Bill Gates' recent visit to London attracted significant interest; now you can watch his keynote presentation and hear him answer questions on bCentral.

During the course of his presentation, Bill Gates talks about the evolution of software in business. He looks at how software will advance in the time ahead and outlines some exciting new developments that could help your business. Joined by Alistair Baker (Group Director, Small & Mid-Market Solutions and Partners, Microsoft UK) and Jeff Young (Microsoft Business Solutions Vice President, CRM & Retail), he then answers questions from the audience.

Note: If you do not have Windows Media Player 9 installed then you will need to download it to view the webcast.

Microsoft has released today a ton of updates and fixes for Microsoft Office.

Office XP Service Pack 3 for Multilingual User Interface Pack

Project Server 2002 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Visio 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Mertsch in our forum has ripped Windows Media Player 9.0 build 3133 from the lastest windows XP SP2 RC1 for your downloading pleasure.

If you have a Mirror don't forget to post a link!

I Am Not A Geek have thrown up their preview of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 1.

Windows XP SP2 should only be a couple months away from public release. The first release candidate was released on March 17, nearly a month after the previous build. The current build is 2092 which I am using today. I personally expect RC2 to be released in about another month followed by the finished product another month after that.

Paul Thurrott has thrown up his Screenshot Gallery for Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 1.

Thanks to Voodoo over at Neowin.net for the heads up!

The DirectX® Team is pleased to announce the release of DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004) - Beta 2. This Beta release contains the full DirectX SDK which features the initial Beta release of the DirectX 9.0c developer runtime. Areas of concentration in the DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004) Beta release are:

Here we are again with the latest Build of WinXP SP2 but this time its finaly reaching final stages of beta testing. Release Candidate 1 has been released for all official testers.

You may download the express intaller from GeekNewz using the link below. All official testers can go download the full 273mb file from the official site.

Microsoft has updated the Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 document

This document focuses on the changes in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and its implications for developers. Examples and details are provided for several of the technologies that are experiencing the biggest changes. Future versions of this document will cover all new and changed technologies.

Microsoft has updated the Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0

The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms.

Mertsch in our forum has ripped Windows Media Player 9.0 build 3124 from the lastest windows XP SP2 beta for your downloading pleasure.

If you have a Mirror don't forget to post a link!

Thanks to Neobond over at Neowin.net for the heads up!

I just got my monthly round-up of security alerts from Microsoft in my email and I thought I'd share it here seeing as Neowin is focused on keeping our readership up to date as far as securing your internet enabled devices goes. This month's security updates address newly discovered issues in Microsoft(R) Windows(R), Microsoft Office, and MSN(R) Messenger.

Thanks to Tim @ Majorgeeks.com for the Heads up! Microsoft has never released a service pack for Windows98 SE. But I made a Service Pack for Windows98 SE users. It contains all Windows98 SE updates from WindowsUpdate site and more.

MSN Messenger is an instant messaging program that lets you send instant messages with cool emoticons, send pictures and other files to your friends, call a phone anywhere in the world from your computer, see when someone is typing a message to you, page a contact's mobile phone, and much more.

Office XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP3 contains significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements. This service pack applies to any level of Office XP. It contains all updates included in Office XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), and updates released after SP2.

The MSN Sandbox is the place to play with some new technologies at MSN. It is a chance to experiment and peek behind the scenes at some new ideas.

TheCrucible.ca has just posted an article comparing several versions of windows, including the newly leaked SP2 Build 2082. Many benchmarks are included! Here's a snip.

With Windows XP SP2 and Windows XP Reloaded just around the corner, we thought we would bring you a little sneak peak at what new features, and what to expect from these new releases. We managed to wrangle up a copy of SP2 Build 2082. This will be one of the last interim builds before SP2 is released within the next two months.

Even though the next generation Windows product is not due until late 2005 or even 2006, here's a look at what Microsoft has in store for us. For those of you that are lucky enough to have snagged a copy, remember this, Build 4053 is still a baby, not even in Beta stage yet, so this review will not go in depth into subjects such as the theme, sidebar, etc.

Thanks to the guy's at the other batcave WinOScentral for the Info:

I was just answering a question in the forums about Windows prefetch and ran across a nice little VBS script which you can cut and paste into notepad, save it as a .vbs file, then save it to a directory on your computer and then run the "Task Scheduler" wizard and have this file run once a month so you don't have to worry about your prefetch cache getting to large.

NeoWin reports that only minutes ago Microsoft changed the layout to its internal MSN Messenger homepage, which seems to be related to the release of MSN Messenger 6.2! The exact date of arrival can be found on the new, rather orange (coincident?) pages: Thursday, April 08, 2004.

According to sources at Iexbeta, the latest known build of Longhorn [build 4053] has finally leaked!