This is old news now.. I am just bad at keeping upto date. MS has updated their advisory (3 weeks ago!) about the file format block in Office 2003 SP3. They now provide some additional reg files to un-block the older file formats de-commissioned by Office 2003 SP3. But rather than release an SP3a or SP4 (?) or an optional update, they just provide links to files you have to download to restore access adn bury that info in the advisory. So SP3 will still block those file types listed but you need to get something to "fix" it.

This turn around comes about from the "revelation" that ..

"...it had underestimated how many users had been affected. It now says that, instead of the file formats themselves being insecure, it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure."

The appropriate response I think for this is "Like d'uh!"

I got that "MS update" icon in my sys-tray advising me of 4 "important" updates one of which was the Office 2003 SP3 update. I wonder how many people turned off that update (just like me) as a result of the news breaking back in early January. I suppose you could install SP3 then run the reg files to clean it up. But why should it still be this difficult, they could make it an optional MS-Update too can't they ? In fact that would be the easiest for users right ? Even when MS admit they're wrong, I still sense they are treating the client base with some antipathy.

Speaking of antipathy, this article back in November about the performance of Vista-SP1 in a pre-release benchmark test gives a great POV of the company's official perceptions of their release of Vista.

"Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver."

I will concede that releasing mass-consumer software of this size and complexity is difficult and a task I don't envy at all, but "...the world wasn't 100% ready" ? Or was Vista not 100% ready for the world ?