Steve Ballmer never misses an opportunity to praise Microsoft and its products from the rooftops. But with Windows 7 he may finally have reason to do just that. Which is exactly what he did during Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington this week.

The next edition of Microsoft Office is now available for free testing by the public. As well as a desktop edition of Office 2010, there is also a dedicated application for Windows Mobile devices.

Microsoft has revealed details of the next incarnation of its browser, just three weeks into its development process. The key promises include making Internet Explorer 9 as fast as rival browsers, and allowing hardware to do more of the work with web graphics.

Microsoft is most definitely back. The combination of Windows 7 and the Bing search engine means that the company is in a fine position heading into 2010. Windows 7 continues to grab market share away from both Vista and XP and is managing to steal market share from its competitors. However it’s Yahoo rather than Google that is feeling the pain.

Microsoft has confirmed that an unpatched bug in Windows 7 could give hackers the ability to bring machines to a standstill. But the firm has condemned a security researcher for the way he publicized the bug, despite having used similar tactics themselves.

Microsoft has decided to open up the Windows 7 desktop to advertisers, with companies able to put together themes that can be downloaded to users’ computers. I can see many people hating this idea and accusing Microsoft of selling out but, really, what’s the problem? The themes are 100 percent free and 100 percent optional so I really cannot see the issue.

Microsoft has begun using tools from the Wolfram Alpha service within the results for Bing. It could serve as a valuable way of differentiating Bing from rival search sites.

Windows 7 is a brilliant operating system. Of that there is no doubt. It’s what Vista should have been, built along the same lines but with less bloat and more features. So what’s the problem? The problem is that the look and feel of Windows 7 may have been inspired by the look and feel of Mac OS X, the operating system of Microsoft’s arch rival Apple. And that’s causing a hell of a storm of controversy.

Microsoft and independent security voices both say an update in this week’s “Patch Tuesday” collection should be the top priority for all users. Failure to do so could leave users vulnerable to a particularly serious security gap.

It was good news when Microsoft released its Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool to enable owners of netbooks without an optical drive to upgrade to Windows 7. However, it’s bad news to learn that the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool possibly contained source code from the GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster project. Oh dear.

A Microsoft tool designed to help law enforcement staff to rescue data from a suspect’s computer has appeared online. At least one filesharing site has taken it down, raising questions as to how advanced or secretive the tool truly is.

June saw Microsoft announce it was busy redesigning the MSN homepage. While it’s still a few months away from being rolled out to everyone, the new design has now made its debut. And the timing couldn’t be better, with Microsoft Web sites beating all comers, including Google, for total hours spent on them online.

A month after a record-setting batch of updates, the November ‘Patch Tuesday’ package will contain just six updates. Of those, at least three appear to be revisions or repetition of updates from the October release.

Two weeks after the launch of Windows 7 and I think we can safely say it went rather well. There was a successful build-up to the launch, a huge buzz created around the new operating system, and despite a few upgrade hiccups, very few technical difficulties for end users. And first week sales figures suggest consumers responded by opening their wallets.

Microsoft has announced another 800 job cuts. The cuts appear to be across the board rather than through specific departments being axed.