The Mac OS X 10.5.1 update has improved stability

I am delighted to report that after installing the initial Leopard update, both of our pilot Macs have back to their normal pre-Leopard stability.However, I was dismayed to see that on a third Mac  which we took from Mac OS X 10.4.10 directly to 10.5.1  that Apple still hasnt fixed the dangerous firewall default setting. That Macs firewall was turned on before the upgrade  but was disabled afterwards, leaving the machine vulnerable to attack.

Be sure to check and correct the firewall settings on any Mac that your company upgrades to Leopard.

One of the application issues reported yesterday has also been resolved. Thats the bug where the File -> New Blank Document menu item disappeared from Microsoft Word 2004.

During the upgrade process, Word was somehow switched into Word 5.1 Menus mode  which I hadnt even known existed. I stumbled across it when happening to look at the View menu, and Word 5.1 was there with a check mark on it. I unchecked the box, and my menus went back to normal, restoring the New Blank Document option.

I have no idea how Word got into that mode. In fact, I tried to bring Word back into that mode to take a screen capture and was unable to do so. Not only did that Word 5.1 item disappear from the menu, but it seems impossible to bring it back. The only reference I could find is in a Microsoft online help document, which says in part,

Word for Mac has a command in the View menu, named Word 5.1 Menus, that make the menu commands appear as they did in Microsoft Word 5.1 for Macintosh. All Help files are written using the default Word menu commands for the version in question. If the Word 5.1 Menus feature is enabled, the Word commands may be renamed or moved to a different location than those referenced in Help. To make sure that the Word 5.1 Menus are not enabled, click View, and then verify that the Word 5.1 Menus check box is not selected. If the Word 5.1 Menus option is selected, the option is enabled. Select the command to toggle this setting, and disable Word 5.1 Menus. If you use the steps that are listed in Word Help, we recommend that you disable the Word 5.1 Menus. Note that in both Microsoft Word X for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac, you can only turn on Word 5.1 menus from the command well because the command is not available on the View menu by default. However, you can still disable Word 5.1 Menus by using the steps in Method 2 for Microsoft Word 98 and later versions. The Word 5.1 Menus command will only appear in Word X for Mac and in Word 2004 for Mac if the feature is enabled.

However, I cant find that command anywhere. Bizarre.