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The retired Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, had been spotted at Beijing 2008 Olympics. Gates was clapping for the great performance of athletes in “water cube”.

“When did Gates become so old?” was my first impression about the pic.

(via zjol)

On Mac OS X, you can easily save any document as PDF format. It is a built-in feature. We do not have the useful feature on Windows Vista (or any other versions of Windows) but it can be done with external software. I recommend doPDF to save your documents to PDF format on Windows.

doPDF is a FREE PDF converter that allows you to create PDF files by selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favourite web sites to PDF files.

After installing doPDF, you will get a virtual printer named “doPDF”. Simply select the printer from the “Print” menu and it will convert and save your document to PDF format. No nag, no watermark and it’s free!

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For those who encounter problems when upgrade to Windows Vista SP1, here is a good news for you. Microsoft is giving away free support for Windows Vista SP1 issues. The unlimited installation and compatibility support is available at no charge until March 18. 2009.

There are 3 support options: Email, Online Chat and Phone. Currently, email support response time is 1 business day. Online chat waiting time is over 60 minutes(!). The phone support is only available for users who have software assurance agreement, TechNet/MSDN subscrition, or Microsoft Partner Program.

Oh, the free support is for U.S. users only. (duh!)

[via News.com]

Now you can download Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) via Windows Update or Microsoft Download Center. Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that addresses specific reliability and performance issues, supports new types of hardware, and adds support for several emerging standards.

How to install Windows Vista SP1?

You can manually check Windows Update on your Windows Vista for Windows Vista SP1. If Windows Vista SP1 is not listed, there could be several reasons. Here are the most common reasons:

• You have not yet installed all the prerequisite packages you need for Windows Vista SP1. Click “check for updates” on Windows Update control panel to install them, before you can install Windows Vista SP1.
• You have a pre-released version of SP1. You need to uninstall it before installing the final release of SP1.
• You already have Windows Vista SP1.
• Windows Vista SP1 released in 5 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese). If you have ANY other language installed, SP1 will not yet be offered to you.
• Windows Update detected drivers that may be problematic when updating to SP1 and will not offer the service pack until an update has been installed.

“Windows Vista: The Missing Manual”

Download standalone Windows Vista SP1

Beside getting Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. You may also download the Standalone version of the service pack. The standalone version of Windows Vista SP1 is a big size (434.5MB) executable file named “Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe”.

The standalone version is useful when you need to install Windows Vista SP1 on several computers (save total download time on each computers). If you are only install Vista SP1 on just one computer, you should get a smaller size download (~65MB) on Windows Update.

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Microsoft made an offer to acquire Yahoo! for $44.6 billion USD cash and stock on Feb 1, 2008.

Microsoft offers to pay Yahoo! shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.

“We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo!,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive.

Microsoft allows the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock. Yahoo has acknowledged receipt of the offer and its board would evaluate the proposal “carefully and promptly”.

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