Later on the intense interest in OOXML vs ODF during concluding year'due south ISO document standardisation wars, I'm surprised that the inclusion of OpenDocument support in the newly-released Office 2007 SP2 has attracted and so trivial attention. Well, non really surprised. The general public doesn't care much about document formats every bit such, just that the documents they ship and receive open OK. The anti-OOXML fervour was almost exploiting a chink in the armour of Microsoft'due south de facto nigh-monopoly in Role suites.

Well, Microsoft has ticked the box now. I haven't washed exhaustive tests; but I did some sanity checks. I opened a .docx (OOXML) in Give-and-take, saved information technology as OpenDocument Text; opened in OpenOffice.org, saved information technology out to a new .odt document, opened that in Word, saved it out as docx. And you lot know what? Information technology looks the aforementioned. Even the styles are still there. What's more the conversion was fast and user-friendly, merely a Save As. All in all, a dissimilarity with the wretched experience I had with the earlier Microsoft-sponsored converter.

Next, I tried a pocket-sized stress-test; a .doc bidding bill of fare for Contract Bridge that has some tricky tables. This document crashed WordPerfect's .odt converter. Discussion could happily save it as .odt and reopen. Opening the exported .odt in OpenOffice showed some minor differences – role of the tabular array went slightly out of alignment, as the illustration shows (Word is on the left, OpenOffice 3.0 on the right), but zero drastic.

Is this the end of the format wars? Non quite; at that place is still a long list of features non supported past the conversion, and if you want an like shooting fish in a barrel life it still pays to stay with i vendor'southward Office suite. My impression though is that Microsoft has done a decent job, and that for everyday documents the conversion volition work every bit expected.

For the OpenDocument crowd, getting the format incorporated into Microsoft Office is a victory of sorts, just non the real goal, which is to constitute it as the universal document format. Microsoft is betting that its inclusion will help it sell Office, but that customers will still mostly employ .dr. or .docx (and the Excel equivalents). If plenty institutions mandate OpenDocument, that bet could yet fail, but correct now that looks unlikely.

Update

Ivan Zlatev reports on a less successful import hither.

Update 2

While word processing import and consign is reasonable in some circumstances, there is a deal-breaking problem with spreadsheet import and export: all formulae are either ignored or broken. That is, you can salvage from Excel to .ods, open up in OpenOffice.org Calc, and go cells like msoxl:=SUM(C6:C8) (in plain text). You tin can salvage from OpenOffice.org Calc, open in Excel, and detect formulae converted to evidently text. If you salve and open sheets from Excel, just in .ods format, it works; the clue why is in the OpenOffice.org rendering. It appears Microsoft has stuck past the letter of the standard, which does not specify how formulae work, but broken any kind of meaningful interoperability.

The poor performance of Outlook 2007 has driven many users to Google for solutions, and a skillful proportion arrive at this blog, which is why there are almost 200 comments to this post.

Microsoft says it has fixed the problems with Office 2007 Service Pack 2 – though this comment disagrees. Personally I've not installed SP2 yet, but I did use a Feb update which equally I understand it has almost of the functioning fixes, and I've establish noticeable improvement.

On my 64-chip desktop, with Outlook 2007 set with cached mode turned off (not the default) I'm enjoying excellent functioning despite a huge mailbox.

Microsoft has sponsored a benchtest [pdf] that shows (as you would expect) substantial speed gains in SP2, and claims that the number of deejay writes the latest Outlook makes is much reduced. There's too a performance tip buried in there: plough the To-Practice bar off if y'all want best responsiveness.

I'm sceptical about tests like this which oftentimes don't match real-earth experience. I wonder if the testers had anti-virus software running, as highly recommended by Microsoft, but which slows down performance a lot particularly where there is intensive disk action.

Still, it's encouraging that Microsoft has taken the trouble seriously.

Update

I installed SP2 shortly after writing this post. So far, no noticeable impact on Outlook vs the February update.

Windows 7 volition be on sale pre-installed from 23rd October 2009, co-ordinate to plausible leaks. Then much for "when it's ready." Yous heard it from me commencement though: on 29th October 2008 I posted that Windows 7 may exist less than a yr away.

The OEM vendors need at least a couple of months to prepare and distribute their machines with the release build. Vista was done on November 8th 2006, fifty-fifty though it was not "launched" until Jan. RTM July for Windows 7?

Technorati Tags: windows 7,microsoft

I fabricated my pilgrimage to see Dylan last nighttime, at the National Indoor Loonshit in Birmingham.

I call it a pilgrimage because first, I am in awe of the homo, and 2d, my expectations in terms of entertainment are modest. He does gruff these days – very gruff. That'south how it is, and you have to get over information technology or not go.

I started my evening with a drink at the Prince of Wales, a traditional pub in the middle of Birmingham's urban desert. It felt very much as information technology did a couple of years agone when I concluding saw Dylan. Mostly older fans, and many of the ones I spoke to had non seen Dylan for years; 1978 in i instance. I did run into a hard cadre fan though, who had already seen Dylan at Sheffield and at the Roundhouse in London. Sheffield was better, he said.

Dylan'south new CD is just out. I asked the bout veteran if he would play anything from it. "No hazard." Why non? "Because he'south crackers. He really is".

I reject a programme at £12 and a poster at £7. I still want a souvenir, so I pick up a free flyer instead. My ticket is an eticket, which lacks soul; I plant myself picking up someone else's discarded ticket at the cease as a memento (I withal take my Earls Court ticket from 27th June 1981; groovy memories).

I am seated in the center of the stalls, just in front of the soundboard. Information technology is a skillful spot for audio, but my advice if you go to run across Dylan is to get as close to the forepart as possible. Otherwise, you lot will be surrounded by chatterers, as I was. Pleasant people I am sure; but I did not spend my money to hear them. One adult female tried to engage me in conversation during Stuck inside of Mobile. She saw me taking notes and said, "Are you lot putting all this on Facebook?"

All this highlights the problem with this kind of concert: Dylan is out of sorts with his audition. He plays keyboard most of the night and faces sideways across the stage, possibly signifying lack of appointment. I enjoyed the concert, by and large, and at times it was outstanding. Gruff Bob works best on songs like Workingman's Dejection and Ain't Talkin'. Mystical and powerful. But many of those present exercise non know these songs and do not respond. Unfortunately, the songs they practice answer to, like Mobile, or Highway 61 are all as well often performed as throwaways; enjoyable, but much less than Dylan is capable of.

Dylan'due south fairground keyboard conveys a cheery mood – nearly too cheery for my taste. I prefer my It' Own't Me Infant or Man in the Long Black Coat dark and intense. His voice is still powerful though. I am convinced that at the correct moment Dylan tin can be as utterly transcendent in 2009 every bit e'er in his career.

Desolation Row – not a corking performance, simply I love to hear this song. The lyrics are incessantly fascinating. The large acoustic bass works well.

Towards the cease we get Watchtower, a favourite of mine. "Nobody knows what any of it is worth", sings Dylan. The signal is reinforced when I pass a couple of fans on my fashion back to the station. "I'chiliad distressing it wasn't very skilful", one says to his friend. I say zip of course, just I am surprised past my internal reaction. What do yous hateful? Yous JUST SAW BOB DYLAN.

The set listing:

The Wicked Messenger
It Ain't Me, Baby
High Water
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Dejection Again
Man In The Long Black Coat
Desolation Row
Honest With Me
Workingman's Blues
Highway 61 Revisited
Ballad Of A Sparse Man
Nearly Likely You Go Your Manner (And I'll Get Mine)
Own't Talkin'
Thunder On The Mountain
Like A Rolling Rock

All Along The Watchtower
Spirit On The Water
Blowin' In The Wind

Roger Jennings shares his frustration that afterwards nearly two years in beta, Information Carte direction for Windows Live still does non work reliably.

I've tried this before, but since switching to 64-bit Vista I've not used CardSpace. I had another await.

My first experience was poor. I headed to the card direction page, entered the details of a Live ID, and clicked Change. Net Explorer appeared to hang. I then tried to open CardSpace in Control Panel, simply it gave me an error message. I looked in the event log and found a series of effect 269 errors, with the message:

The Windows CardSpace service is too busy to process this request.  User has too many outstanding requests.

along with a .NET stack trace.

Undeterred, I rebooted and tried again. I took the precaution of adding a carte to CardSpace before visting the sign-upward folio. Everything worked, and I associated a new card with my Live ID.

Here'southward how it works now. Let'south say I'thou not logged in and I endeavor to visit a Alive property such as SkyDrive, my favourite:

I get redirected to the Alive sign-in folio, where I tin choose between countersign and data card in a drop-down menu:

I still have to blazon my email accost. I'm not certain why that's necessary, since the electronic mail address is also on the carte. Still, I go ahead and so get to select a card. The dialog appears on the secure desktop, e'er a slightly jarring experience. I choose the one associated with Windows Alive, which happens to be the only card I have:

Soon after, I'm in:

Did I proceeds annihilation over typing the password? In terms of user experience, not actually. Still, I never typed my password, which means information technology could not be phished. Fifty-fifty if I attempted to send my self-issued card to a fake site, information technology withal would not be any use to the phishing site. If I could use the same card for multiple sites, and had cards from trusted third-party identity providers, and so I would begin to do good further. This paper from 2006 – iii years ago – has more than information.

Whenever I've researched CardSpace or talked to its champion Kim Cameron I've been impressed. It's tough for journalists though, since the organisation is hard to explain in a few words, and few people sympathize information technology. It is even harder considering Microsoft has done so little to promote it. Further, if both Jennings and myself had problems using it, that does non say much for the reliability of the client. Since rebooting my PC fixed it, it suggests the problems may non be at the Alive.com finish, but information technology is hard to tell. Overall, an opportunity squandered.

I ran into a pocket-size but thought-provoking trouble in my sample Silverlight database awarding. I wanted to call a web service, and only telephone call a second web service if the offset was successful. The problem is that all web service calls are asynchronous, so you cannot practise this with a simple if argument. The quick fix I used was to store my intended operation in a PendingOperation variable. When the start spider web service completes, information technology checks for a awaiting operation. If the first call succeeds and finds a pending operation, it calls the second web service to complete it.

My workaround is OK, merely information technology got me thinking virtually the all-time manner of doing this. What if you had a sequence of spider web services to telephone call, and wanted to check for the success of each 1 before proceeding to the next? I discussed this on the Silverlight forums and was directed to this article by Daniel Vaughan which describes how to practise this in a groundwork thread. I haven't tried his code yet; but information technology strikes me that this could be useful; I'd like to see Microsoft build something like information technology into the core framework. Since all the calls take place on a groundwork thread, in that location is no danger of locking upward the user interface.

If RIA programming is as important every bit some suggest we will have to go used to this kind of problem.

I've been agreeable myself creating a elementary online database application using Silverlight. I had this mostly working a while back, but needed to finish off some pieces in order to become information technology fully functional.

This is created using Silverlight 2.0 and demonstrates the following:

  • A leap DataGrid (every bit you can come across, work is yet needed to get the dates formatted sensibly).
  • Integration with ASP.Net hallmark. Y'all have to log in to see the data, and you have to log in with admin rights to exist able to update information technology.
  • Create,Call up,Update,Delete using ASP.NET spider web services.
  • Image upload using Silverlight and an ASP.NET handler.
  • Filter a DataGrid (idea taken from here).
  • Written in Visual Studio 2008, and hosted on this site, which runs Debian Linux, hence Mono and MySQL. Would yous have known if I had not told you lot?

You can try it hither. I'll post the code eventually, but it will be a couple of months as it links in with some other article.

MVP Ken Cox notes in a comment to Jesse Liberty'south blog:

Hundreds of us are scouring the Internet for a realistic (but manageable and not over-engineered) sample of manipulating data (CRUD operations) in a Silverlight ii application. There are promising pieces of the puzzle scattered all over the place. Unfortunately, after investing fourth dimension in a sample, we discover it lacks a fundamental element – like actually saving changed data back to the database.

I can safely say that mine is not over-engineered, and that yes, it does write information.

It'due south so easy. Install your virus or worm on a USB memory stick, set information technology to run automatically via AutoRun. An obvious security risk, and I'yard surprised that Microsoft hasn't already disabled the characteristic past default in a security update or service pack for XP or Vista.

The company is finally paying attention:

AutoRun entries on non-optical removable storage devices have been disabled to ensure that yous are able to make a considered decision before running software from removable media such as USB drives. Worms sometimes attempt to use AutoRun as a vehicle to install malicious software onto your calculator. CDs and DVDs, which are not subject field to worm injection after manufacturing, will continue to expose the AutoRun choice to enable y'all to launch the specified software.

says the press release for Windows 7 RC. Personally I think it should apply the same logic at least to writable CDs and DVDs. I've disabled AutoRun on my PCs and don't miss it. I agree though that USB sticks are the biggest risk today – though a little bit of social engineering volition probably persuade many users to run a setup file on a USB stick anyway.

A new feature in Windows 7 has been appear as part of the Release Candidate rollout. Chosen XP Mode (XPM), it lets users run applications in a virtual instance of Windows XP itself, for fantabulous compatibility. Although not part of the retail Windows seven, XPM will be a free download or may be installed at no actress cost by PC vendors.

The neat aspect of this is that XP applications don't have to run inside an XP desktop, merely can exist published to the host organisation. What this means is that users can start an XP application from the Windows 7 desktop, and only see the awarding window. This is more convenient than having to cope with two operating systems at once.

The principal advantage is compatibility. Since this actually is XP, pretty much anything that works on XP should run correctly. That said, since the hardware is virtualized in that location could be issues with some devices, or with applications that require accelerated graphics.

Some other attribute is security. For instance, if y'all have some applications that exercise non work properly with UAC (User Business relationship Control) enabled, you tin can run them in XP Style rather than compromising the security of the unabridged system.

It is a clever move from Microsoft, since it will remove most compatibility concerns that could otherwise impede adoption.

Another interesting new characteristic is Remote Media Streaming:

Windows 7 offers new functionality called Remote Media Streaming that enables you to access your abode-based digital media libraries over the Net from another Windows 7-based estimator outside the home. Simply associate two or more computers running Windows vii with your online ID provider credentials (such equally your Windows Live™ email address and countersign) and let Internet access to your media.

says the press release. This feature extends to any PC in your home network, so if you have a fast enough connection you demand never exist parted from your music. Then again, y'all could just run Spotify. There'southward also back up for MOV files in Windows Media Histrion.

There's a few more detail changes in the UI; I'll report further when I've had a look.

Windows seven RC will be released to Technet and MSDN subscribers on April 30th, and made generally available on May 5th.

Most comments on Microsoft's quarterly results are understandably focused on the overall flick: a quarterly acquirement pass up for the beginning time e'er.

Revenue decline tin can be forgiven during a recession, just it's more interesting to expect at the breakup. I made a unproblematic quarter-on-quarter tabular array to look at the design:

Quarter catastrophe Mar 31st 2009 vs quarter ending March 31st 2008, $millions

Client Revenue % alter Profit % change
Client (Windows) 3404 -15.6 2514 -nineteen.29
Server and Tools 3467 seven.07 1344 24.44
Online 721 –xiv.47 -575 -154.42
Business (Role) 4505 -4.78 2877 -7.99
Amusement and devices 1567 -1.57 -31 -129.25%

The weak Windows client figures are unsurprising. The poorly-received Windows Vista is out in the marketplace, and the highly-praised Windows 7 is beingness prepared for release. When anyone asks me, I advise that they should wait for Windows 7 earlier buying a new PC or laptop, if they are in a position to filibuster.

The Business organization division (Office) remains massively profitable, fifty-fifty though information technology besides has declined a trivial. Office may be ludicrously expensive, but at that place's little evidence of a meaning shift to cheaper or costless alternatives.

It's besides notable that the server and tools business continues to perform well. Again, I'm not surprised: Server 2008 strikes me as a solid product, and there's non much wrong with products similar SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio.

Not much to say about entertainment and devices. Xbox is doing so-so; Windows Mobile is rather a mess.

The existent shocker here is the online business concern. Revenue is downwards and losses have grown. It is no use just blaming the recession: this is a sector that is growing in importance. Should Microsoft back out and go out information technology to Google? That would be as if Kodak had refused to invest in digital photography. But something is desperately wrong here.

That said, I'm guessing that the figures mostly represent the failure of the various Windows Live backdrop to concenter advertising income; the pocket-size market place share of Live Search must be an important factor. The newer cloud calculating business model, where Microsoft sells subscriptions to its online platform and services, is largely still in beta – I'm thinking of things like Windows Azure and Alive Mesh. Further, I'm not certain where Microsoft puts acquirement from things like hosted Exchange or hosted Dynamics CRM, which straddle server and online. At that place is still time for the company to get this right.

I'm not convinced though that Microsoft yet has the volition or the direction to make sense of its online business. Evidence: the manner the company blows hot and common cold most Live Mesh; the style SQL Server Data Services was scrapped and replaced past total online SQL Server at brusque notice; and the ugly and confusing web site devoted to Windows Azure.

When I looked at Virtual World recently I was impressed past its high quality and ease of development. It illustrates the bespeak that within Microsoft in that location are teams which are creating excellent online services. Others are less strong; but what is really lacking is the power to meld everything together into a compelling online platform.

That could change at any time; but we've been waiting a long while already.