Office 2010 general available on June 15 2010

That Office would be released in June was news last November, but now Paul Thurrott mentions a hard date June 15th 2010 in his weekly WinInfo Short Takes.
GA or General Availability means that RTM should be at least a month before that, but I expect even 2 months.
Next week is February vacation in the Boston area (which, unlike much of the country, doesn't do a March spring break), and although I'd like to go to Barcelona for the Mobile World Conference and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7 unveiling, I'll have to do that virtually—because we're going to Florida with another family on vacation. Of course, vacations for me are virtual vacations, and I'll still be working. So aside from some email-response slowness, it should be business as usual here.

Leo and I recorded the Windows Weekly podcast on Thursday at the usual time, so you can expect the new episode to appear by the weekend, as usual. Be sure to check out the SuperSite for Windows, however, because I'm now doing weekly Windows 7 feature overviews and tips, and publishing both to the site each week.

Microsoft planning new Windows 7 piracy check

Microsoft said on Thursday that it plans to release a Windows Activation Technologies Update for Windows 7 that will detect 70 known activation exploits.
The update will be distributed on Microsoft's Genuine Windows site on February 16 and will be available from the Microsoft Downloads Center on February 17. Joe Williams, Manager of Microsoft's Genuine Windows team, confirmed the update will also be offered through Windows Update as an ‘Important’ update later this month.

Williams stressed that the update is voluntary and will not jeopardize users privacy. "Although the update contacts Microsoft’s servers to check for new threats...these checks do not include any personally identifiable information" he added.

The update will check for 70 known activation exploits. If any activation exploits are found users will be notified their copy is not genuine and the desktop wallpaper will be switched to a plain black desktop. Periodic reminders and a persistent desktop watermark will also remind users that their copy is not genuine.

Sony's first netbook

After all the noise Sony made about avoiding the term "netbook" with the release of its Vaio P ultraportable, and the statements Senior Vice President Mike Abary made about the Eee PC before that, it was beginning to look like Sony was never going to release a device in the netbook/mini-note form factor. But that has changed.

Today, Sony officially launched its first netbook. The 10.1-inch Windows XP-based Vaio W runs on a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N280, has 1 GB of RAM, and a 160 GB SATA HDD. It's equipped with 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, a built-in Webcam, and offers 1366 x 768 screen resolution -- higher-than-usual for netbook screens.Unlike many other companies who are aligning with mobile broadband chipmakers and network operators to make their products truly mobile, Sony says the Vaio W is for use in the home as a secondary or maybe even tertiary computer.

To retain the traditional Vaio emphasis on multimedia, the W comes with Vaio Media Plus streaming multimedia software, which lets the netbook interact with DLNA-compatible household devices, such as a PC, PlayStation 3, or HDTV. But since it is a netbook after all, it is being touted less as a media portal, and more as a creature comfort.

The company paints the device as an Internet companion suitable only for the most superficial tasks. Sony's introduction of the Vaio W in Europe says, "While watching TV or reading a magazine, you've probably experienced the urge to look up something on the Internet that you've just seen or read but couldn't be bothered getting up to your desktop PC..." That's where the Vaio W is useful.

It's quite emblematic of Sony's attitude toward netbooks. The $999 Vaio P offers a smaller footprint, is equipped with GPS, mobile broadband, and the same Vaio Media Plus software mentioned earlier, but is absolutely not a netbook. The W, which Sony calls a "mini-note" in English language releases, and an "Internetbook" in Japanese language releases, is stripped of most of its mobility features and is being marketed as a mostly superfluous and unnecessary device. After all, Abary did say if netbooks caught on, "We're all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom."

If you can be bothered to get up off the couch and buy one, the Vaio W will debut in August for $499, and can be pre-ordered at Sonystyle.com.