Quick note that the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh is already available here.

Some of the most important downloads include:

I reading Om Malik’s post titled The Silent Microsoft Exodus which lays out the successive resignation of a number of top executives of Microsoft and can’t help but think that the software giant is on a win situation regardless what the public thinks. In an excerpt:

I read this post by Om Malik on Is Steve Jobs Bill Gates 2.0? and was surprised of the comparison based on a number of hard to personally agree reasons:

Rebecca Harrison of Reuters wrote about South African magnate Mark Shuttleworth, taking on Microsoft with his own open source vision relying on Linux Ubuntu software to revolutionize South African nations. As stated, the nation supports open source movement in the hope of capitalizing on the information age after their nation missed the industrialization era hoping to start a technological revolution in the nation. Microsoft, on the other hand, could not allow Shuttleworth to operate solely on African soil and as such pledged funding for 284 South African’s municipalities to build their IT centres.

It looks like Windows Vista is ready to roll-out as Microsoft has a good parting relationship with Brian Valentine, their Senior Vice-President of Windows Core Operating System Division. He has tendered his resignation and is set to join an executive position with Amazon as a Senior Vice-President, but details of his responsibility and role has not been released.

The final version of Windows Vista for business users is set for release on November, and for its consumer market on January 2007, which leads us to believe that Brian is done and ready for another task at hand. Jon DeVaan will take full responsibility as a Senior Vice-President after sharing the post with Valentine for the last six months and shall continuously report to Windows Core Operating System Division Co-Presidents Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin.