Microsoft is working on the next service pack updates for Office and Windows Vista.

Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system is expected to be released in between February and April of 2009, according to a Microsoft's blog posting on Wednesday.

Several months ago, Microsoft announced that the SP2 would add support for Open Document Format (ODF), XML Paper Specification (XPS), and Portable Document Format (PDF). In addition to those file format additions, some other highlights that you?ll find in SP2 include:

For Office Desktop Programs:

-Improved Outlook Calendaring Reliability
-Improved Outlook Performance
-Enabling Object Model support for Charts in PowerPoint and Word
-Improved cryptographic functionality by supporting all cryptographic algorithms offered by the operating system
-Improved functionality in Excel?s charting mechanism

Ability to ungroup SmartArt graphics (and as a result, the ability to add animations to them in PowerPoint)
Ability for Visio to export UML models to an XML file compliant with the XMI standard
Tool that enables the uninstall of Office client Service Packs.For Servers:

-Performance and manageability improvements to variations in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) including STSADM commands for repairing links between source and target pages
- Improvements around processing status approvals from Office Project Web Access into Office Project Professional 2007
- Improvements to read-only content databases and index rebuild timer jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Regarding the Windows Vista SP2, the Windows team is offering far less detail. Microsoft confirms that there is a Service Pack 2 for Vista, but that's about it.

"Microsoft is working on a second service pack for Windows Vista (Windows Vista SP2) and Windows Server 2008," Microsoft said in a statement. "Service packs are part of the traditional software lifecycle--they're something we create for all Microsoft products as part of our commitment to continuous improvement. And, as is standard, Microsoft is continuously having conversations with key stakeholders, prior to broadly distributing test builds. We will share more details in the coming months."

In an interview last week, Microsoft VP Brad Brooks said that the company had not, at that point, started outside beta testing of SP2.

However, Microsoft posted a support document earlier this month that suggested a beta version exists.

The third major installment of OpenOffice.org's suite of applications has reached its final version. Probably one of the most important aspects surrounding OpenOffice 3 for Mac is that it now runs natively under Mac OS X, meaning no more X11, meaning faster performance, a standard UI and an increased overall reliability.

Being the major update that it is, OpenOffice 3 does many extra tricks, like reading documents saved with Microsoft Office 2007 or 2008 in .docx, .xlsx, .pptx and other new formats. This feature alone is enough to bite some of Microsoft Office's market-share, and upset some high-ups over in Silicon Valley. The suite can read and write documents in standardized OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 as well.

The Start Centre has received a major overhaul, adding new icons and a new zoom control in the status bar. Chart boosts looks while Draw and Impress come with improved crop features. Writer adds a new notes feature and a built-in math solver component, and is also able to display multiple pages during editing. Workbooks now support up to 1024 columns in each spreadsheet. New sharing options have also been added, enabling multiple users to collaborate on a single workbook simultaneously.As for the Mac version of OpenOffice 3.0, for once, it brings some support for Visual Basic for Applications, which enables users to program macros customize their commands to great extent. Best of all though, the suite adds native OS X support for the first time. This means users no longer have to fire up that pesky graphical environment for UNIX applications known as X11. Thinking of Gimp's wasted potential on Macs, X11 commits a sin by simply existing. So, what does all this mean?

Well, for starters, you now have an office suite of apps that behaves natively, crashes less (or almost never); it blends in with the Aqua interface which makes it look and feel like any OS X app; it integrates with OS X's Accessibility API and is more accessible, fast and reliable.

OpenOffice 3.0 was uploaded to the organization’s servers at 10am (BST) on Monday, sources say. "The servers seem to have collapsed under the load," said OpenOffice.org's marketing lead, John McCreesh. McCreesh pointed out that the "vast majority" of downloads of the suite take place through local mirrors, but said "the fact that our central site can't even run the bouncer [to divert requests to those local mirrors] must mean it's… our biggest-ever download".

You may download OpenOffice 3.0 Final here.

Microsoft has announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, the new Web-based extension of Microsoft Office that lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.

Currently it is being offered in English but Microsoft plans to offer the beta program later this year in various languages for international markets. The company expects to release the final public version of Office Live Workspace later in the year.

"Today's announcement moves us further down the path of bringing a software plus services experience to people at home, work and school," said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division. "By combining the rich client experience of Microsoft Office with flexible, intuitive service offerings, we're providing seamless computing experiences for our 500 million Office users worldwide." Microsoft is also unveiling a number of new Office Live Workspace features, such as an activity panel, notifications, direct links and multifile upload.

Office Live Workspace features an activity panel that shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance. It notifies users about changes made to their workspaces or documents and allows them to bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window. People will be able to upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop and the new sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.

Microsoft is also launching a $100,000 sweepstakes for U.S.-based Office Live Workspace users.

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) on Monday plans to announce several key enhancements to its StarOffice and OpenOffice.org office productivity software suites.

StarOffice 8 and the corresponding open version, OpenOffice.org 2.3, have both been updated with a variety of new features, including the ability to edit for blog servers along with enhanced charting capabilities and tools to reduce the size of presentations, Mark Herring, senior director of Network.com for Sun Microsystems, told LinuxInsider. The new server version of StarOffice, meanwhile, now includes the ability to convert documents in bulk into the Acrobat PDF file format.

"These new capabilities further affirm StarOffice 8 as an alternative to Microsoft Office, offering a full-featured office productivity suite that is affordable, flexible and compatible with Microsoft Office," Sun said. "These updates also enhance OpenOffice.org, the open source project building the world's most widely distributed open source multiplatform and multilingual productivity suite."

110 Million Downloads
OpenOffice.org is a free, open source platform designed to be interoperable with every major commercial office suite and compatible with the internationally standardized OpenDocument Format. It runs natively on Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X and several other platforms, and is backed by the OpenOffice.org Project, an international community of volunteers and sponsors, including Sun.