Is Microsoft’s Office suites here to stay or will Google topple its crowning glory. As if replying to Eric Schmidt’s prediction of the imminent demise of desktop software, Microsoft’s Antoine Leblond downplays the threat in a new Reuters interview:

Leblond, who became co-leader of the Office group in June, said Google was the latest in a long line of challengers to the Office software suite … “The simple argument that ‘this is good enough for 90 percent of what we do’ has fallen on its face over and over and over again,” Leblond told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “When it comes to mission critical things and key pieces of how people run their businesses, the threshold is higher.”

Microsoft has built a Dynamic DNS type system into Vista, making it easy to connect to your PC from anywhere in the world without having to know its IP address!!

Want to be able to access your machine anytime, anywhere? Can’t be bothered purchasing a domain name and configuring Dynamic DNS? Microsoft has a solution: the “Windows Internet Computer Name” — a unique domain name for your computer.

There is one small catch though: you have to be using the next-generation networking protocol IPv6 which, although thoroughly integrated into Windows Vista, isn’t supported by most home routers yet.

Microsoft Office 2007 OS would be made available to large business customers on Nov. 30. Retail customers will be able to buy the package in the beginning of the next year at $399. Upgrade version will cost $239.

Following are the key features unique in Microsoft Office 2007:

Ribbon: The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon — a new device that presents commands organized into a set of tabs. The tabs on the Ribbon display the commands that are most relevant for each of the task areas in the applications. For example, in Office Word 2007, the tabs group commands for activities such as inserting objects like pictures and tables, doing page layout, working with references, doing mailings, and reviewing.

Button: The new UI brings together the capabilities of the Microsoft Office system into a single entry point in the UI: the Microsoft Office Button. This offers two major advantages. First, it helps users find these valuable features. Second, it simplifies the core authoring scenarios by allowing the Ribbon to focus on creating great documents.

Tabs: Contextual tabs will only appear when they are needed and make it much easier to find and use the commands needed for the operation at hand.

Galleries: Galleries provide users with a set of clear results to choose from when working on their document, spreadsheet, presentation, or Access database. By presenting a simple set of potential results, rather than a complex dialog box with numerous options, Galleries simplify the process of producing professional looking work.

Live Preview: It shows the results of applying an editing or formatting change as the user moves the pointer over the results presented in gallery.

An interesting excerpt from CNet

For years, Microsoft has been trying to add features to Office without them getting in the way of people who already know their way around the software. . . .Unfortunately, the company was a little too successful at making its innovations unobtrusive. In user testing, Microsoft found that nine out of every 10 features that customers wanted to see added to Office were already in the program.

Microsoft wants its Sender ID framework to be more popular to get back more revenue into its coffers and its willing to do that under its Open Specification Promise (OSP) program. Sender ID is an anti-spam technology born out of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which Microsoft participated in and holds a number of patents. Up until the OSP release, those patents made the Microsoft implementation of Sender ID incompatible with more relaxed, open licenses, such as the GNU General Public License.

According to Mac News :

However, intellectual property questions arose two years ago about possible patent claims Microsoft might be likely to make over the application. After that, the likelihood that Sender ID would provide the platform for an industrywide standard diminished amid fears by some developers that Microsoft would go after them for royalties.

“There have been lingering questions from some members of the development community about the licensing terms from Microsoft and how those terms may affect their ability to implement Sender ID,” said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform Development Group at Microsoft. “By putting Sender ID under the Open Specification Promise, our goal is to put those questions to rest and advance interoperable efforts for online safety worldwide.”