Reprinted from TidBITS#798/26-Sep-05 with permission. Copyright (C) 2005, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ MailBITS/26-Sep-05 ------------------ **Office 2004 SP2 Enhances Entourage, Fixes Bugs** -- Microsoft has released Office for Mac 2004 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which fixes bugs in all the Office programs and provides notable enhancements to Entourage, the email, calendaring, and contact management part of the software suite. Entourage 2004 SP2 features enhanced support for Microsoft Exchange Server, making it easier for Mac users to coexist in a predominantly Windows and Outlook environment. Specific improvements include better email and calendar management, enhanced public folder support, faster client-server synchronization, improved access (with full browsing) to the Global Address List, and enhanced delegate access that makes new setup possible entirely through Entourage without needing to use Outlook on a PC. Entourage 2004 SP2 requires Exchange 2000 or later, and some organizations may need updates to Exchange. Although Entourage was the only program with significant new features, all the other Office programs received numerous bug fixes and security improvements. You can read the full list at the link below, but we're happiest about the promised performance improvements in Word 2004 SP2 and the fix for the bug that crashed Word when you updated Table of Contents fields contained in a table cell, the two of which had been forcing us to rely primarily on Word X for our Take Control ebooks. Many of the bugs fixed resolve crashes, so if you've had trouble with Office 2004 applications crashing, be sure to install SP2. You can download Office for Mac 2004 SP2 via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility, or from Microsoft's Mactopia Web site; it's a 57 MB download. [ACE] **Opera Now Free** -- Perhaps acknowledging the difficulty of selling a Web browser in today's Internet, Opera has freed its Web browser. While you can still choose to pay for Opera 8.5, which also features chat, contact, email, and other related features, that fee now covers support, not the software. Opera is offering one year of 24-hour-turnaround email support for $29; otherwise, the browser is free. Opera's browser is a bit quirky in how it renders CSS and handles JavaScript, but some folks swear by its fast rendering and certain subtle features. The company has increasingly moved into mobile and embedded browser development, in which revenue comes from licensees who pay a per phone, per customer, or per copy of software sold license. Adobe, for instance, embedded Opera's technology into Adobe GoLive CS2 product for better previewing of pages. Discussion on TidBITS Talk also points toward Opera earning sufficient money from ads shown along with search results from Google. [GF] **Adam Engst Speaking at MUG ONE on 04-Oct-05** -- For folks in upstate New York, I'll be speaking at the MUG ONE Macintosh user group meeting in Oneonta, NY on Tuesday, 04-Oct-05 at 7:30 PM at SUNY Oneonta. Initially, I thought the MUG ONE folks would be bored with learning more about iPhoto, given that I've talked to them about iPhoto several times in the past few years, so my main presentation will be about PDF. Whether you're just annoyed at PDF reading tools or perplexed at how to make a decent PDF for distribution to others, I'll be distilling our experience with the PDF-based Take Control ebooks into this session. But, since it turns out that MUG ONE can't get enough of iPhoto, I'll also be sharing some of my favorite iPhoto 5 tips and tricks, and answering questions about this latest version of iPhoto. [ACE] .