As promised, here's a few Partner Conference links for you to check out today.

eWeek is reporting on the improvements in Office that Microsoft foresees.
The most likely scenarios for Office 12 include enterprise content life cycle; knowledge directory and insight; unified communications, which would bring instant messaging, telephony and other communications together; and integrating them all into business process automation, enterprise project automation, deployment and small business.
I can get along with Office 97 just fine, rarely using anything you'd consider an "advanced feature."

A web site dedicated to watching all Microsoft news (appropriately named Microsoft Watch) reports on Microsoft going vertical with its sale strategies.
One of Microsoft's main goals at this week's partner conference is to flesh out for the 6,000-plus partners here how and why Microsoft is reorienting itself to sell vertically—the same way that rival IBM is doing. As part of its vertical push, Microsoft also is requiring its partners to focus vertically, as well.
The Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian doesn't live too far from where the Partner Conference is being held, so as you'd expect there's a bit of L'Inq coverage of the event. He's been spotting HP Turion laptops, something to do with beer (which can never be a bad thing), and reporting on the vast number of attendees interested in MS CRM. Nice!