Microsoft launched a "DevDiv Hotfix Public Availability Pilot Program", which will allow developers to access and download some of the latest hotfixes of their developer tools. Not many hotfixes are available at this time [the one that caught my eye was "FIX: You may receive an error message when you rebuild a solution and try to view a Windows Form in Design view in Visual Studio 2005."], but hopefully the number will increase in time. Of course, this hotfixes will be included in the forthcoming Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1.

This program is available through Microsoft Connect. And make sure you read the red text before downloading and applying any of the hotfixes...

With 2007 Microsoft Office System out in the wild, there is a fair chance your next e-mail message will contain some Word 2007 formatted documents. Get ready and download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, which will help you open, edit and save those documents in your Word 2000, XP or 2003. The pack includes filters for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats and can also be applied to equivalent Office 2003 Viewers.

Yup, after a year from the .NET Framework's 2.0 release, and it's time for another release... .NET Framework 3.0 just RTM'ed yesterday...

Here's the link rundown, taken from .NET Framework 3 News and Announcements page:

To complement this collection, there's also Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (VSTO 2005 SE), which should nicely go along also RTM'ed Office 2007 System...

Looks like we're finally getting there - Windows Vista and Office 2007 will be made available to business on November 30th, while home users will have to wait till public release in January. I'm running Vista RC2 on my laptop and Windows XP + IE7 (final IE7 has been available for download for more than a week now, now also available through Automatic Windows Updates) and I'm ready for the switch. I guess this is also the right time to buy a new working box to raise that experience factor and make Vista happy. Some other stuff I've been installing lately include Windows Live Messenger 8.1 Beta, XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2, Windows Live Writer Beta Update (Build 145) and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements. It's just too bad I don't have more time to play with all these - time's just flying when you're having fun...