While Microsoft faces a host of challenges in maintaining its market share numbers and persuading customers to upgrade to its 2007 Office System suite of products when released in the second half of this year, its competitors face an equally daunting task of winning users away from Office 2007 and growing their numbers. Heading the list of challenges facing Microsoft is the fact that Office 2007 has a new user interface, which could require extensive staff retraining at a significant cost, as well as a new file format, which has the potential to create compatibility issues.

Mandriva One 2006 Beta 2 (an installable live CD) has been released. "The second beta of Mandriva Linux One 2006, our new installable live CD, is now available from most public mirror sites. This fixes a range of issues from the first beta." Download locations.

Linspire and one of its biggest desktop Linux rivals, Ubuntu, are talking about collaborating to offer Linspire's CNR (Click-N-Run) application download service to Ubuntu users. CNR is a subscription service ($20 annually) through which users can install thousands of software programs with 'literally' one click, CEO Kevin Carmony said. Ubuntu, according to DistroWatch.com the no. 1 most popular Linux distribution (as ascertained by number of clicks), has nothing like CNR available for its users. Both Linspire and Ubuntu are based on the Debian kernel.

Following the MorphZone Bounty Program, Pavel 'Sonic' Fedin has, after a lot of work, released MOSNet 1.0 on Sourceforge together with the MOSNet SDK. This is a big leap for MorphOS users, which previously had to rely on emulated software to get networking up and running.

The OpenSUSE project has announced the development version SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 6. Also, the revised released schedule for SUSE Linux 10.1 and the start of the SUSE Linux 10.2 schedule with eight months development have been posted. The project attended FOSDEM 2006 and the slides of the talks given there are now online (audio/video recordings will follow soon). Last but not least the preview phase of the openSUSE Build Service has started.

"In a well-orchestrated PR bliltz, 36 Companies, associations, and end-users today announced the formation of the ODF Alliance. The ODF Alliance was first proposed by IBM at meeting of key players and others held at an IBM facility in Armonk on November 4 of last year, and has now been brought into existence under the wing of the Software and Information Industry Association."

The ModdingDen has an interview with the lead developer of SimpleKDE, a cut-down, lightweight version of KDE. "The main reason is that we find KDE too cluttered and too bloated; and we want something faster, more simplistic and easier to use. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with my own KDE installation, but I especially observe beginners having difficulty in adapting themselves to it." The interview dates 9th January 2006, but since we never covered SimpleKDE on OSNews, it's interesting nonetheless. Read more about SimpleKDE at their website. And yes, boys and girls, there are screenshots too.

LonghornBlogs thinks that it has found out what the Origami project really is about: and we've all seen it before. They have photo's of what might be the device: a mini-tablet PC running XP Tablet Edition. "I have an extremely reliable source that told me the device pictured above exists for real now, will cost $500, and will be available before the end of the year." Speculate at will, boys and girls!

"With six separate versions of Windows Vista on the way, Microsoft has a marketing challenge on its hands. How will the company properly inform users as to which versions support which features? One part of the plan is now becoming clear: all four 'consumer' versions of the OS will be available to users even after installation. How? They'll all be available for 'instant online upgrade' once Vista is installed."

Steve Wozniak did a talk at the Computer Museum on January 12th 2006 and it is now on Google video. "Woz serves up Apple Computer history in his own unique way. Steve will describe a sequence for providing a rational understanding of many of the innovations leading to early Apple designs. He'll look at early company structure, the personalities that influenced him, and personalities within the company. In addition, he'll discuss the reasons he wants to be an engineer for life but not a CEO. Don't miss this sure to be entertaining, informative, and very personal view."

"Whether you're running a single server with a few accounts or a massive ISP infrastructure, managing more than one domain quickly becomes a boring, time-consuming hassle. But thanks to the magic of open source and the guys at ISPConfig, this no longer has to be the case."

The cooperation between the XGL and AIGLX projects to bring better interfaces for the Linux desktop continues as David Reveman (Novell) of XGL has agreed to adopt many changes from the AIGLX project sent in by Kristian Hogsberg (Red Hat).

XYZComputing reviews VectorLinux, and concludes: "VectorLinux is definitely going places. This distribution made a very good impression on me during the time I have spent with it and it will be remaining on my desktop for some time to come. Though it is not really one of the better known Linux distributions it appears to be growing due to its speed and capability."

Ars has published review of a Macbook Pro in which they feature benchmarks contrasting the performance of the Macbook Pro, a G4 PowerBook, and an Inspiron 9100 with a hacked version of OS X. Interestingly, one of the benchmarks, Cinebench, also features the same Inspiron running Windows, in which the Inspiron/Windows combination does better overall. Of course an unfair comparison (hacked OSX vs. normal XP), but interesting nonetheless. Ars concludes: "All in all, the MacBook Pro is an extremely solid machine that makes me happy to be back in the Apple Pro notebook world after a six month hiatus in 12" iBook-land."