Thor Schrock

With everything going on this past week, Microsoft's visit to Omaha for a technical seminar was unfortunately buried in the news. However, our own Blaze was in attendance and asked the questions our customers have passed to us about Office 2007 and Vista over the past few months.

The question I have been asked more often than not is how much the products would cost. The question caught the presenter off guard, as he seemed very qualified to speak to the technical aspects of the software rather than the business and supply channel plans. He told Blaze that he was not absolutely certain, but he could not imagine Vista costing more than Windows XP does now.

While that answer is better than none, there are six different versions of Vista, so which versions will match in price against the five different versions of Windows XP that exist? He could not answer that, but my follow up questions to our Microsoft Partner Support Representative indicated that final retail and OEM pricing will not be revealed until Vista and Office 2007 are out of Beta.

In addition to some great information and presentations, Blaze also got a goodie bag full of Microsoft toys. The biggest catch of the day was a copy of the most recent Beta version of Windows Vista that has not been released to the general public yet. This was whisked away in the night to our Maintenance Checkup Home Edition (MCHE) development team for use in testing our Beta Version 2 of the MCHE with Vista for compatibility.

The only way anyone can stay on top of the rapidly developing world of software is to take advantage of educational opportunities like the one Microsoft provided last week. Blaze reported that the others in attendance were mostly from Iowa and Omaha. He was the only person from Lincoln represented in the group.