Read more at preview.windows.com.

As it turns out, email clients that use the Word 2007 rendering engine (ie. Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010) have inherited the Word 2007 image height limit of 18 inches.

This is nice to know if you’re working in Word, but how about when you’re designing for email? We ran a test and found out that Outlook ‘07 and Outlook ‘10 truncate the upper portion of all images higher than 1728px from the top-down. So, if your image is 250px longer than the 1728px limit, 250px will get lopped off the top. Take a look at the screenshots below to see this in action:

Outlook 2003 (and all other major email clients)

Outlook 2007 & Outlook 2010

You may be wondering, “Who adds images larger than 1728px high to their emails?” Well, sometimes it happens (images says more than a 1000 words and so on)… So before you warm up your scrollbar, don’t forget that Outlook has its limits.

The Surface tablet comes in 2 versions. Both with a 10,6″ screen, where the Pro version comes with FULL HD, USB3, I5 processor and up to 128GB hard drive!

Very nice flip-out keyboard and back support. This will definitely be a huge challenge to iPad and other tablets. Let’s just hope the price is “right”.

Read more about Surface on Microsoft.com

Today, more than 1 billion personal computers around the world run Windows. Over the years, Windows has been the catalyst for innovations that have transformed the way people communicate, access information, create and share content, and much more, at work and at home. Windows is the platform that most people use to get the greatest value and benefit from their personal computers. Windows is also the platform that brings together the broadest array of choices across PCs, devices and applications. To all of our Windows customers, thank you! To the hundreds of thousands of partners that develop millions of solutions for Windows, thank you.

Read the rest of the letter at microsoft.com.

CEO Steve Ballmer has a unique sales pitch for the company’s Windows Vista operating system — if you don’t like it, you can turn it into Windows XP.

Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs, Ballmer noted that the program allows customers who aren’t satisfied with Vista to use XP.

“Customers get both,” said Ballmer, during a brief interview at an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Ballmer was responding to a question about whether Microsoft would extend Window’s XP’s shelf life beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration for the broader PC market. The company earlier this week said it would give XP a reprieve for installations on ultra-low cost desktops.

Ballmer implied that an extension for mainstream PCs isn’t in the cards because customers who want XP past June 30 can simply purchase Vista and exercise the downgrade option. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” he said.

A number of PC makers, including Dell, are offering business systems that have been “pre-downgraded” from Vista to XP.

Ballmer’s comments indicate that Microsoft does not view the downgrade program as a mere licensing loophole through which a few disgruntled customers can retain access to Windows XP. Rather, it appears that the company is now formally endorsing the program and may in fact be counting on it to spur sales of Vista, which many businesses have rejected due to its hefty hardware requirements and incompatibilities with older applications.

The situation raises questions about sales figures that Microsoft has provided for Vista. In April, the company said it had sold more than 140 million Vista licenses since the OS became available to the public early last year. But Microsoft did not indicate what percentage of those Vista licenses have been downgraded to XP.

A number of organizations in the government and commercial markets have said they may bypass Vista and jump directly from XP to Windows 7 when the latter becomes available in late 2009 or early 2010.

The irony is further strengthen by the fact that this was taken with an iPhone And in case you thought this was “photoshopped” here’s another image proof to back it up.

One would think a man in his position would use his own company’s products, but then again he might be running dual boot and actually be using MS office on Vista at the given moment.

Considering the lame reception of Vista and the latest MS products I tend to think “Ha – I knew it!!”. Anyway, it’s a great shot, and the logo on the desk matches the colours of the Macbook perfectly