Microsoft to Add ODF Support to next version of MS Office

Microsoft on Wednesday quoted that they will be providing ODF support in the next version of MS Office.Which means that without adding any special software to MS Office, users will be able to open documents sent to them in the open source Open Document Format (ODF), the company said. As well, users will be able to edit and save documents in that format.
“Microsoft is going to be providing support for three new file formats directly in the Office product,” said Erich Anderson, vice president and general counsel for Europe, in a telephone interview.Microsoft said it will add support for ODF version 1.1 when it updates its Office 2007 product some time next year with “service pack 2.”In addition to ODF, Microsoft will also support Adobe’s popular PDF fixed format and Microsoft’s competitor to PDF, known as XPS.
Thomas Vinje in Brussels, a lawyer who has represented clients opposed to Microsoft, said the announcement was meaningless unless Microsoft made ODF the default standard when people opened office.If ODF is not the standard its presence “won’t matter because the vast majority will not use it. That was the experience in the U.S. case,” he said, referring to a case which found Microsoft in violation of the Sherman antitrust act.
Carlo Piana, a lawyer in Milan who represents clients who make open source software, called Microsoft’s approach “too little, too late.”

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Tags: Microsoft, ODF

Windows Xp Sp3 beats Windows Vista Sp1 in benchmark tests

        Well Vista fans might be a little disappointed with this news,according to a benchmarking test conducted by Exo.performance.network(Xpnet), Windows Xp Service pack 3 outshines Windows Vista Service pack 1 which is going to be released in 2008.The tests were conducted using RC releases by microsoft and the results were quite surprising.

Office bench tests for various Windows Versions(Lower The better)

(image sources:exo.blog)

As the tests show the lower bars of windows Xp3 and even Sp2 prove that Windows Vista is a big performance dud as compared to Windows Xp which was released way back in 2001!.The tests were conducted on Dell XPS M1710 systems with 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU & DDR-II 667MHz RAM.Well Microsoft officials as always told that the Service packs are still in their development stages and will go through massive changes before being released and tests should be conducted once the service packs are officially released(that’s in 2008).The post on Exo’s blog clearly showed the extra edge of the grand daddy Xp over the mischievous little baby Vista which is not doing quite well these days.The real benchmark although will be the official release of Vista SP1 and XP SP3.The support for Service Pack 2 is ending on 14th April 2009 but Microsoft may just give windows users a reason “not-to-upgrade” to Windows Vista by releasing the much awaited Windows Xp service pack 3.Also a registry hack has been discovered which allows Xp users to download a RC build using Windows Update.Xp Sp3 will feature a 10% improvement in performance as quoted by Microsoft officials.So is Vista another setback like windows ME?Well here comes 2008!

(news sources:exo.blog-official blog of Xp.net)