How to keep password in MS-Word 2010 file....?

1. Click the File tab, then click info, then click protect document.
2. Click Encrypt with password.
3. Then One box will appear and type your password and click OK.
4. Then your document will be protected with password.

Microsoft Office 2010 confirmed release in June

It has now been confirmed that the next version of Microsoft Office will indeed be launching in June next year.

It was expected that the shipping date announcement would have come during PDC 2009, however here it comes a couple of weeks later. The beta was made available for free for early testers -- much like what Microsoft did with Windows 7.

The new Starter edition of Office 2010 is to be a ad-supported version of Office which will be only come bundled with new computers.

Now, Windows 7 on a phone!

XP Phone to allow customised hardware, can run Windows 7

User can select three screen sizes: 4.3-inch, 4.7-inch and 7-inch (resolutions: 800x480 or 1024x600 pixels); a choice of their operating system: MS Dos, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Embedded, or Windows 7; and the speed of the AMD Super Mobile CPU: over 1GHz or under 1GHz.

The storage capacity will be customizable as well, with options of SSD (8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB) and HDD (30GB, 60GB, 80GB, 120GB). The RAM is similarly customizable: 512MB, 1GB or 2GB. And users can also pick out a camera from 0.3-megapixel up to 5-megapixel. The phone will come with single SIM card option, and dual-SIM as well.

How to Install Windows 7

Check Your Machine's Specs

The first thing to do is check whether your desktop or laptop PC is capable of running Windows 7. If it's already running Vistawith acceptable performance, then the answer is yes. Officially, you need at least a 1-GHz CPU and 1GB RAM, but testers of the OS have successfully got it running on machines as out of date as a 266-MHz Pentium II with 96MB of RAM. Go ahead and try that kind of thing if you want, just don't use your license key on that type of machine. It may run, but you'll spend a lot of time waiting for it, and it won't display the glassy new Aero interface and enhancements.

If you're unsure whether your current system can run Windows 7, download and run Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor to assess your hardware's capabilities. When I ran it on an aging XP laptop, it told me I needed to back up my files and perform a Custom installation (see below), that my hard disk didn't have enough free space (you need 16GB), and that the laptop wouldn't run Aero Desktop. The good news, however, was that my 1.6-GHz CPU and 1.5GB RAM were sufficient. The advisor actually checks a lot more than the basic system requirements, and it lists every piece of hardware and software you have installed at the bottom of its report.

Choose an Edition

Home Premium, Home Basic, Professional, and Ultimate.The key thing to consider here is that you have to do a clean installation without the ability to carry your apps along if you move from one level of Vista to another level of Windows 7, say from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional. The exception is Windows 7 Ultimate, which will let you perform an in-place upgrade from any level of Vista as long as you don't change whether you're using the 32- or 64-bit version.

After that Choose 64-bit or 32-bit

After Running Setup

Once the setup has run its course, you'll be asked to type in a username (20 characters maximum) and computer name (15 characters maximum). Then you're asked for a password, password confirmation, and password hint. (You can bypass this last step if you're not worried about others getting into your PC.) After this, you're supposed to enter your product key, but since you have a 30-day trial, you don't need to right away. The same page by default sets the system to automatically activate Windows, but you may want to uncheck this if you're just trying out the OS. After 30 days, you'll see messages and warnings that you need to Activate, so it's not like you can forget about it.

Then you choose Security settings. The large choice at the top for Default Settings makes a lot of sense—it turns on automatic updates and checks online to resolve problems. The other two choices, "Install important updates only" and "Ask me later," leave you a bit less protected. After this, you'll be prompted for your Time Zone and be given a chance to check the date and time. Windows gets this over the Internet, so you shouldn't have to set it manually.

Now comes the Welcome screen and the "Windows is preparing your Desktop" Message. And that's it—you're running Windows 7! You'll likely see updates in available in Windows Update, which will probably require a restart.

Your Windows 7 Upgrade: Why and How

Microsoft offers a free Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and that is the best place to begin your upgrade odyssey. Also, here is a link to the official Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration page. You may want to read it before making your upgrade decision.

Be warned: Vista users get to upgrade while XP users will migrate to the new OS. The difference is important, as you will see.

Windows Vista Users -- If you have survived this long with Windows Vista, you may be in no hurry to upgrade. People who like Vista may actually consider Windows 7 a step backwards in some regards.

The good news is that you can upgrade a Windows Vista machine to Windows 7 with a minimum of difficulty. Also, a machine that runs Vista may run Windows 7 a bit faster.

Windows XP Users -- On the Windows Upgrade Advisor page, Microsoft states: "If your PC can run Windows Vista, it can probably run Windows 7, but it's still a good idea to use the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor."

That means newer Windows XP machines can migrate to Windows 7, perhaps where you chose not to have Windows Vista preinstalled. However, if you are running a 5-year-old XP machine, I would not expect to upgrade or to have some regrets if you do.

Be warned that there is no easy upgrade option for Windows XP to Windows 7. Here is what Microsoft has to say about it:

"The upgrade option is not available in Windows 7 Setup when installing Windows 7 on a computer running Windows XP. However, you can use Windows Easy Transfer to migrate files and settings from Windows XP to Windows 7 on the same computer.

"To do this, you must first copy files to a removable media, such as an external hard drive or UFD, or to a network share. Next, you will install Windows 7 and then migrate your files back from the removable media onto your computer. When you are finished, you must install your software programs again, but your files and settings will have been copied from Windows XP."

Corporate IT -- I will not presume to tell IT Pros whether to upgrade. I believe many companies will find the new enterprise features of Windows 7 a good reason to switch, though many may wait until the OS has been on the market for a while and the presumed kinks have been worked out.

Small Business -- I treat small businesses much like consumers and, to that extent, I don't recommend upgrading XP machines unless they are fairly new and you don't mind having some people running XP and others running Windows 7.

Windows 7 is a very nice OS, but upgrading and migrating is not as simple as it might be. Have fun shopping for a new Windows 7 machine.

Windows 7, Microsoft’s most widely tested product, launches at a price cut in India

On Thursday, Microsoft launched its most highly-anticipated product, Windows 7, across the world. And for once, users in India have gotten a break.

According to Microsoft, the Windows 7 beta program had over eight million people signing up for it, making this the most widely-rested beta product in the company’s history. The different versions of Windows 7 are available in India at the following prices:

Windows 7 Home Basic - Rs. 5,899

Windows 7 Home Premium - Rs. 6,799

Windows 7 Professional - Rs. 11,199

Windows 7 Ultimate - Rs. 11,799

The prices are significantly lower than the product is retailing at in the US. So far, the cheapest way to get Windows 7 seems to be in Indonesia, where the Home Basic package costs Rp 9,00,000 (Rs. 4,400 approx).

Windows 7 Likely to Be Better Enterprise Fit Than Vista

Corporate PCs are three times more likely to be equipped to run Windows 7 than had been capable of running Windows Vista when the often-maligned OS was released.
Or at least that is what Softchoice, an IT management company, is reporting about the 450,000 corporate PCs it manages.
According to Softchoice, 88 percent of the corporate PCs it has under management meet the minimum system requirements of Windows 7. Of those not yet equipped to run Windows 7, the majority would simply require more RAM and/or bigger hard disks. To run Windows 7, only 1 percent of PCs would require replacement.
If you look at the optimum configuration for Windows 7 rather than the minimum configuration, 65 percent of Softchoice-managed PCs are Windows 7-ready, and 5 percent would need outright replacement, according to Softchoice. This compares very favorably with the state of Windows PCs.

What are Microsoft and Nokia talking about behind closed doors?

If there needed to be any more indicators of how dominant forces like Apple, Google and BlackBerry have become in the mobile market, here’s the best one yet. In the unlikeliest of tie-ups, Microsoft and Nokia are looking to make a deal to build a mobile version of Microsoft’s Office suite, reports the Wall Street Journal.

It was just a short while ago that Symbian and Windows Mobile ruled the mobile operating system market for high-end phones; QuickOffice was routinely compared to Microsoft’s Pocket Office with staunch loyalists on both sides. To be honest, we have always found QuickOffice to be vastly superior to Pocket Office, so the availability of the latter would not entice us in any way.

But last year, Microsoft and Nokia cut a deal that made it easier for users of Nokia phones to access email on corporate networks running Microsoft's Exchange software.

And the new deal with Nokia, the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, could help Microsoft play a broader role in mobile devices while fortifying its Office business in the face of competition from free Web-based word processors, spreadsheets and other applications from Google, Sun Microsystems, etc.

Microsoft, Intel Design Windows 7 to Be Speedy

Collaboration with Microsoft could allow the software giant's upcoming Windows 7 OS to take advantage of multithreaded and multicore Intel chips for faster application performance, according to an Intel official.
Microsoft and Intel are working together to give Windows 7 the ability to better identify resources available and break up application processing over multiple chip cores and threads.
A feature called SMT parking allows Windows 7 to take advantage of Intel hyperthreading technology for "better performance on hyperthreaded, multicore Intel processors," wrote Joakim Lialias, an Intel alliance manager, in a blog entry on Microsoft's Web site that was posted late Wednesday.
This feature will help users break up tasks like video encoding and image filtering over multiple task-execution threads, said George Alfs, an Intel spokesman. "The more cores you have, the better," Alfs said. Intel chips based on its new Nehalem architecture are capable of running two threads per core, and ultimately all of Intel's laptop and desktop chips will be based on Nehalem, Alfs said.
The companies also worked together on technologies that could allow Windows 7 to boot and shut down faster, Alfs said. Driver and BIOS-level improvement could improve the start, shut-down, sleep and resume times. Chips based on the Nehalem microarchitecture can go into an idle state faster than earlier chips, and Windows 7 is designed to take advantage of that capability, Alfs said.
Longtime Partners
The cooperation of Intel and Microsoft shouldn't come as a surprise. Most PCs today come with Intel chips and Microsoft's Windows operating system, so there is a benefit in both companies working together.
Intel and Microsoft have been collaborating for more than 20 years now, according to Lialias. "Our mutual goal was to provide the most responsive compute experience possible," Lialias wrote.
The blog entry also sheds light on specific hardware-related improvements Microsoft is incorporating into the new OS, something the company has been quiet about. Microsoft wasn't immediately available to comment on the topic.
Observers have criticized Microsoft's previous operating systems for not taking full advantage of multicore and multithreaded chips. Windows 7 will do a more intelligent job of allocating tasks across hardware resources, said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist with In-Stat.
The traditional way of boosting application performance on PCs was by cranking up CPU clock speed, McGregor said. That led to software being written in a sequential mode for execution on one core, with an increase in clock speed providing the performance boost. But over time, chip makers like Intel started adding cores to boost performance, as cranking up clock speed led to excessive heat dissipation and power consumption.
Boosting Multicore
Software typically lags hardware development by three to five years, and software developers are still playing catch-up to hardware improvements. Even today, many consumer software applications are not designed to take advantage of multiple cores. But Windows 7 could encourage developers to start writing applications for multicore chips.
The past few years have also seen the emergence of solid-state drives, which are considered faster than hard drives. Intel and Microsoft are working on technologies to speed access to SSDs by including faster read and write capabilities. Intel plans to deliver firmware for its SSDs that supports the Trim command in Windows 7, which speeds up the writing and erasing of SSDs.
Microsoft is also incorporating DirectX 11 graphics drivers into Windows 7 to effectively break up tasks over multiple cores to boost application and graphics performance. Intel in June already launched new graphics drivers that work with Windows 7, but for now the drivers support only DirectX 10.
Apple has changed the basic architecture of its upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 OS, code-named Snow Leopard, by introducing new features that tap into the processing power of multiple CPU and graphics cores.

Shifts Expression Media's Focus

Microsoft will no longer ship its Expression Media digital asset management software as part of the Expression Stud

io suite effective with the upcoming Expression Studio 3 release, a company representative confirmed by an e-mail message last week.

Instead, Expression Media will be a standalone product marketed to digital photographers, the largest customer base for the product. Expression Media catalogs photos, video, and music. The company also will continue to invest in digital photography, the representative said.

Expression Studio has featured application design tools for Windows and Web interfaces. It has been closely linked with the company's Silverlight rich Internet application technology. The company has planned a July 10 launch event for Expression Studio 3 and Silverlight 3.

[ Complicating matters for Microsoft is the new HTML 5 spec, which could make RIA technology like Silverlight obsolete. ]

"Expression Media is focused on the higher end digital photography market, while the Expression Studio is focused on developers and creative professionals involved in the production of rich interactive experiences rather than photography. As such, it no longer makes sense to ship Expression Media as part of the Studio [suite]," the representative said.

Other tools in the Expression Studio suite have included: Expression Design, for graphic design; Expression Web, for Web design; Expression Blend, for interactive design, and Expression Encoder, for video encoding.

Microsoft on New Xbox 360

Microsoft says all this talk about an upgraded Xbox 360 is not only wrong, it's missing the point. There won't be an upgraded Xbox 360 next year, and in fact, we're only halfway through the current console cycle. What's more, Project Natal, the company's no-controller 3D motion and voice recognition technology is being designed for the existing Xbox 360, not an imaginary "performance-upgraded" one.

In an official statement released to the media, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote

As the Xbox team stated at E3 two weeks ago, we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.

And while games blog Kotaku makes assumptions I wouldn't about the Ballmer quote in the introductory paragraph to this article, the piece is worth scanning for the following quote, from Xbox Live Director of Product Management, Aaron Greenberg:

There will be no new console.

You can't get any less ambiguous than that, and unless you're into torturing semantics, that's book shut, case closed, speculation over.

But what about Natal? Will there be a version of the Xbox 360 with Natal integrated? Maybe, maybe not. Greenberg says they've looked into it, but that's all he's saying. What Steve Ballmer said yesterday doesn't help--it's simply too ambiguous to cite evidentially. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to rethink how this medium works.

Microsoft Names Three in 'Click Fraud' Suit

Microsoft said Tuesday that it filed suit against three Canadians and two associated businesses that the software giant had committed a version of "click fraud".

Microsoft sued Eric Lam, Melanie Suen, and Gordon Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia for breach of contract, torturous interference with business relationships, fraudulent inducement and misrepresentation, computer fraud, conspiracy, and two violations of Washington anti-spyware and consumer laws. Companies named UMGE, Super Continental USA and Super Continental US, both allegedly tied to the trio, were also named, as were 50 "John Doe" plaintiffs.

The complaint accuses the Lams and Suen of abusing Microsoft's adCenter network, specifically exploiting it to benefit their own company, and its ad purchases of keywords associated with so-called "gold farming" in the online game "World of Warcraft," and a separate business reselling car insurance.

The method, according to Microsoft, was a technique known as "pay-per-click fraud".

Advertisers pay a certain amount per keyword or set of keywords to promote their own company when a certain keyword search term is entered, such as "auto insurance". That money is paid out of a budget when a user clicks on the sponsored ad, and is redirected to the site. Once the budget vanished, so would the sponsored ad.

Higher bids receive higher placement, according to the complaint. But the ad is only valuable when a genuine customer visits the sponsoring site. In Microsoft's case, the defendants allegedly either manually clicked competitor's sites, or used automated tools to do so.

The effect, according to Microsoft, was to defraud those who had paid for the higher rankings, as the rival ad budgets were quickly exhausted by the artificial clicks. "This would cause the higher-sponsored sites to drop off the results page or decrease in the rankings, and the perpetrator's lower-ranking sponsored site to rise to a higher position in the sponsored site list," Microsoft's complaint said. "This improved sponsored site positioning would lead to higher and better quality traffic (and presumably greater revenue) for the click fraud perpetrator -- without the perpetrator paying a higher price for keywords."

Microsoft said it would continue to take action against other incidences of click fraud.

"Consumers and businesses around the world rely on free Internet services and content funded and powered by advertising," Tim Cranton, the associate general counsel of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. Indeed, just last week the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a study that found interactive advertising is responsible for $300 billion of economic activity annually and has created 3.1 million U.S. jobs.

"Given the sector's size and strategic importance, it is critically important for the industry to continue working together to help combat fraud against online advertisers and promote a healthy marketplace for online advertising and Internet services to thrive," Cranton added. "This marketplace will help fuel technology advancements worldwide and provide a key element in economic recovery and growth in the years ahead."

Microsoft Silverlight Challenges Adobe AIR

Microsoft Silverlight 3 is catching up to the capabilities of Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight was behind. Silverlight 3 applications can run in or out of the browser, online or offline, with much improved audio, video, and 3-D graphics.

Recently I've been hearing from Adobe on a regular basis about adoptions of the Adobe Flash Platform by large media organizations, such as Clear Channel Radio and MLB.com, for streaming media content to the Web both live and on demand. I've been hearing rather less from Microsoft about Silverlight adoptions.

I think that part of the reason is that Adobe leapfrogged Microsoft last winter in the area of media support, particularly H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio and full HD video playback. These and many other capabilities are included in Silverlight 3, which is currently in a beta that does not include a "go live" license, but will most likely be released in July.

[ See related Test Center reviews: Silverlight 2 | Adobe AIR | Adobe Flex Builder | Curl | Visual Studio 2010 preview. ]

Another area where Flash and Flex were ahead of Silverlight is Windows and Macintosh desktop operation. A number of desktop Flex/AIR applications have become popular, especially Twitter clients; examples include TweetDeck, Twhirl, DestroyTwitter, and Seesmic Desktop. (Let's ignore the memory leak issues they all have in common for the moment.)

Out of the browser

Silverlight 2 didn't have a viable way to run on a desktop; the best a developer could do along those lines was to build a desktop WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application based loosely on a corresponding Silverlight RIA (rich Internet application). Silverlight 3 addresses those issues very nicely, with easy ways to install Silverlight applications on a desktop, update them in place, detect Internet connectivity state changes, and store information locally and securely.

What else was wrong with Silverlight 2? From a developer's point of view, no single tool covered all needs; Expression Blend 2 did graphical XAML design but couldn't edit code, and Visual Studio 2008 did code editing and XAML editing and preview, but couldn't do graphical XAML design. That will be fixed in Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010, both of which have solid betas. For designers, the Expression Blend 3 Preview already imports Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files, another lack in Blend 2, and will add "SketchFlow" prototyping and interactive behaviors in a future release.

In addition, Silverlight 2 lacked 3-D graphics, pixel shader effects, writing to bitmaps, animation effects, themes, decent data binding, and a reasonable assortment of controls. Those deficiencies are all fixed in Silverlight 3.

Rich and obscure

One problem area that Flash and Silverlight have had in common is SEO (search engine optimization). A search engine such as Google can only see the text on a Web page; RIA applications historically have not displayed usable text or allowed external links to states "deep" inside the animation, concentrating instead on their forte -- flashy graphics. Recently there's been some improvement in SEO for Flash and Flex, using external JavaScript objects such as SWFObject (for dynamic loading) and SWFAddress (for deep linking), at least for those who to take the trouble to revamp their Flash sites; Silverlight 3 addresses both SEO and deep linking internally.

Silverlight has long been strong on execution speed and language support. Both of those are getting better still in version 3.

I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications. Some mixed but Microsoft-oriented shops might phase out their Adobe work in favor of Silverlight on integration grounds, but some won't. Meanwhile, the next generation of streaming media adoptions are likely to be closely contested, now that the two technologies are near parity.

Of course, in a few months everything will change again. Stay tuned.

Microsoft Silverlight 3 beta

Pros Silverlight 3 applications can run in or out of the browser, online or offline. Much improved audio and HD video support. 3-D graphics and pixel shading effects. Many more controls, with enhanced data support. Expression Blend can import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files.

Cons No go-live license for the beta; need to wait for release, probably in July.

Cost Free

Platforms Development: Windows XP SP2 or later with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1. Runtime: Windows XP SP2 or later, or Intel-based Mac OS X.

Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate: An Early Look

The Windows 7 Beta, the next version ofMicrosoft's flagship operating system, was all about finalizing underlying changes to the system architecture. The Release Candidate, which the company will make available on the TechNet website on April 30th and available for public consumption on May 5th, puts some finishing touches on some new features and adds a good deal of polish to the OS. And that polish is apparent from the first moments you begin installing it: The install routine has been refined, with new icons and a few splash screens ("Checking video performance") with a starburst-type effect. Even the Starting Windows and log-on screens gain a cool, patterned background.


The Windows 7 Beta was lauded for its stability. The Release Candidate makes the operating system feel just a touch faster; it's quicker to load and just a bit more responsive. And you'll be happy to hear that it installed in no time, too—as little as 20 minutes in my experience. Compared to the hour it often took to install Windows Vista, this thing flies.

Microsoft Plans Xbox 360 "Game of the Year" Bundle

Microsoft will launch the Xbox 360 Game of the Year bundle sometime in May, the company said by way of its "Major Nelson" blog on Monday.

It's a pretty simple deal: a Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite, bundled with Halo 3 and Fable II, all for $399. As Major Nelson points out, that's the normal price of the Elite -- meaning that the games are included for free.

Bad news for Europeans, however: the deal will be offered everywhere but there; there was no explanation given. There's also the question of how many gamers out there want both an Xbox 360 Elite but don't own either game.

"Major Nelson" is the blog name of Larry Hyrb, the Microsoft director of programming for Xbox Live.

Microsoft Details Dates, Versions of Office 2010

Along with Microsoft's announcement Tuesday about the availability of a preview version of its next-generation mail server, Exchange 2010, the company gave out a couple of details about that most widely used software of all – Microsoft Office.

After not mentioning the suite for nearly six months, the company has come out with a general timeframe for the productivity software's release and tipped its hand as to the naming of the suite—which will apparently get the "2010" moniker like today's Exchange product. The company had previously been referring to the product as "Office 14."

On the heels of this snippet of information, tech sites have dug up the information that there will be both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the desktop software. Up to now, the software has only been available in the 32-bit flavor. But with nearly all new Windows PCs shipping with the 64-bit edition of the operating system, the 64-bit version of Office is a natural. Microsoft staff confirmed that there will be both 32- and 64-bit versions, in a statement sent to PCMag.com.

The pertinent paragraph in Microsoft's statement is this, which decisively uses the new names:

"Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010."

The main advantage of moving to 64 bits is the ability to take advantage of more RAM than the 4-Gbyte limit with 32-bit OSes – theoretically up to a whopping 16.8 million terabytes, though other system limitations make that much unfeasible at present. But those with huge databases and spreadsheets, as well as those who run lots of programs simultaneously would benefit. Because of the memory advantage, most Microsoft server products already have moved to 64 bits, such as Windows Server 2008.

Possibly more significant for the next version of Office will be the addition of a Web-based version of the software. The company announced this at its Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles last September. One intriguing element of that announcement was that there would be an ad-supported version of the Web version, which might mean a free version for consumers. A Web based version also means that it will be possible to run office on Linux and on the Apple iPhone.

In other Office news, Microsoft said that Mac users can try a 30-day trial version of Office 2008, for free. The trial version is completely full-featured, but just time-constrained. Users can register for a trial key, then buy the full version from Microsoft's Mactopia site, or pick up a retail copy from an Apple authorized reseller. The Home and Student Edition of Office 2008 for Mac is priced at $150, the Standard Edition at $400, and the Special Media Edition is priced at $500, according to reports.

Microsoft: No Office 2010 Beta for You

Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that it will not open Office 2010 beta testing to the general public, but will instead limit the preview to a large group of invite-only users starting in the third quarter of 2009.

The technology preview, as Microsoft will call the beta program, will involve "thousands of users," a company spokeswoman said. But it will be a closed group, in that Microsoft will not post a beta version of Office 2010 to its site for just anyone to download.

"At this point, there is no plan" to offer the beta to the general public, she added when asked whether Microsoft would release a preview to any and all.

Office 2010, the moniker Microsoft announced today for its next application suite -- the bundle had previously carried the code name "Office 14" -- will be issued in beta form to workers in Microsoft's largest corporate accounts as well as run-of-the-mill consumers, the spokeswoman said.

By omitting a general beta, Microsoft breaks with the approach it used to test Office 2007, the dramatically revamped suite it introduced to business customers in late 2006 and launched in retail January 2007. For Office 2007, Microsoft delivered two betas, one in March 2006, the second in September; in between it let users try out the suite's applications from within their browsers.
The Microsoft spokeswoman also confirmed today that Microsoft will ship two separate versions of Office 2010, one suitable for 32-bit operating systems, the other offering applications written specifically for 64-bit.

Late last month, ZDNet blogger Ed Bott rooted out references in a recent build of Windows 7 to a 64-bit edition of Office 2010, which was still called Office 14 at the time. Last Friday, Rafael Rivera, perhaps best known as one of two bloggers who sparked criticism of Windows 7's redesigned User Account Control (UAC) two months ago, reported that an Office 2010 add-on posted to the Microsoft download site was specific to 64-bit. The add-on, dated 4/9/2009 and labeled "Microsoft Office ScreenTip Language (64-bit)," was available as late as early Wednesday, but has since been pulled from the site.

Office 2010 will be the first Microsoft's suite to boast a version that natively supports 64-bit.

Microsoft has said it will ship Office 2010 for Windows sometime in the first half of next year.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 Coming This Month

Microsoft has announced that it will start pushing Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) to customers this month.

In an entry to the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) blog, Cecilia Cole, a Microsoft program manager, said that the service pack would be posted to the update service in April. She did not name an exact date, but said that more information would be published on an Office-specific blog "later this month".

When Microsoft releases updates for WSUS users - who are almost exclusively enterprises that feed their systems patches from their own servers - it also makes those same updates available on Microsoft Update, the similar service for consumers and small businesses. Microsoft Update, a superset of the better-known Windows Update, provides patches for Windows and some of its other software, notably Office.

Microsoft first talked up Office 2007 SP2 nearly six months ago, when it said it would ship the update between February and April 2009.

Office 2007 debuted at retail in January 2007, concurrent with the launch of Windows Vista.

Microsoft Eases 'Downgrade' Rules for PC Makers

Microsoft Corp. has relaxed its "downgrade" rules and will let computer makers continue to sell PCs preinstalled with the aged Windows XP for as long as six months after it launches Windows 7, according to a report published Wednesday.

The information obtained by TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that last weekend leaked Microsoft's plans to offer free or discounted upgrades to Windows 7, seems to confirm other reports that Hewlett-Packard Co. had been given the green light to sell new PCs with XP Professional through April 2010.

Yesterday, TechARP spelled out the new optionsMicrosoft will offer computer makers such as HP and Dell Inc.

For six months after Windows 7's official launch, a date Microsoft calls "general availability," Microsoft will let OEMs sell new PCs equipped with Windows XP Professional and market them as such directly to customers or through their channel partners. Those machines must include physical media for Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, the two editions that provide downgrade rights.

Microsoft Laptop Hunters Ad: Round Three

Microsoft changed demographics with its third addition to its Laptop Hunters ad campaign. This time, Mom Lisa and 11 year-old Jackson go off to shop for a laptop under $1500, using the same Mac-bashing template as the previous ads.

The pair is looking for a computer with "speed, a big hard drive" and a good gaming machine under $1500, for which Microsoft kindly offers to pay. Lisa and Jackson rush off to BestBuy where they look at a few laptops, including some Macs.