As I blogged about previously, unlike most other products it isn't a matter of just localizing the text and releasing it in another country, the product has to be customized to a particular country's tax laws and accounting practices so it takes time to release a version for another country. Users outside of the US or UK may of course download the free Express version or a trial Professional version for a test drive.

Here are the press releases:
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/nov07/11-14OANewEditionsPR.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/nov07/11-14officeaccounting.mspx

And here are the links to the product:
US English: http://www.ideawins.com
US Spanish: http://www.ideawins.com/espanol
UK: http://www.msofficeaccounting.co.uk

To download Express or a Pro trial navigate to the Product Overview section in the respective site.

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 is currently available within the USA only. At this stage, no plans exist for international availability of the product, with the exception of the UK. In May 2006, Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 (UK version) entered Beta testing in the UK with a targeted set of customers and partners. Once Beta testing is completed and the results have been fully reviewed, further updates will become available on the UK product launch. We anticipate having these updates in the first half of calendar year 2007.

Unlike most other products it isn't a matter of just localizing the text and releasing it in another country, the product has to be customized to a particular country's tax laws and accounting practices or we could find ourselves in some legal hot water in that country. Having said that, you are of course free to download the US English version and try it out.

If your business has a need for more advanced features like sales orders, purchase orders, jobs, classes, inventory items, kits, 1099 reports and multicurrency then the Professional version is the correct product. Express can be upgraded to Pro by just entering a new product key which will unlock the Professional features. Trial Professional keys may be obtained by clicking on one of the links in the product like on the "Enter Key" page of the upgrade wizard.

If you are a SBA 2006 user then you will want to upgrade to the Professional version when it is released to retail early next year because upgrading to Express will hide some features you may already be using.

We like to think that Office Accounting can help you turn your ideas into businesses so keep an eye on the http://ideawins.com site because the best idea will win... ;)

1. Disconnect machine from network
2. Install the new system (if not installed)
3. Enable firewall and do not allow inbound exceptions
4. Connect machine to network
5. Download and install required service packs and updates
6. Download and install antivirus software
7. Join machine to domain (if applicable)

Being so close to the release of XP SP2 and thus the free update to the Tablet operating system, I would like to add support for some new features of the OS and drop support for any pre-SP2 machines because I can't see anyone not upgrading; ....so is anyone not going to update their tablet to the 2005 Edition when SP2 is released?

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

// System metric constant for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
private const int SM_TABLETPC = 86;

public static bool IsTabletPC()
{
    return (GetSystemMetrics(SM_TABLETPC) != 0);
}

DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern int GetSystemMetrics(int nIndex);

With the release of the 2005 Edition of the Tablet PC OS and the associated 1.7 SDK coinciding with XP SP2, now is a great time to get a free introduction to developing for the Tablet PC and check out the cool new features coming. Go to http://www.tabletpctraining.com/microsoft/ for dates and cities.  I will be teaching in Philadelphia on May 18 and Cleveland on June 8.