Alright, so for nerds WinHEC is very cool, especially now as Microsoft has today released the second beta-versions of both Windows Vista and MS Office 2007.

First of all, if you want Office 2007 you might want to check this page out, where you can actually download the very latest beta. It's true, it's legal. On the downside: it's totally swamped with other people who also want the latest beta. After clicking to download I got to download the software that allows me to download the suite, but I can't even authorise my e-mail address properly without having the connection kill me every five seconds. Don't forget to check out compatibility-issues before you go ahead using beta 2 in mission-critical environments (which you shouldn't).

Mary Jo Foley says it's make-or-break-time for Microsoft come Windows Vista 2, as this release would clearly show whether they'll make it or not. I still don't know what to make of it, as I haven't really seen any reviews, but it'll divide the world much like the new series of Apple MacBooks: some love their low prices((relative to other Apple laptops, of course)), while some are scornful.

To make things easier for you, here's a gallery of pictures from the latest Windows Vista-build, and here's a gallery of pics from MS Office 2007 beta 2.

Among the new sweets in the Windows Vista-build are gadgets, otherwise known to most of the world as widgets, as popularised through Apple and their Dashboard. There's a flamboyant Windows-picture of picking gadgets here.

Another thing that's bound to make "ordinary users" hellfired is UAC, a fancy acronym for User Access Control, which means that instead of just preventing a user from doing stuff that requires administrator access.

On MS Office 2007, it seems that themes, i.e. colour-schemes, are working, which they did not in beta 1. Not forgetting that you can now blog from Word, save files as PDF and a great number of other things that I have covered before.

A lot more about Office 2007 beta 2 is found here, courtesy of eWeek.