbed browsing function. With it you can have several websites open at a time and jump between them simply by clicking on the proper tab. Very useful to me at the office. You can also save a tab group. This allows you to open a whole group of websites as one Favorite. Very nice!

I think my favorite thing in IE7 is printing. In the past when I printed webpages I would many times lose the right side of the page on the printed document. This made reading the document off-line very difficult if not impossible. In IE7 web pages are reformatted for printing and the whole page prints every time. This in itself is worth the upgrade if you do any printing of web pages.

I'm starting the play around with the RSS reader in IE7 but haven't used it enough to know how I like it yet. Overall IE7 seems like a worth while update. Remember that we do not suggest using any beta software on your critical office computers. Beta software can and does cause problems that can sometimes be serious.

Testing Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

First, let me remind you that we do not suggest that our Clients install any beta software on their production computers. Betas always have problems and will most likely cause you grief. Let us geeks do the beta testing.

I had installed IE 7 beta 1 on one of my computers and had problems with several sites including Blogger, this blogging site. I waited a little while after beta 2 came out to download and try it. I finally did it earlier this week and so far no problems.

Some things I like in IE 7 are tabbed browsing and an RSS reader. Tabbed browsing allows you to open several websites or webpages at a time and tab between them. You can save sets of tabs for easy recall. This is very useful for me. I am just playing around with the RSS Reader so I'll have to let you know what I think later. Generally I use FeedDemon for RSS feeds, and I am very happy with it so I don't know if I will end up using the IE reader at all. But I will give it a shot.

Notes From Microsoft Seminar

I attended a Microsoft seminar in Branford yesterday. The seminar covered Windows Vista, the Windows XP replacement, and Office 2007, the next version of Microsoft Office. Both products are scheduled to ship in January 2007.

I really like what I see in Office 2007. The user interface is very intuitive. Several very good features have been added. Files are now saved in XML format which is an open standard and it seems to make them smaller in size as well. The newest version of SharePoint Services was also demoed. In combination with Office 2007, this will form an excellent document mangement and workflow product.

We will be setting up demonstrations of Windows Vista and Office 2007 later in the year to give our Clients a chance to see what's new. Stay tuned!

Vista Release Delayed - Again

Microsoft announced yesterday that the Windows XP replacement, Windows Vista will be delayed until January 2007. The previous release date was November 06. They say that they need a few extra weeks to make sure everything is just right. Large corporate customers should be able to get the software before the end of the year, however. The general public will need to wait until January.

I don't have a problem with the change in dates. Our Clients will not be jumping on the Vista bandwagon for 6 to 12 months after the release anyway. This is a new operating system, there WILL be problems that will need to be addressed.

We have been working with the beta releases of Vista and will of course install the live version as soon as it is released so that we can assist our Clients with making the migration. I will be posting Vista information here as soon as it is appropriate to do so.