After RCPU lauded readers last week for playing down Browser Wars II, we got rather a brush-off e-mail from reader Andy:
"Browsers are not an application -- they are a platform. And no one wants Microsoft to use one monopoly to gain another monopoly. Please go on and talk about something new."
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/12/20093 comments
Your .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 betas could be at risk if you upgrade to Windows 7. But since this problem only seems to affect Vista users, there probably aren't many of you who care.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/12/20090 comments
The first Community Technology Preview is out there for TechNet and MSDN subscribers.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/12/20090 comments
It turns out that Windows 7 Starter Edition, the version of the new operating system aimed at netbooks, will be pretty lame after all. And that it will be for OEMs only. And that it will be more expensive than XP, meaning Microsoft will be damaging one of the main value points of buying a netbook (the price). And that Steve Ballmer just doesn't like netbooks that much in general. Dig his quote from the story linked above:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/12/20090 comments
Forgive us a bit of a departure from partner-related stuff, but this is RCPU's favorite story of the year so far. Twitter, the annoying social networking site that RCPU recently joined because, well, we apparently had to, has been struggling with denial-of-service attacks recently. That much, you knew. But if you decided to take the weekend (and, we suppose, Friday -- as we did) off, you might not know that the attacks seem to have been the work of a bunch of Russians trying to knock a Georgian (Euro-style, not the college-football-fan kind) off the Web.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/11/20090 comments
Microsoft's been busy patching lately, and there are
nine more fixes
on their way today. But, hey, Redmond's faring better than Twitter has been lately, right?
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/11/20090 comments
In a move we like to see, Microsoft is selling Razorfish, one-time star of the Web world and a company that Microsoft bought when it acquired online ad agency aQuantive,
to a French advertising giant
, Publicis.
We like this because it's one less distraction for Redmond, hopefully meaning that maybe Steve Ballmer is toning down his dream of becoming a media magnate and is starting to focus on Microsoft's (struggling) core technologies again. (To be fair, the company does have a huge launch wave coming, with Windows 7's arrival in October being the obvious marquee event.)
But we're also curious to see what the chefs at the Publicis Drugstore (which is really more of a café-slash-swanky shop) can do with Razorfish. After all, if the French can make pig guts taste good (and they can), they can surely find a way to spice up Razorfish, right?
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/11/20090 comments
As if Google jumping into this game along with OpenOffice.org wasn't enough, a Chinese company called Evermore (quoth the raven, although we think he actually said "nevermore") is launching a Web-based productivity suite. Good luck with that, Evermore. Nobody has knocked Office off of its throne yet. Then again, with a market like China in its back yard, it might not matter how well Evermore's suite takes off anywhere else.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/11/20090 comments
Good news for at least 400 Yahoo employees: Microsoft is going to hire you as part of its deal with the search also-ran. Bad news for the 5,000 or so Microsoft employees the company has laid off recently or will lay off soon: While you're out of work (hopefully not for long), 400 Yahoo employees will be moving (at least virtually) to Redmond.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/06/20090 comments
With regard to Microsoft's plan to offer a ballot of browsers in European versions of Windows 7, we'd like to thank John from Kentucky for pretty much writing today's newsletter for us:
"I just don't understand why the EU keeps pushing this issue. Browsers don't inherently deliver ads or make money (at least not off me). They're a free 'product.' This whole debate seems so 1997!"
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/06/20094 comments
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft has admitted that Linux (and, to an extent, Apple) is a competitive threat to Windows. Well, that might very well be true, but we all know what the biggest competitive threat to any new version of Windows is: the old version, Windows XP. Whether Microsoft mentioned that, we don't know; to be honest, we didn't read the whole filing. If you really want to, check out Annual Form 10-K here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/06/20091 comments