So a group of pesky states (hello, California -- we know why you're here) wants
to keep the consent decree covering Microsoft's nasty little habit of being
a monopolist alive for five more years. Microsoft says, as you might imagine,
that it's time to put the whole consent decree business to bed.
Well, Redmond now has a
pretty
powerful ally
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Posted by Lee Pender on November 13, 20070 comments
So, this is kind of weird: A French Linux vendor named Mandriva thinks it has this contract all wrapped up with the Nigerian government. Then, all of a sudden, the government announces that it’s going to pay Mandriva for the computers and software it’s shipping -- but the government’s not going to install the Linux distro; it’s going to
run Windows instead
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Posted by Lee Pender on November 02, 20070 comments
Well, here we go again. Apple is out with a new version of OS X,
this
one called Leopard
, and
everybody
(and we do mean
everybody
)
is telling us how much better Leopard is than Vista. Everybody who's not complaining
about Leopard's
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Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20077 comments
Well, it only makes sense, right? Microsoft lights up the scoreboard with its
earnings report, and big channel partners fall in line. In case you missed it,
last week, great big distributor Ingram Micro
reported
its best third quarter
ever.
Hopefully your own revenues are rising with this tide, as well.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20070 comments
The consent decree Microsoft made with the U.S. government as part of its 2002
antitrust settlement was supposed to expire this month, but it'll
run
until the end of January
, thanks to a federal judge's decision. Some states
want to monitor Microsoft for antitrust-like behavior for another five years.
The judge will be mulling that over in the next few months.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20071 comments
Partners! In case you missed one of about a billion Microsoft e-mails you must
get every month, here's a tip for you: You can now participate in an
evaluation
of the latest release candidate
of Windows Server 2008. Our first comment
in the evaluation? "Change the name back to Longhorn."
Posted by Lee Pender on November 01, 20070 comments
Redmond
magazine contributing editor Mary Jo Foley has a report on what
Microsoft is doing to get consumers to
buy
Vista for the holidays
. So far, the answer is...not much of substance, actually.
But we are kind of looking forward to Steve Ballmer's appearance in
Vogue
.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 25, 20070 comments
It's all butter cookies and, uh, Danish, we suppose (if Danish -- as in the
sweet, sweet pastry -- is actually Danish, unlike french fries, which aren't
French) this week at Euro Convergence in Copenhagen. (OK, so the only other
thing we can think of when we hear "Copenhagen" is chewing tobacco,
which just sounds so much less appealing than cookies and pastry -- or even
fries. But go with whatever you like. Just use the spittoon, please.) And just
as we've had from Microsoft at prior Convergence get-togethers, we've got messaging
about the four disparate Dynamics suites cozying up to each other in some way.
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Posted by Lee Pender on October 25, 20070 comments
Mr. Ellison usually gets what Mr. Ellison wants (right, Siebel and PeopleSoft?),
but the Napoleon of the software industry
hasn't
managed to pillage BEA
yet. He's still on the warpath, though, and it wouldn't
surprise us to see BEA fall into Oracle's hands before this little drama is
finished.
Posted by Lee Pender on October 24, 20070 comments
Microsoft
introduced
Mobile Server
this week, hoping to pick BlackBerry's position in the "smartphone"
market. And, by the way, we'd like to thank Research In Motion for naming its
product BlackBerry and giving us all these great fruit references to use in
RCPU. Now let's see whether Mobile Server turns out to be a lemon. (See? It
just never stops.)
Posted by Lee Pender on October 24, 20071 comments
Maybe you missed Microsoft's introduction of a
Web
site for medical records
, which the company announced last week. If you
did, that's OK -- it wasn't in the newsletter, so it won't be on the test.
Health care, though, is a great big ol' booming business, chock with profits
for partners who know how to take the temperature of the market and prescribe
some implementations for customers. (Health care metaphors never fail!) Rich
Freeman has a
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Posted by Lee Pender on October 12, 20070 comments