The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition on Monday issued then pulled a story saying Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) may be stripped of the rights to its Internet Explorer Web browser as part of the remedy in the government antitrust case it lost earlier this month.

A spokesman for the paper, Dick Tofel, said the story, which appeared in the Journal's Internet edition at http://www.wsj.com sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning eastern daylight time, was never meant to be published.

Asked if the report was removed because of issues with its accuracy, Tofel declined to comment. ``It wasn't that it was withdrawn, it shouldn't have been posted in the first place,'' Tofel told Reuters.

The story was ``up there for only a few hours,'' Tofel said, and never appeared in the Journal's printed editions. The Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Interactive are published by Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE:DJ - news).

The story cited people close to the Microsoft case as saying the government is considering a proposal that would force Microsoft to grant royalty-free licenses to Internet Explorer, opening the programming code to customers and computer makers.

Restrictions on Microsoft's Office software products and its Windows 2000 server software are also being considered, the report said. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department would not comment on the story, except to repeat the Journal's position that the story was posted in error.

A spokesman for Microsoft was not immediately available to comment on the matter. Microsoft shares fell 3, or more than 3 percent, to 86-1/16 Monday on Nasdaq, where the stock was the second most actively traded issue.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that Microsoft broke U.S. antitrust law by illegally abusing its monopoly power over the operating system for personal computers. A hearing on remedies in the case is scheduled for May 24.

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U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's guilty verdict last week in the antitrust suit the government brought against the Redmond, Wash., company two years ago was expected, even by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). What wasn't, however, was the possibly more damaging toll the legal proceedings have taken on the company. According to many close to Microsoft, the company has been driven to major distraction by the trial, which has resulted in the delay of at least one of the company's major forthcoming product initiatives, Next Generation Windows Services.

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If the antitrust saga surrounding Microsoft were turned into a movie, it would be a B-flick called something like "Digital Trustbusters" or "Boies Don't Cry." In the Microsoft-Department of Justice drama, it's hard to say whether the government's victory means anything. The DOJ trumpeted its win after U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) as guilty of illegally maintaining its monopoly and of unlawfully tying its Internet browser to its Windows operating system (OS). Market watchers couldn't help but notice, however, that the company -- which immediately said it plans to appeal the ruling -- is free to go about its business while the courtroom drama continues.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference 2000 (NAB2000), Microsoft Corp. unveiled Microsoft^® Windows Media™ screen-capture technology, the industry's first "true-to-the-source" screen-capture compression technology as a feature of the newly announced Windows Media Technologies 7. The new Windows Media screen-capture technology is the first to capture and stream computer motion without any loss in image quality or screen content. Developed through extensive customer input and intensive work by the research and development team at Microsoft's Digital Media Division, this new technology will offer a critical breakthrough for delivering streamed software demonstrations and training via the Internet or across corporate networks. Windows Media screen-capture technology is scheduled to be released in beta form as a component of Windows Media Technologies 7 in May 2000.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference 2000 (NAB 2000), Microsoft Corp. unveiled Windows Media™ Technologies 7, the only Internet broadband-ready platform designed for creation, distribution and playback of broadcast-quality digital media. Microsoft^® Windows Media Technologies 7 will uniquely enable customers to realize the promise of Internet broadband with broadcast-quality video; CD-quality audio; end-to-end secure content distribution; unmatched reliability and scalability; and an open, easy-to-use and extensible platform.

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Julien has posted his review of BVRP's Winphone 2000. Here is a snippet from the review:

Hopefully, Winphone 2000 perfectly supports independent modems that can store your messages/faxes even if the computer is off! Winphone 2000 now supports ISDN modems due to its CAPI 2 support. However all the ISDN modems that use their own CAPI modified protocol won’t work correctly. Our test modem, (Bewan USBooster 128) uses a softly changed CAPI 2 protocol isn’t managed correctly by Winphone 2000. But BVRP & Bewan are working closer to fix this issue. Winphone 2000 also supports all related cellular phones that use the following protocols: GSM, DCS and CDMA.

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The Web Standards Project (WaSP) today denounced Internet Explorer 5.5 Windows Edition for abandoning Web standards Microsoft has publicly committed to supporting, and focusing on proprietary technologies which are certain to fragment the already-troubled Web space.

``We are incensed by Microsoft's arrogance, and perplexed by its schizophrenic decision to support standards on one platform while undercutting them on another,'' said Web Standards Project group leader Jeffrey Zeldman.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2000 convention, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) announced alliances with three additional television production system providers -- Grass Valley Group Inc., Vertigo Multimedia and Video Design Interactive -- to develop support for the Microsoft® TV platform. These leading providers enable production and transmission of interactive content and are incorporating interactive TV capabilities into their product lines. Today's announced collaboration will further enable the creation of mainstream interactive television by providing easy-to-use tools for the television industry. In addition, Microsoft and Norpak Corp. announced that they are working together to broaden support and implementation for interactive television.

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On March 29, 2000, VerticalNet, Inc. (Nasdaq: ``VERT'') and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: ``MSFT'') signed their definitive agreement announced earlier this year for a three-year strategic alliance to deliver business-to-business e-commerce services and content to small- and medium-sized businesses. As part of their strategic alliance, Microsoft will purchase at least 80,000 VerticalNet® Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers from VerticalNet and distribute them to third party businesses. VerticalNet will assist Microsoft in distributing 30,000 of these Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers. Additionally, VerticalNet will build the Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers, incorporating Microsoft megaservices like Microsoft® ClearLead®, and place them within its 55 communities of commerce. On April 7, 2000, VerticalNet and Microsoft completed Microsoft's equity investment in VerticalNet, in which Microsoft purchased 100,000 shares of VerticalNet's Series A 6.00% Convertible Redeemable Preferred Stock in exchange for $100 million in cash.

``We believe that this strategic alliance represents a tremendous competitive advantage for VerticalNet by extending our reach to thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses who are eager to participate in the power of e-commerce,'' said Mark Walsh, President and CEO of VerticalNet. ``The strategic alliance between our companies should further validate VerticalNet's portfolio model of communities of commerce.'' A Microsoft representative is expected to join the VerticalNet board of directors.

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Microsoft may be stripped of the rights to its Internet Explorer Web browser as part of the remedy in the government antitrust case it lost earlier this month, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people close to the case, said the government is considering a proposal that would force Microsoft to grant royalty-free licenses to Internet Explorer, opening the programming code to customers and computer makers.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that Microsoft broke U.S. antitrust law by illegally abusing its monopoly power over the operating system for personal computers. A hearing on remedies in the case is scheduled for May 24. Restrictions on Microsoft's Office software products and its Windows 2000 server software are also being considered, the report said.

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Microsoft today will show off new Windows Media technology in hopes of edging past competitor RealNetworks in the battle for Internet audio and video software dominance. Microsoft will unveil its technology at this week's National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. The updates are tailored for training professionals; computer users with high-speed, or broadband, connections to the Internet; and content providers concerned about copyright protection.

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Windows Me puts Microsoft back into familiar territory: bundling different technologies into the operating system. Windows Me is Microsoft's next operating system for home users. The company demonstrated the latest features of the new operating system for the first time this past weekend, revealing tight integration with a number of Microsoft technologies, including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and links to MSN Internet sites.

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What's worse for a software company than being told it broke the law? Only this: Being told it makes an inferior product. Scarcely a day after Judge Jackson's ruling of law last week, AOL and Gateway unveiled a trio of low-cost Internet-access devices that pointedly excluded Microsoft from their party. The devices--a countertop, a desktop and a wireless Web appliance--use upstart Linux, rather than Microsoft's Windows, as their operating system. Linux, according to AOL and Gateway execs, beat Windows to the punch by being faster and more reliable. Ouch.

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According to Microsoft representatives in Tokyo, the Operating system will be remarkably small, and more surprisingly, the Windows Operating System will be housed on each game disc (DVD) that is released. While development on the X-Box operating system is ongoing, Microsoft representatives stated the final version will likely be under 500KB.

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We would like to welcome you all to the new and improved ActiveWin mailing list. We have finally sorted out all of the previous problems we had with delivering our list to you all (Our server wouldn't send any more than 200 mailings out). So now you can all look forward to daily e-mails keeping you up to date with everything that is happening in the world of Windows and Microsoft.

We have now begun to work on new content for the daily HTML mailing list you are receiving now...this will include FAQ's and tips of the day. In the mean time we would like to let you all know that you will get this mailing daily and whenever there is a big breaking news story we will also e-mail you all. We are still working out some problems with bits of text cropping up in our mailings, but we should have those sorted out very soon and as they tend to only appear at the bottom of e-mail mailing there isn't too much to worry about.

Subscribe to the HTML mailing list

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BetaNews learned this morning that Creative will not offer Windows 2000 support for the NOMAD 64 digital audio player. A user received an e-mail from the Creative Labs USA team stating that they had no intention of supporting Windows 2000, telling him "the system requirements of the product have always been Windows 95 or Windows 98." While they did say "there are no plans at this time...", users of the NOMAD may be able to persuade Creative with enough organized effort. Visit the NOMAD Web site for more information.

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Forgot your password for Microsoft Office 97/2000 document? Don't worry, this utility may help you to guess it. The following passwords can be recovered instantly: for Microsoft Access databases; all ones for documents created in French version of Microsoft Office; write-reservation passwords; passwords for workbook and individual sheets (Excel); document protection passwords (Word). The passwords required to open Word/Excel documents can recovered using "brute-force" and dictionary attacks, highly optimized for speed (the performance is 4-5 million passwords per minute on PII/PIII). Multi-language user interface is provided.

You can download the file from here.

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The White House might ask to be briefed by the Justice Department about the penalties it will seek against Microsoft Corp. for violating antitrust laws, a spokesman said Thursday.

"We have not been involved in this, but we have not ruled out being briefed on the case," White House spokesman Jake Siewert said last night. Siewert would not say what other White House involvement might be possible.

Presidential participation in antitrust decisions is extraordinarily rare but not unprecedented, according to antitrust scholars.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates met with President Clinton at the White House on Wednesday in a summit on the "new economy," two days after US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that the company broke federal and state antitrust laws by engaging in predatory tactics to protect monopoly in personal computer operating systems.

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Hooker Furniture Corp. knows that furniture can’t just have style; it’s also got to function.

That's also true for the company’s business operations. Hooker has to get its product to customers, keep costs low and stay competitive. That’s why the company replaced its mainframe-based IT system with a system based on Microsoft® BackOffice® Server 4.5. Since adopting the new system a year ago, the furniture manufacturer has used real-time communications and data transfer to improve efficiency, productivity and customer service while lowering administrative and overhead costs.

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Daily Radar have posted their last installment to their Starlancer week. Here is a snippet of it:

While Erin has been hard at work on StarLancer, his brother (and Digital Anvil's founder) Chris has been off working on his own super-mega space project. Since the first time we saw shots of Freelancer over a year ago, we've been pretty sure that this new game was going to shoot the entire space genre through the event horizon of a black hole. What we actually know about the game is fairly limited so far. In fact, we were just barely able to wrest these few screenshots away from the protective arms of Microsoft and Digital Anvil. The two companies have been jealously guarding the game, letting the merest of trickles out to satisfy our desire for more.

You can read more here.

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Software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is buying a 60 percent stake in Japan's No. 2 cable television operator, Titus Communications Corp., taking its push into high-speed Internet access to a small but growing market.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., said late on Friday that it was buying the stake in Titus from U.S. cable company MediaOne Group Inc. (NYSE:UMG - news), which is merging with U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Japanese media reports said late last year that Microsoft was interested in buying the stake. Other Titus stakeholders include Japan's Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) and Itochu (8001.T).

Microsoft and MediaOne officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

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PC.VGF.Net have posted a preview of Gas Powered Games upcoming game. Here is a snippet of it:

Some of the most innovative and successful games in recent memory have intuitively mixed two genres. Throw a first person shooter and a strategy game into a blender, and out

comes Rainbow Six. What about action and role playing? Try Diablo. Combine adventure and stealth? Looking Glass` Thief is the result. Now imagine the elements of a realtime strategy title and a classic dungeon crawl together seamlessly. Sound appealing? That's what the creator of Total Annihilation had in mind.

In Dungeon Siege, you'll take control of up to 10 different characters and depart on a quest to discover the reason behind the monsters that have been attacking villages in hordes. The game's world is filled with both NPCs that may join you and plenty of creatures to smite. Although the game may take place in a typical fantasy land, Dungeon Siege should, if nothing else, give RPGers one thing they do crave - sheer size. The Siege Engine allows the designers - as well as gamers - to create a world of any imaginable size. As a plus, you can expect the world to be seamless, and have no load times whatsoever; gone are the days of waiting every time you enter a cave or stroll into a tavern.

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The state and federal governments have won the first round of their antitrust case against Microsoft, but with years of legal appeals anticipated, who the new president is could change how the case is resolved.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) has signaled he would be more friendly to the company. Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) generally has stayed silent. There is precedent for a new administration changing course in a major antitrust case: In 1982, the year-old Reagan Justice Department threw out a case against IBM that had lingered since 1969.

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Microsoft UK today announced that Asheron's Call will officially launch in the UK on the fourteenth day of the fourth month of the year 2000. To celebrate the upcoming launch, Microsoft UK is giving gamers the chance to get their hands on a copy of the game early. 100 copies are up for grabs over the next two weeks leading up to the launch. This promotion is only open to UK residents.

Asheron's Call is a massively multiplayer role-playing game playable exclusively on the MSN Gaming Zone (http://zone.msn.co.uk) that draws together thousands of players within a dynamic, 3-D online world. Players can create truly unique characters by choosing between extensive combinations of visual appearance, attributes and skill sets. Asheron's Call immerses players in an intense role-playing fantasy environment where they must compete or cooperate with thousands of other online players. An extensive system of allegiance and influence greatly enhances social interaction. The online nature of the game facilitates an evolving and dynamic adventure inside a consistent universe. The game will never be solved because there will always be more areas to explore and quests to complete.

For more information about the launch of Asheron's Call in the UK, please visit the game's official UK Web site, at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/games/asherons

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Bill Neukom, executive vice president and chief counsel at Microsoft, yesterday reiterated what's becoming a company mantra: Microsoft will prevail in the appeals process.

Speaking to the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association annual meeting in Seattle, Neukom remained as cool as a cucumber about the company's legal prospects, three days after a federal judge ruled the Redmond software maker broke antitrust law.

"Some of you might have heard some news concerning my company and a tiny part of the government this week," he joked. He then detailed how the company will argue each of the counts U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled on, citing precedents and discussing legal points.

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Intel may boost capital spending this year by as much as 40 percent to $7 billion, as the world's biggest chipmaker looks to raise production to meet demand, analysts said.

Intel, expected to be the industry's top spender this year, has said it will spend $5 billion, up from $3.4 billion last year. The biggest component of capital spending for the chipmaker is manufacturing and testing equipment.

Chip-equipment suppliers have seen surging orders from Intel in recent weeks, analysts said. The chipmaker's lengthy project list includes plans to install equipment for a test line in Oregon and refurbish a New Mexico plant. Intel will convert one plant in Colorado into a test facility and equip another to make flash memory, logic chips and other communications and networking gear.

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3D Rage have released a comparison between Windows 98 and Windows 2000. here is a snippet of the comparison:

Back in the old pre-286 MS-DOS days, a system could only run one program at a time, and that program would frequently take control of all available resources, even if it didn't need them. Even now, an operating system cannot truly multithread without multiple processors, so it is simulated through time slicing. A single processor can only execute one thread (a single process, win32 applications can and usually do have several threads) at a time. Therefore, there must be some system in place to decide which thread gets to use the processor.

You can read more here.

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WinZip have released a new build of their popular compression utility bringing the build number up to 3095. You can download the new build from the WinZip homepage.

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Earlier reports of a potential flaw in Windows 2000 have been debunked. The flaw, which was reported on the Internet last month, concerned servers used as domain controllers and connected to more than 51 IP addresses.

A group of users at a North Carolina ISP reported problems with their domain controller after adding 52 IP addresses to the machine. They reported the problem to Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com), who, after five days of testing, declared the problem to be an "issue," rather than a flaw.

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Gamespot UK has posted up a preview of DirectX 8.0 with a breakdown of the features and benefits that it will give to gamers. Here is a snippet of the preview:

Historically, graphics in DirectX has been divided into two parts: DirectDraw for 2D graphics and Direct3D for taking care of the 3D graphics pipeline. That's about to change. Microsoft's goal for DirectX 8.0 is to merge DirectDraw and Direct3D into a single entity. The focus is to give the best possible support for full-screen 3D game titles. That doesn't mean that 3D in a window goes away. It means that the work that will go into DirectX 8.0 will focus on making full-screen titles run well. Microsoft feels that DirectX 7.0 solved the windowed 3D problem, so 3D in a window is still viable, and it certainly won't disappear.

Microsoft is also working to abstract the API a little more so that more innovative hardware can be developed without having to wait for the API. Rather, innovations can be hidden underneath. For example, the front buffer - which actually contains the displayed image - won't be directly accessible any longer. There will also be a cursor API, which lets hardware vendors finally have a fully supported hardware-accelerated cursor that's supported by DirectX.

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Days after a federal judge declared Microsoft Corp an abusive monopoly, the software giant is giving the world a sneak peek at the latest consumer version of its Windows operating system, which boasts more Internet and multimedia features.

The latest test version of Windows Millennium Edition, also dubbed Windows Me, will be shown off to user groups around the country on Saturday, and shipped to computer makers and sellers next week for testing, Shawn Sanford, group product manager for the consumer Windows division, said in an interview.

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Microsoft last night confirmed that Windows Me has as predicted, hit beta 3 just in time for Microsoft eXtreme. Build 2499.7 (Currently unconfirmed on this at the moment as we were also told my Microsoft that 2499.5 was beta 3 a day or so ago but as soon as we can get a confirmation we'll post it) was the build classed as being good enough for Beta 3 status. Windows Me is the name of the final version of Windows based on the Windows 9* kernel.

Read the Windows Me FAQ

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As expected, Microsoft's upcoming space-sim StarLancer has gone gold and will ship to stores later this month. We will have a review up in the next few weeks once the gold code arrives here. I can already say it is an excellent game if you have been a fan of the Wing Commander series of games.

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The year 2000 is shaping up to be a year of change chez Rothenberg -- and not all of it an unalloyed pleasure. Just weeks after my last embarrassingly remedial activity -- buying my own Mac after years of corporate largesse -- I have taken another consciousness-raising baby step out of my ivory tower: To conform with standard operating procedure in the ZDNet newsroom, I've migrated most of my daylight operations to Windows.

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As mentioned a few weeks ago - Microsoft will debut Windows Me beta 3 (Which went gold yesterday as mentioned earlier in the day) at eXtreme tomorrow. Here is a snippet from news.com:

As previously reported, Microsoft will debut the operating system this weekend at Microsoft Extreme, the company's venue for sneak previews of products. Also being shown is Pocket PC, the company's new version of Windows CE for handheld PCs, and Front Page 2000 Web authoring software.

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While Microsoft prepares for the final stages of it landmark antitrust trial, lawyers are readying the first stages of about 115 civil lawsuits that could expose the software giant to more than $7 billion in damages, legal experts say.

Private attorneys started filing the bulk of civil lawsuits against Microsoft in November, soon after U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact in the trial.

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Leave it to La-Z-Boy and Microsoft to find a way to surf with your feet up. The companies during opening day of the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., on Thursday unveiled the ``e-cliner,'' a plush recliner with Microsoft's WebTV hard-wired into the armrest.

``I usually fall asleep watching TV in one of these recliners, so now I guess I can surf the Web in my sleep, too,'' said one retail buyer looking over the recliner at La-Z-Boy Inc.'s showroom here. The e-cliner will retail from $999 upholstered to $1,299 for the leather version, complete with the WebTV keyboard console, set-top box and two month's free WebTV service.

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Software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) on Thursday said it had scored a small victory in its legal battle with archrival Sun Microsystems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news) over its license for a computer programming technology developed by Sun.

In a ruling issued late on Wednesday, Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., rejected Sun's interpretation of its contract with Microsoft concerning updated versions of its Java technology.

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DVD is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and so are the websites that cover it.

In January, DVDFile.com, along with The Digital Bits and other major DVD sites, launched a campaign to get Star Wars released on DVD. The effort gained so much support that Lucasfilm took notice. While the film company said it would not release Star Wars on DVD, normally tight-lipped director George Lucas agreed to answer 10 questions from the campaign's organizers.

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After a week of being battered on Wall Street and in the courts, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is trying to build up its public image with a new television ad.

The software giant unveiled an ad Thursday in which chairman Bill Gates, filmed on the Microsoft campus, talks directly to the camera as he discusses the company's past and future. Upbeat acoustic guitar music plays in the background.

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Consumers are claiming the Internet, demanding rich media content and access to it from anywhere, from the looks of activity at this week's Internet World conference here.

America Online, the king of consumer Internet activity, is in the middle of it all. Yet another example of its consumer-oriented focus is the introduction of a line of Instant AOL Net appliances from Gateway. AOL, of course, also introduced the updated Netscape 6 browser.

"The new [Internet] revolution is about consumers and about convergence," says Steve Case, AOL's chair. The Internet has changed from a hobbyists' haven with little commercial content to a burgeoning online marketplace, he notes. And vendors are trying to make it even easier for you to spend money online.

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Daily Radar is having a Starlancer week on their site and has a breakdown and description of all the ships in the game. When I first read the title on Voodoo Extreme I thought it meant that it went gold, obviously I was wrong. In the Starlancer week they have two sets of music tracks from the game that can be downloaded (Track 1 and Track 2), an interview with Erin Roberts and are going to be revealing a few surprises!

To check out the first page of Ships of the Line click here.

To check out the second page of Ships of the Line click here.

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Matrox have released a new set of drivers for the Millennium G400 card only (not the G400 Max) running under Windows 2000. These are the first Matrox drivers that are fully WHQL certified. The drivers are 2.9 MB and can be downloaded from here. You can also download the uninstall utility (if you don't already have it) from here.

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In a bid to stay one step ahead of market leader Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has started shipping samples of its first copper-based X86 microprocessors as it prepares to report first-quarter sales of more than $1 billion, said the company's chairman and chief executive officer W.J. Sanders III.

Sanders would not reveal the expected clock frequency of AMD's upcoming Athlon processor — code-named Thunderbird — with integrated Level 2 cache and copper interconnects, which it expects to ship by midyear. AMD began shipping its fastest 1-GHz Athlon processors, built with its 0.18-micron process technology and aluminum interconnects, to a limited number of customers last month.

The Thunderbird chip, which is will be produced at the company's Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany, is based on a 0.18-micron, six-layer metal copper manufacturing process. The process was frozen last winter and later qualified at the end of last quarter.

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ATI have released new Windows 2000 Drivers for their ATI Rage 128 chipset. You can download the file from here.

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3Dfx have released new Windows 2000 Drivers for their Voodoo Banshee chipset. At the moment these are beta drivers and are unsupported. These drivers give you Glide and OpenGL support to the driver kit that wasn't included with Windows 2000. You can download the file from here.

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Sun Microsystems, in its efforts to compete with Microsoft Office in the Windows arena, has announced the availability of Star Office 5.2 beta for download. This version focuses on improving Microsoft Office file type support to make it easy to migrate to the Star Office set of business applications, as well as improved support for importing and exporti