Office, Vista changed in wake of Adobe Legal threat

Microsoft is making changes to the next versions of both Office and Windows as part of an effort to head off a legal challenge from Adobe Systems.

Microsoft said earlier Friday that it expects an antitrust suit from Adobe after months of negotiations in which the companies failed to reach an accord.

The software maker is unilaterally making changes to both Office 2007 and Windows Vista in an effort to assuage some of Adobe's concerns. More important, the move is an attempt to lower the chances that an injunction could stop Microsoft from shipping those products.

"We don't want anything to stand in the way of customers getting their hands on the product," Microsoft Vice President Chris Capossela told CNET News.com in a telephone interview on Friday. "We certainly are trying to be a good partner here."

Microsoft has already had to delay the release date for Windows Vista several times because of technological hurdles. The current plan is to finish development of Office in October, and Vista by November, in order to have a mainstream launch of the products in January.

Companies brace for European antitrust battle.The company is making two main changes. With Vista, it plans to give computer makers the option of dropping some support for XPS, Microsoft's fixed-format document type that some have characterized as a PDF-killer. Under the changes, Microsoft will still use XPS under the hood to help the operating system print files. But computer makers won't have to include the software that allows users to view XPS files or to save documents as XPS files.

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