As was the case with Windows 7, Microsoft is focusing on application compatibility as a critical aspect of the overall quality of the next iteration of the Office System. The advent of Build 14.0.4536.1000 public Beta brought with it the Office 2010 compatibility program and tools, resources designed so that IT administrators and developers test drive existing solutions designed to integrate with Office 2007 and older releases of the productivity suite. The software giant is essentially looking to make sure that applications and add-ins that currently integrate with existing installations of Office will continue to do so without any problems with Office 2010. The Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT) and the Office 2010 Code Compatibility Inspector are the resources offered to early adopters for compatibility testing.

icrosoft starting to serve the February 2010 security updates to customers running its products was just the first move in what has become an interesting game of chess between the company and malware authors. The Redmond company moved first, with the release of the MS10-015 (KB977165) patch, among the many security bulletins offered this month. The second move also belonged to Microsoft, as the company pulled MS10-015 from Automatic Updates after reports of Windows XP SP2 and SP3 PCs where crashing with Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) errors, and becoming un-bootable.

At the end of the past year, Microsoft launched a new edition of Office 2007 targeted at markets on the African continent. The Office 2007 Home and Student for Africa SKU comes with a discounted price of approximately 39 Euro or $53, namely the equivalent of 3,999 Kenyan Shillings. According to the Redmond company, the new edition of Office 2007 was considered necessary after taking into account feedback from customers and partners in Africa, and after studying the market for a few years. (via the Kenya Broadcasting Corp.)

A new release of Microsoft’s free security solution for Windows is now available for download. The Redmond company has made available for download extremely quietly the new version of Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 on February 17th, 2010. The latest release of MSE, formerly codenamed Morro, is currently up for grabs from the Microsoft Download Center, with no details available from the software giant as to what, if anything was changed with the antivirus.

What better way to celebrate the year of the tiger, than with a theme pack from Microsoft? Users running the Redmond company’s latest iteration of the Windows client can now download a new theme via the Windows Personalization Gallery. A Windows 7 ‘Year of the Tiger’ theme pack is available from the software giant free of charge, and can be integrated seamlessly into the operating system.
The six new background images feature tigers, no big surprise in this regard, obviously, given the leitmotif chosen for the theme.