Yes, updates again... this time for Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has released service pack 1 for Office 2011, which delivers security and bug fixes along with additional functionality.

Outlook gets the most attention. Synchronisation support has been improved with the addition of calendars, notes and tasks. The downside is that Apple will soon stop using Sync Services to link iCal and MobileMe, so Outlook calendar changes will only reach iPhones, iPads and iPod touches if they are synced via iTunes.

SP1 also returns the Resend function that disappeared when Office 2011 shipped, and adds Redirect (forwarding that ensures subsequent replies go to the appropriate address), support for Exchange rules, and a list of recently used locations for meeting invitations.

Excel gains the Solver add-in, PowerPoint documents can now be password protected, and all applications now allow the creation of Alt Text for graphics and movies.

That's about it for feature changes, although there's also a fair list of fixes for specific bugs, security issues, and general stability.

Microsoft also released security updates for Office 2004 and 2008. I have all three versions installed, and my experience was that Microsoft AutoUpdate only detected the update for Office 2004. So make sure you get the updaters for all the versions on your Mac.

In case any non Office users still reading, I'd explain that a number of people keep Office 2004 on hand because of its support for VBA even though they use a newer version as well.

So far, the update has been relatively painless. I could have done without being forced to quit Safari too run the updaters, but I've noticed no nasty side-effects with Office 2011 SP1 apart from a minor scripting change affecting Outlook.

Previously, the 'content' property of an outgoing message was the plain text, but now it's the HTML text. To set the plain text you need to assign the value to the property 'plain text content'.

Footnote: For those that read last week's post about my TechTracker woes, uninstalling that application did stop the repeated downloads. I haven't got round to trying it again.

As I mentioned last month, I've been struggling to keep my Mac's software up to date.

The good news is that TechTracker is now working for me, at least after a fashion. I've got no idea what changed, but suddenly the list of installed software started appearing when the web page loaded.

But I still have two gripes. Firstly, a significant number of applications - including Adobe Reader, Parallels Desktop and Skype - are reported as being out of date even though I have the latest versions installed, and the version numbers match those listed by TechTracker. I initially used TechTracker's Feedback links to report those issues, but it didn't seem to do any good as the same thing happened day after day. The workaround seems to be to use the Info & Settings link to select 'skip until next update'.

The other problem is that TechTracker doesn't distinguish between major and minor updates. This is a particular issue for paid software, but it can also affect open source and other freeware. If you've decided that it isn't worth paying for version 3 of an application, you don't care about 3.x.x updates but you do want to hear about new 2.x.x updates such as security patches, and TechTracker won't tell you about them. The same situation presumably occurs if you're stuck on an older version for hardware reasons, such as Firefox 3.6 running on PowerPC Macs where 4.0 is Intel-only. At least Firefox does a pretty good job of keeping itself up to date.

That said, one of the useful features of TechTracker is that can reports the software installed on more than one computer, so (if it worked reliably) it would let you make sure that other people in your family or small business haven't been refusing updates that you think should be installed.

On the other hand, TechTracker tells me that I'm not using the latest version of Photoshop CS4, yet CS5 is installed on this computer. And there's no mention of the other CS5 components.

And I've just discovered that TechTracker appears to have been automatically downloading four large files on a daily basis. Two were updaters from Apple, two were application installers.

Why do I blame TechTracker? Examining the Console log revealed TechTracker activity just before each set of downloads occurred. I've uninstalled the software, and I'll see what happens. I may give it another chance down the track.

Camino is the 'other' open source browser for Mac OS X. It feels more like a Mac application than Firefox does (eg, it uses the system-wide spelling checker instead of implementing its own), and because it uses Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine it is very rare to run into site compatibility problems. Indeed, the main reason I use it is that Safari doesn't work reliably with a certain feature of a web application that must use for one of my clients.

The Camino Project has received a setback with the news that Mozilla is dropping active support for embedding rendering. While I can understand Mozilla's reasoning, the decision has put the all-volunteer Camino Project in a bind.

According to that blog post, "The Camino Project is committed to finishing Camino 2.1, which will bring Camino users the same version of Gecko used in Firefox 3.6." Camino 2.1 is expected in May, and security and stability patches will be provided for as long as Gecko 1.9.2 is supported.

"Beyond that, the future is unclear" but may involve replacing Gecko with WebKit. From a selfish perspective, that could well make Camino redundant. I already have the choice of Safari and Chrome, both of which are WebKit based. And I can't see Apple failing to support features of its own operating system.

Compatibility issues seem rare these days. Apart from support for new features, it's really only the one niggle mentioned above that stops me using a single browser for everything.

So I think longtime Camino Project participant Stuart Morgan is probably correct when he writes in his personal blog that this change "could be the beginning of the end for the Camino project".

To everyone that's contributed to Camino over the years: thank you.

While a lot of us download most of our software, there are still times when it makes sense to buy on physical media.

Since the floppy disk faded into history, that usually means a CD or DVD. But what about using an SD card?

Falling prices of flash memory means a 4GB card (or thumb drive) only costs a few dollars, cheap enough to substitute for a DVD. And almost all current Macs have an SD slot as standard, while the MacBook Airs come without an optical drive.

Parallels is now offering its Desktop for Mac virtualisation software on a 4GB SD card as an alternative to a DVD. At least it is in the UK - if or when this option will reach the Asia Pacific region is yet to be announced.

Kim Johnston, vice president of marketing for Parallels said "The environmental benefits are important to us... Its low weight and space-saving packaging saves resources in the manufacturing process and transportation."

That does make a lot of sense. If you want to store the original media somewhere safe in case you ever need to reinstall the software, an SD card takes up much less space than a DVD. Although the volume of a SD storage case is much the as a DVD in an envelope (roughly 15cm3), a like-for-like comparison would involve a plastic CD case, which is around 175cm3.

And you can always back up the installer to a hard drive, and reuse the SD card in a camera or other device.

I like the idea, but whether it will catch on is a different matter. Although software box sizes have shrunk considerably over the last few years, vendors and retailers seem reluctant to make boxes as small as the DVDs they contain. Apple is a notable exception, though there have been suggestions that the arrival of the Mac App Store foreshadows the disappearance of boxed software from Apple Stores.

So F-Secure's Mac Protection security software hiccupped the other day when an update incorrectly reported that legitimate files contained PDF and JavaScript exploits.

Sure, that's not supposed to happen. But over the years most AV vendors have made similar mistakes. Part of the problem seems to be the need to respond quickly to new threats, though it's hard to see that is such a big deal for a Mac product.

F-Secure soon became aware of the problem, and the update was replaced within two hours after its initial release. The company subsequently provided a utility to move most of the affected files out of the Trash and back to the correct locations.

One thing to keep in mind is that we're talking about beta software. To my mind, that's the big lesson. Looking at the messages in the F-Secure forum, a fair proportion of the people that experienced the problem didn't really understand what that means.

Beta software is by definition unfinished. You shouldn't run it unless you're prepared to cope with something going wrong, possibly in a big way. In this case it was a database update that caused files to be misidentified (and would have occurred even if the software itself was finalised), but in another product it could have been a programming error that caused all calendar events to be deleted when daylight saving ends in a particular time zone. Or just about anything.

OK, so F-Secure to some extent distinguishes between beta and technology preview releases, with the latter said to be of "reasonable quality". But if you're not prepared for disaster (eg, with a backup strategy that lets you recover as quickly as you need to), you shouldn't be running prerelease software. From what I can see, even something as basic as Time Machine would have allowed most users to recover fairly easily once they'd disabled or re-updated F-Secure Mac Protection - as long as they hadn't done a manual scan, which apparently moved a much wider range of files into the Trash.

Another lesson is that you shouldn't empty the Trash without first examining at its contents. If there's anything that you didn't explicitly put there, investigate further before emptying. Just make it a habit, like saving your work at regular intervals, and flossing your teeth.

One last thing: some affected users seemed surprised that the Put Back command wouldn't move files out of the Trash and back to their original locations. Put Back only works when a file was put into the Trash by the Finder, ie by dragging it to the Trash, typing Command-Delete, or File>Move to Trash. If any other program - such as F-Secure Mac Protection - put the file in the Trash, the Finder has no way of knowing where it came from and therefore cannot put it back.