So here I am in Berlin for Microsoft’s Tech Ed event -  a double first for me. Last night was an interesting time to be here for the first time, as it marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - and while we had out dinner together we were treated to viewing the proceedings on large TVs. Interestingly, it was an internet stream we were viewing and not just a TV broadcast. I’m not sure if the hotel dining hall couldn’t get a TV signal but I was quite impressed by the HD stream.

I did inquire if having Tech Ed at the same time as the celebrations was done deliberately by Microsoft, and if there was some significance to it - but it seems the answer was a  straight no. Which is fair enough. At least we were spared some cheesy link between walls coming down, and new Microsoft software.

The big Microsoft cheese that was here was Stephen Elon, head of Microsoft’s business division, but judging from the response to my tweets from the event, there was a mixed reaction to his keynote.

There was good stuff for IT managers and end-users, but it lacked anything of note for developers.

He certainly seemed to have trouble with the reserved European audience, who failed to respond with the whoops of delight he’s likely used to in the US, every time he announced a new feature.  - “Woh, tough audience.” was a line I recall.

He resorted to clapping loudly when he felt applause was due, to which the audience dutifully responded. It’s not as if the demos were poor, or the new features dull - presumably if you’re sitting in the audience at Tech Ed, you’re interested in such things, it’s just that a new Exchange feature isn’t entirely “whoopable”. I mean, it wasn’t a new iPhone he was announcing you know, jeez.

To be honest, the odd video segments they showed to demonstrate some of the benefits of Exchange 2010 were simply odd.  One showed, I think some mouse guy playing video games instead of having to manage Exchange domains - or something. I’m not really sure. I don’t think anyone else was either.

Even Stephen bounded back on stage with the words, “I think I’d rather be managing Exchange”.

Odd.

Ironically, there was one genuine moment of audience applause - when the new Outlook web app was shown - complete with new catch-up features such as thread support - running in Firefox! Previously, unless you used IE, Outook web access looked very poor, but now it works in Firefox and Safari too, which is great news for Mac users.

Woohoo! Yeaharr! That OK for you Stephen?

Microsoft recently made Office 2010 available as a technical preview for a limited audience, and having been invited to take part I thought it would be rude not to.

As its very early days, (it’s not expected to be released until next year), I thought it would be prudent to install it alongside Office 2007. However, that plan was thwarted when the installer told me that the Office 2010 64-bit version I was trying to install would not play with Office 2007 32-bit on my system at the same time.

I therefore plucked up the courage, and uninstalled Office 2007.  I’m now running a beta of Office 2010 on the Windows 7 RC. And it’s pretty much my main system. Hmm, don’t try this at home kids.

In fact the main issue I’m having is that Xobni, the Outlook plugin I love so much, isn’t working for me. A quick search pulls up the fact that some have got Xobni working with Outlook 2010 - but it’s not working for me. I even tried the old school, uninstall, reboot and reinstall approach. But still nada, it won’t appear.

This is slightly ironic as I’ve been evangelising the usefulness of Xobni to colleges and they’ve told me I was spot on - so to no longer be able to run it myself is well, a shame.

Xobni has said that it will start testing on Outlook 2010 when version 1.8 Xobni is out, which it is, so hopefully there might be an update soon. But at the moment I’m having to live without it.

Other issues  I’ve faced with Office 2010 are both Word and Outlook crashing unexpectedly, which didn’t happen before and some other oddities, such as a message when I launch Outlook saying that it’s not the default mail client, even though it is.

Word also warned about opening a file, as it claimed it ‘originated from an Internet location’, which made no sense as it was merely an email attachment. Is that what it meant? If so, it’s going to be doing a lot of complaining, as quite a lot of people will be getting their documents, from, “an Internet location”. If not, are we going back to paper and hand delivery?

Other than that, I like the new look and feel, especially of the now ribbon equipped Outlook 2010, and the new feature to be able to save your paste formatting style is handy too.

If only my Xobni worked…

I have to say that I’m amazed and slightly appalled by the lengths Microsoft is going to get people to use Internet Explorer 8.

Firstly, it’s claiming that without it, woman are in danger of throwing up on their husbands, and secondly, that if you don’t download it, yes – children are going to starve!

Let’s start at the beginning. Microsoft has been running a campaign to promote Internet Explorer 8, which is fair enough. As part of that it’s been running a series of ‘amusing’ video ads, featuring Dean Caine, who found fame as Superman in the 90s TV show he did with Terri Hatcher. (just in case you were wondering).

One particular ad was intended to promote the private browsing feature and did this by showing a women inadvertently discovering something on her husband computer, (presumably porn) that makes her instantaneously projectile vomit – over said husband. Haha.

On the face of it, this is a bold move from Microsoft to do something a little bit more adventurous than its usual rather staid adverts, but it’s clearly lost its bottle. As CNET reports, it has removed the ad as some people had , “found it offensive”.

However all is not lost, as you can still see this mildly amusing clip on YouTube. Naturally.

However, in my research I was keen to discover what Microsoft had removed the ad from – and what I discovered was its horendous “browserforthebetter” web site. To my sheer amazement, on this site it says that for every download of Internet Explorer 8 Microsoft will “donate 8 meals to “Feeding America” to help accelerate an end to hunger in this country. And while it’s doing it, it even throws in the ‘word’ accelerate’ to further promote a browser feature. Nice.

Excuse me, is it just me, or is this a bit sick?

This comes across as desperate - that Microsoft is feeding (see what I did there?) on our emotions to make us download its software. And by the way, it will only donate those ‘8 meals’ if the download is from that exact site – so all those millions of downloads from Windows Update, won’t be feeding the hungry. How fair.

So reading the press release, Microsoft is helping children who have to rely on free or reduced price school meals in term time and don’t get access to them in the summer break. OK, it’s a good cause, but please Microsoft, do you have do it this way? Are those who prefer Firefox, or heck, just use Windows Update, complicit in starving children?

Come on. Naturally I downloaded it, so I didn’t leave the site feeling that I would burn in hell, and hey, it doesn’t say you have to even run the installer. And I’ve got it anyway – through Windows Update (ooh, how could you!).

Yesterday we reported that Microsoft would release the beta of a free anti-virus package for PCs called Security Essentials.

It’s currently only available in the US, UK, China, Brazil and Israel.

If you’re in the UK and interested don’t try and get it from the Microsoft Essentials site as it won’t work. Instead, head over to the Microsoft Connect site (down there, bottom right). However, you’ll have to answer a bunch of questions first before you’re privileged enough to get to it.

 As with most people, we’re wondering if it will be any better than the previous version called ‘OneCare’ which had several flaws, chief of which is that it just didn’t work very well.

 This was disappointing, as if you’re trying to protect your operating system, you’d hope that the company that created it would be able to do a good job of doing that. On the other hand, you’d also think that they’d be able to do a better job of protecting it in the first place.

 To be honest seeing the words Microsoft and ‘1.0’ in the installer, don’t fill me with confidence, but I do intend to give it a go and report back on what it’s like. Wish me luck.

So in response to reprimands from the European Union, Microsoft is throwing its toys out of the pram – and not shipping any browser at all with Windows 7.

This of course, wasn’t really what the EU wanted – it was trying to promote choice and wanted Microsoft to enable users to choose which browser they wanted to use as they first ran the OS. But Microsoft is sticking to the letter of the law, and pulling IE out altogether.

Which does sort of beg the question of how you’re going to get the browser of your choice onto your computer if it doesn’t have a browser on in the first place. One can’t assume everyone will have a second computer to hand to download one. It’s all a bit chicken and egg – and a little 1998 – remember being excited at getting IE4 on the cover disk on the front of PC Pro or the (recently deceased) PCW? Yeah? Oh, just me then.

What Microsoft is going to have to do then is ship IE8 on a separate CD when you buy the OS – and if you buy a new computer the vendor will presumably help – by installing Firefox for you first.

Or it can stop being silly and include IE – but not force it to being the default – and provide links to all the other providers. The chances are the majority will not bother, and it will still see itself coming out on top in terms of market share.

OK, I know I’m a few days late on this one but I thought it was still worth highlighting for those that missed it. Microsoft has backtracked on the artificial limit it had threatened to place on Windows 7 Starter Edition – at least according to Microsoft expert Paul Thurrot on his Windows SuperSite.

The deal was that once Windows 7 was released Microsoft would target a particular of flavour of the OS directly for netbooks, called Starter Edition. This would have the limitation of only allowing three applications to be running at one time, and you’d get a ‘computer says no’ message if you tried to launch any more.

Naturally, pundits were up in arms about this rather Noddy sounding approach- after all, you’d have your browser, your Word application and Spotify open and then you’d be stuck having to shut something down to say, run a video.

Then again, maybe there was something in this. If you’ve actually used a netbook you’ll know that as great as they are in concept they do have their limitations.

Keyboard and screen size are well known, but the 1.6GHz single core Atom that most of them run with 1GB of RAM is not actually that fast at all. After all, it might be lighter on its feet than Windows Vista, but there’s no doubt that Windows 7 is more taxing for a netbook that Windows XP.

So maybe there was some sense in it, protecting poor consumers from the curse of struggling mini machines.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps the great collective that is Microsoft possibly realised that users who found their little netbooks slowing down to much could take the drastic measure of shutting down the applications themselves. It’s a crazy approach, I know, but it might just work.

After all, if Microsoft was to limit itself in that way, the likes of Ubuntu could suddenly find themselves enjoying a bit of a boost, and that’s not something that the folks of Redmond would care for much.

Following on from my ‘ Windows 7 is ace’ post yesterday I came across this blog post from Computerworld in which Mr Vaughan-Nichols crows about the fact that Microsoft recently posted a last quarter earnings drop of 30 per cent, its first year-on-year decline in its public history.

Now reading the post its clear the Mr Vaughan-Nichols is an open source advocate and has an anti-Microsoft axe to grind. However, I do think he has a point.

As I said yesterday, I do like Windows 7. I also like the idea of Microsoft Mesh, though it still needs work, and Windows Live Messenger got a good looking spruce up recently too. Windows Server 2008 is also pretty well thought off too. However, I don’t see the point on Hotmail, when you’ve got Gmail and the less said about Live Search the better.

Windows XP, the OS that refuses to die, has also got a new lease of life on Netbooks, but that’s not necessarily been to the benefit of its bottom line, as it’s simply slashed prices to claw market share away from the ‘evil Linux threat’.

In fact to my mind, Microsoft’s approach to dealing with Linux is akin to how the US government used to deal with the cold war threat from Communism. Get in there, disrupt things and overthrow incumbents without much of a long term strategy. What do you end up with Windows XP given away for practically for free, Linux squashed underfoot, and the future promise of Windows 7 Starter Edition, which unbelievably is said to only let three applications be open at once.

The problem though for Microsoft is not that it just hasn’t made much of a dent in Google’s search and online advertising business, but that it’s earned far less over the past year in its office, server and Windows divisions – namely the cash cows of its business.

Naturally there are those who will point to the current economic climate as the reason for Microsoft’s trouble, but the degree of its losses are such that it just feels like more than that. And it’s also worth pointing out that Apple has managed to post a 15 per cent growth figure in the same time frame.

The suggestion is that Microsoft has become that which is originally sought to destroy and to take down - it has become IBM. It’s relevancy it’s fading, it’s clearly struggling for influence.

Is this true? In my opinion, it is and this could be a first clear marker of an overall downward trend.

Of course that’s not going to change the fact the Windows 7 is a real positive move but I think that to become as successful as it once one, Microsoft is really going to have innovate in other areas, and historically, it’s just not that sort of company.  And while super cheesy salesman Ballmer is in charge, I don’t think that’s likely to change.

I have to admit that I’m mildly excited with the news that the release Windows 7 release candidate will be available on Friday. (I must stress mildly, I’m not that sad. Am I?)

FYI it will be available for Technet and MSDN subscribers sometime next week, while the great unwashed will have to wait until next week – 5 May. (Actually, that’s the wrong way round isn’t it – let’s face it, MSDN and Technet subscribers are far more likely to be unwashed – I’m not so sure about the great bit… anyway I digress).

As I was saying, the point it, that I’m actually going to bother do download and install it as soon as I can.(Hopefully it will install directly over older builds). You see I’m rather enamoured of Windows 7, and I’m running it, as many of the techie sorts are over the way at PC Pro, on my main machine.

Having given up the ghost on my official Windows XP powered Dennis Publishing laptop, on account of it being as slow as a very slow thing on a particular sluggish day in Slowland, I had the opportunity to use a MacBook Pro as my main work machine. Nice.

And for a good while I did, running Windows Vista inside Parallels, in order to get the best of both worlds. I did this you see, as I wanted m Mac grooviness (not enough people use the word groovy anymore I feel), but I also couldn’t give up on Outlook and Xobni, a powerful combination that I like a lot, especially considering Microsoft’s Outlook equivalent for Mac, Entourage is frankly, rubbish.

However, as Windows 7 beta wouldn’t run under Parallels on the Mac I had to install in on yet another machine – but since I’ve got it all going the MacBook Pro has stayed in the draw, which is a bit of a waste of a Macbook Pro if I’m thinking about it.

In fact, I’ve just come to the realisation that if I had to spend my own money I think I would actually prefer a Windows 7 machine over a Mac. As great as Mac OS X is, I don’t think it’s got any great draw over Windows – especially for a work machine. More specifically it’s also about the application – I like Office 2007 a lot more than Office 2008 for the Mac, which feels dates – and if I want to use Outlook and Xobni, then I might as well do it natively.

Thinking about it, on a Mac the best apps as far as I’m concerned are still iPhoto and iMovie – which means that for me, the ideal machines would be an iMac at home and a Windows 7 machine at work. And as for fun, well I guess it’s not a PC either these days – it’s a console.

So a PC for the boring stuff and a Mac for the creative stuff. It seems then that old clichés are still true.

So, as Chris also discussed earlier today, Microsoft has decided to scrap OneCare, its subscription based anti-virus software. Well I for one won’t be weeping. Just recently, Microsoft decided to send me a copy of Equipt, its subscription based Home and Student package that bundles OneCare and Office at a reasonable price with a license for three PCs, which seems generous.

Now the laptop I have been supplied with here at Dennis Towers has Office 2003 on it, which is perfectly adequate, but having used Office 2007, I had a hankering to go back to it.

Bad idea. In fact, right now, I’m writing these words using OpenOffice Writer. The problem is that though I only wanted Word 2007, Equipt forces you to install the whole kit and caboodle, which includes OneCare, which I really didn’t need as all PCs at Dennis run F-Secure anti-virus, which seems to do its job perfectly fine. Having installed OneCare, my machine definately felt more sluggish, no doubt due to the overhead of having two pieces of AV software.

However, the bigger issue was Word as when it came to saving a file I received the message that,

In my previous job I had a lengthy commute home by car, which consisted of heading round the M4 and the M25 everyday. This surely is some people