Microsoft has put on an announcement through one of its many channels that Office 2007 owners can expect Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 to show up in their Windows Automatic Updates sometime on or after June 16. The Office 2007 SP1 has been available since December of last year but Microsoft has been careful about forcing it into the general population of Office users.

As they had done with Office 2003, they are giving a 30 day warning/notice that the automatic update is coming. They also said that not everyone will see it at the same time since they will rolling it out a little at a time to be sure that their servers can handle the download requests.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced that it is delaying the release of Windows XP SP3 because of some bugs it caused with the database server with Microsoft Dynamics. Last night I went home and was looking for the automatic update bringing SP1 to Vista and found that it wasn’t there either, much to my dismay as there are a number of issues I have on Vista that I was hoping to see corrected.

Today we find out that Microsoft has indeed delayed the release of Vista SP1 to Automatic Updates as well, due to the same issue. It sounds like some of found the problem has to do with SQL Server with Dynamics. It’s unlikely that the problem is with SQL Server alone since MS is surely to have tested that at some point, but the relatively few that are out there running Microsoft Dynamics are holding it up for the rest of us.

If you’ve been eagerly watching your Windows Update on XP waiting for SP3 to show up your wait is over; it’s not coming, or at least not quite yet. At what seemed like a very last minute decision, Microsoft on Tuesday delayed the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 3 due to a compatibility glitch with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System software. The release was scheduled to be available through Windows Update on Tuesday and has already been released to manufacturing and volume customers last week.

“In the last few days, we have uncovered a compatibility issue between Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1),” said the firm.“In order to make sure customers have the best possible experience, we have decided to delay releasing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to the web.”

Microsoft has announced that the plan for the general end of shipping Windows XP has been extended a couple of years, at least for the Windows XP Home edition. The latest plan for the end of most sales of XP was dated on June 30, 2008 but the advent of a new market of ultra low cost PCs (ULCPCs) has made Microsoft change there tune on forcing everyone onto the new Vista system.

Microsoft has just released Windows Vista SP1 which is usually a good milestone for those looking at upgrading to the next version of Windows, and is a point at which Microsoft helps push them along, but in the case of these UPCPCs, the Vista OS is just to big and expensive. The OLPC (supposed $100) XO laptop is one such machine that could still take advantage of the XP OS but would be forced to stick with Linux or look elsewhere if XP were phased out.

Microsoft announced yesterday that the much anticipated Windows Vista SP1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) which brings us one step closer to getting a more stable version of the Vista OS. Many businesses will often wait at least until after the first service pack of a Microsoft system before implementing it to give time for any early issues to get worked out.

The Vista SP1 isn’t expected to be available for download until mid-March and will initially come in languages of English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese with full language support to be available by the end of April. When first released the service pack will require a manual download from Microsoft but then will be added to the automatic update in April, as well.

Microsoft appears to have given in a little bit in response to concerns and complaints about their new Windows Vista operating system. The company’s original plan was to have the original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) stop selling the Windows XP operating system with new computers as of January 31, 2008. Custom builders would get another year giving them until January 31, 2009. After that it would be all Vista and no more XP.

Since that original plan was made the sales of PC’s with the new Vista OS haven’t been …

Microsoft has announced that it will release Service Pack 1 containing updates and fixes for the new Windows Vista operating system in the first part of 2008, putting a date to a milestone that many companies look for when upgrading Microsoft products.

The company, consistent with earlier announcements, is planning on releasing a beta version of the SP1 for Vista in a few weeks to a limited number of users in somewhat of a cautious manner.

“A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through

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Information, or “misinformation” as Microsoft is calling it, was passed around the net earlier this month that Microsoft would be releasing the first service pack for Windows Vista sometime earlier this week. Well, the week is almost out and we’ve seen no SP1 show up anywhere, and now Microsoft has released a statement regarding the issue:

“There will be a Windows Vista service pack and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year. Service packs are part of the traditional

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Editing images can get tricky very quickly for the novice photog. Not everyone needs the powerful features found in Adobe Photoshop, nor do they always have to money to purchase an expensive editor. Finding a quality and inexpensive image editor can be a difficult task.

Now may be the time to give Paint.NET a try, as Version 3.0 of the popular graphics editor has been released and is available for download.

Paint.NET is a free image and photo editor for Windows computers. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety …