Daily Archives: December 11, 2007

microsoft, software

450 fixes in Office 2007 service pack 1

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Microsoft has released Office 2007 service pack 1. But what does it fix? If you go to this page you can download a spreadsheet which lists around 450 fixes. It is a little misleading, since many of the fixes reference pre-existing knowledgebase articles, which I reckon means you may already have the fix. SP1 is still worth it (presuming it works OK) – there are plenty of other issues mentioned.

Of course I went straight to the Outlook 2007 section, as this is the app I have real problems with. This one will be interesting to some readers of this blog:

  • POP3 sync is sometimes slow.  An issue that contributed to this issue was fixed in SP1.

I believe I have noticed this one too:

  • A large number of items may fail to be indexed.

As to whether Outlook 2007 will perform noticeably better after SP1, I am sceptical but will let you know.

As it happens, the top four search keywords for visitors to this blog who come via search engines, for this month, are as follows:

  1. 2007
  2. outlook
  3. vista
  4. slow

It is similar most months. Hmmm, seems there may be a pattern there.

apple, microsoft, multimedia

Wired votes for Zune over iPod

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Wired Magazine, home of Cult of Mac, has declared the Zune 2 a better buy than the iPod Classic.

This may prove any number of things. One possibility is that Microsoft has a winner. After all, it the company’s modus operandi. Windows 1.0, rubbish. Windows 3.0, word-beating.

Then again, perhaps articles with unexpected conclusions just get more links. Like this one.

Not that I care – there is no Zune for the UK.

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internet, microsoft, software

Live Workspace: can someone explain the offline story?

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I showed the Asus Eee PC to a friend the other day. She liked it, but won’t be buying. Why? It doesn’t run Microsoft Office (yet – an official Windows version is planned).

It reminded me how important Office is to Microsoft. No wonder it is fighting so hard in the ODF vs OOXML standards war.

Therefore, if anything can boost Microsoft’s Web 2.0 credentials (and market share), it has to be Office. I’ve not yet been able to try out Office Live Workspace, but it strikes me that Microsoft is doing at least some the right things. As I understand it, you get seamless integration between Office and web storage, plus some extras like document sharing and real-time collaboration.

I still have a question though, which inevitably is not answered in the FAQ. What’s the offline story? In fact, what happens when you are working on a document at the airport, your wi-fi pass expires, and you hit Save? Maybe a beta tester can answer this. Does Word or Excel prompt for a local copy instead? And if you save such a copy, how do you sync up the changes later?

If there’s a good answer, then this is the kind of thing I might use myself. If there is no good answer, I’ll stick with Subversion. Personally I want both the convenience of online storage and the comfort of local copies, with no-fuss synch between the two.

That said, I may be the only one concerned about this. When I Googled for Live Workspace Offline, the top hit was my own earlier post on the subject.