After more than 4 years of their much reviled litigation of their customers, the RIAA may be about to get what it has tried to avoid, actually going to trial. While I am sure you have heard of the recent ruling of costs against them, this was after they tried to back out of the case without prejudice, and were smacked for the judge for it. The only facts tried in court in this case were regarding whether they could pull out of litigation scott free after costing the defendant money.
This trial will actually judge the merits of RIAA’s tactics directly, and so far the RIAA has seemed very scared of this. Historically the terms of settlement have been attractive enough that anyone charged that is actually guilty has settled, and in the cases where the defendant has fought, the RIAA has dropped out in some way before getting to a jury. In this case the RIAA tried for summary judgement, meaning the judge makes a determination without going to full jury trial. That was denied so we will see the RIAA in court with a jury on October 2. You can see more detail on the case at Recording Industry vs the People
You are the first person i have seen complaining about office 2007. We have it on half of our workstations and have no issues whatsoever. If you are running vista, that might be your issue. We have been plagued from day one of the vista release and have yet to deploy it.