Microsoft has released the final build (4763.1000) of Office 2010 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers today.
Microsoft said on Friday that its new Office suite, due in May for businesses and June for consumers, had reached the released to manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The build leaked shortly after the official RTM announcement last Friday. Volume License customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the RTM bits on April 27.
Microsoft is currently running an Office 2010 Technology Guarantee. Customers who purchase Office 2007, or a new PC with Office 2007, and activate it between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010 will be offered a free upgrade to Office 2010. Copies will be available online, via download, at no additional cost.
Microsoft is holding business launch event for Office 2010 in New York on May 12. Consumers will not be able to purchase the product until June. Although Microsoft officials will not confirm the exact date, In January Microsoft announced office 2010 pricing. The professional edition will retail for $499 boxed. Office 2010 will be released in at least five different flavours, including a free version that includes Microsoft Word and Excel, but comes with limited functionality and includes advertisements. The editions of Office 2010 will include Starter, Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional and Professional Academic.
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On Tuesday Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4.0 RC to MSDN subscribers. Today, the company has made these releases available to the public.
Visual Studio is a development environment that allows developers to create GUI applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.
There are no new features in the RC release from beta 2 and Microsoft has focussed on speed improvements. A Microsoft spokesperson stated: “We heard from customers that performance in Beta 2 wasn’t everything they had hoped it would be. The RC released today delivers enhanced performance and is an added milestone to garner even more customer feedback before the final build is released. Specifically, customers will see performance improvements in loading solutions, typing, building and debugging.”
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch in cities all over the world on April 12. Major events will be taking place in the UK, China, Malaysia, India, and in the US.
A new “feature” in Windows 7 has been revealed today, by Ina Fried over at CNET. Being dubbed “god mode”, the “feature” is actually pretty handy for power users. The hack allows you to pull all of your PC’s control panels into one standard class view folder.
Here’s how to enable this hack:
Create a folder in Windows 7
Re-name the folder to this exact string “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}”
And there you have it, a folder with all of your control panels for your PC. Check it out:
Is this feature really a “god mode”? Not really, as our friend Brandon Live pointed out today:
“First, you’ve discovered a documented feature of the shell whereby filesystem folders can be easily made into namespace junctions, as described here on MSDN. Basically, any folder named . will show up with just the portion visible in Explorer, and navigating into the folder will take you to the namespace root defined by the portion of the name. The second thing you’ve discovered is the “All Tasks” folder. This is a special shell folder which is used as the source of the “Control Panel” search results seen in the Start menu.”
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