It's August. It's hot -- sort of, finally, at least here in Greater Boston. And it's the time of year when people go on vacation and industry news shrinks from a rushing river to a trickle in a dry stream bed.
At this point, most of the Microsoft world is waiting for Windows 7, and most of the news that's most relevant to Microsoft partners involves Windows 7. Post-Tech-Ed, post-Worldwidw Partner Conference, post-Microsoft-Yahoo deal, we're living out the dog days waiting for the fall, when Microsoft's knight in shining shrink wrap (if you're old-school and still buy stuff that way) will come and save us from the tyranny of Vista and the terror of Microsoft's shrinking profits.
While we're waiting, though, there's a little bit of Windows 7 news leaking out here and there. Microsoft revealed upgrade options and pricing late last week, although most of the trade press (RCPU included, apparently) seems to have missed the announcement. Well, now you know what's happening.
And there's also word about XP mode for Windows 7, the desktop virtualization component that will allow users to run XP and XP-based apps in the new operating system, just for old times' sake (and because Windows 7 obviously won't run everybody's legacy apps right out of the box). XP mode code is at the release-testing phase, and the final product should launch with Windows 7 in October.
But that's a couple of months away. In the meantime, enjoy a beverage in the back yard, go for a swim, catch a baseball game and take what might be one of your last spins with good ol' XP (or, uh, Vista, we suppose). Windows 7 is coming...but not quite yet.
Have anything to say about Windows 7 you haven't read here before? How about those upgrade options and that XP mode? Send your thoughts on this stuff to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/05/20091 comments
It might still be second to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but Firefox, your editor's personal browser of choice,
passed the 1 billion download mark
this week. So much for IE killing off the browser market...
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/05/20090 comments
It's for all those retail dollars that consumers are going to spend in order to stimulate the economy...just as soon as they get their jobs back.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/05/20090 comments
You have to knock out the champ. It's an old adage in boxing (if anybody remembers that sport). Rarely does a challenger win a decision over a champion; the underdog almost always needs to 10-count the champ if he (or she) is going to win the fight and claim the title. Just going the distance and "winning" on points usually won't do it. Or, at least, that's the way it used to be back when boxing was relevant.
The same goes for software and especially for Microsoft. It might be an aging, struggling champion, but Microsoft is still king of the ring when it comes to what we might generically call productivity suites -- or what we'd more commonly call an "office" suite, thusly dubbed because the longtime ruler of the roost in that particular category of software is the still-intimidating Microsoft Office.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 08/04/20090 comments
OK, so that whole thing about Microsoft releasing a browser-less version of Windows 7 in Europe in order to appease voracious European Union regulators? Yeah, that's not going to happen. But browser democracy is still alive and well for now.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/04/20090 comments
Don Quixote lives. Specifically, he lives in Redmond, Wash. and is more commonly known as Steve Ballmer. The Microsoft CEO has been jousting at the windmills of consumer search for years now, and this week he finally got the prize he has sought for some time: a somewhat less-distant second place to Google in the search market.
Yes, finally, Ballmer and Microsoft have signed a 10-year search deal with Yahoo, which basically makes Yahoo a sales arm of Microsoft and its new Bing search engine. Pending regulatory approval, Microsoft and Yahoo will partner to have less than 40 percent (or, some say, less than 30 percent) of the current search market share.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/29/20092 comments
The worst-kept secret in Redmond just got...well, a little worse-kept. We now have some idea of what Microsoft's retail stores will look like and what kinds of things they'll feature. One thing is for certain, though: they won't be as cool as Apple stores (nor should they be).
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/29/20090 comments
Democracy has kind of been an on-again, off-again concept in Europe over the centuries, but it's on again now in more ways than one.
In an attempt to get European Union regulators off the company's back, Microsoft has proposed offering a "ballot" of browsers from which users can choose in Windows 7 (as well as in XP and that other operating system, as Mary Jo Foley reveals).
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/29/20090 comments
SPSS makes software that lets companies analyze trends in consumer buying patterns, apparently. It must have done something right, as IBM paid $1 billion-plus for the company. Oh, and Ounce Labs does compliance stuff. It will become part of Big Blue's Rational software operation.Â
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/29/20090 comments
There's a special Patch Tuesday fix coming out today -- but if you've been keeping up with your Microsoft updates, you won't need to worry about it.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/28/20090 comments