The first Community Technology Preview is out there for TechNet and MSDN subscribers.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 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 August 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 August 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 August 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 August 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 August 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 August 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 August 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 August 06, 20091 comments
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 August 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 August 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 August 05, 20090 comments