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Microsoft has given its new Office-based software-plus-service bundle a new name — “Equipt” — and a due date (mid-July), company officials said on July 2. Equipt is the product/service that was formerly codenamed “Albany” (and inside Microsoft, known as “ValueBox”). Equipt, which Microsoft describes as its “essential set of software and services for consumers,” includes a version of Office Home and Student 2007; Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft’s PC management/security bundle; a few Windows Live communication/collaboration services; and Office Live Workspace, Microsoft’s online-collaboration add-on to Office. Equipt will cost $69.99 annually (for a license that can be installed on three PCs...

Excerpt - Redmond, WA (AHN) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is pulling the XP operating system from its product line come Monday. The move comes 18 months after the company launched the Vista operating system. Although Microsoft will not sell the XP program any longer, they will still generate revenue from providing support for the software as it will no longer be free. Microsoft will offer extended support packages for XP until at least 2014. ~ snip ~

"For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have," Todd Bishop writes for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Microsoft Blog. "As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality." Bishop found a doozy, which also happens to illustrate perfectly why Mac users have such disdain for the "Windows experience." If you've ever...

One of the most successful business partnerships in history was coming unraveled. It was early 2000, and Bill Gates had relinquished the chief executive's job at Microsoft Corp. to Steve Ballmer -- for the first time taking a back seat to his college pal and right-hand man of 20 years. Mr. Ballmer got the title. But Mr. Gates retained the power, triggering a yearlong struggle between the two men that until now has remained largely under wraps. Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Mr. Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match...

<p>Would you pay extra to have an American answer your customer-service call? Dell is hoping you will.</p> <p>The computer maker recently put out a press release announcing “new premium support service.” The plan: For a fee, people get the right to talk to “the same dedicated team each time they have an issue” with a Dell product. The kicker: The service will be provided by “an advanced support team in North America.”</p>

Excerpt - Microsoft is in a bind. Windows Vista has sold 140 million copies, but it's such a resource hog with unreliable hardware drivers that users keep asking Redmond to extend the support for Windows XP. Many corporations refuse to upgrade their server farms and cubicle-bound desktops at all. It's not often that 140 million copies of a software package that costs hundreds of dollars can be called a disappointment, but this one seems to fit that bill. Vowing to release a new operating system every three years, the company now has about 20 months until the supposed release date...

CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) - Microsoft Corp. said its next operating system will be made for touch- screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse, and its top executives reaffirmed interest in joining forces with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer on Tuesday unveiled the iPhone-like touch-screen feature at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference, calling it "just the smallest snippet" of the Windows 7 operating system slated for release in late 2009. A Microsoft employee showed possible applications like enlarging and shrinking photos and navigating a map of San Diego by stroking the screen. Microsoft...

Excerpt - Switching gears. Walt asks about Vista and the lousy reception it’s been given. Is Vista a failure? Ballmer: Vista is not a failure. Is it something we’d like to improve? Of course. Is it something that with 20/20 hindsight we’d do differently? Sure, he confesses. But Vista has sold a lot of copies, he adds. Walt jumps in and asks about the percentage of Vista sales that result in downgrades to XP. Ballmer dodges. Gates looking a little depressed. Walt asks if Vista has damaged with Windows brand. Gates says Microsoft’s philosophy is to “do things better.” And...

At this stage, the best thing that you can say about Microsoft's attempt to transition its users to a new, next-generation operating system is that nobody was actually killed. Even so, it might be appropriate to have a bronze plaque installed where the first copy of Vista was sold, so that visiting dignitaries will have a place to lay ceremonial wreaths. It's simply not competing well against XP. Worse, it's opening the door a crack to Mac OS and Linux. Resistance to Vista is so heavy that major makers like Dell are exploiting legal loopholes that will allow them to...

Excerpt - If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. ~ snip ~

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said there will be a vast shift in Internet technology over the next decade as he met Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. "We're approaching the second decade of (the) digital age," the software mogul and philanthropist told Lee at the start of their meeting at the presidential Blue House, according to a media pool report. "The Internet has been operating now for 10 years," Gates said. "The second 10 years will be very different." Microsoft Corp., the South Korean government and South Korean companies are investing $313 million in...

If you didn’t have your calendar marked this day (04/29/2008) is an important day; the third service pack for Windows XP has been released to Windows Update today. It may not be trickling down just yet but several sites have already posted manual updates that can be downloaded. DailyTech reports that Microsoft hasn’t yet posted an official download for SP3 but BetaNews does have a download link that goes straight back to Windows Update. Windows XP SP3 is more than just a regular Service Pack including more than 1,100 hotfixes/patches which has new features such as Network Access Protection and...

There's another round of mass SQL injections going on which has infected hundreds of thousands of websites. Performing a Google search results in over 510,000 modified pages. As more and more websites are using database back-ends to make them faster and more dynamic, it also means that it's crucial to verify what information gets stored in or requested from those databases — especially if you allow users to upload content themselves which happens all the time in discussion forums, blogs, feedback forms, et cetera. Unless that data is sanitized before it gets saved you can't control what the website will...

The researchers damn Windows in current form, urge radical changes Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been. In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts. "For Microsoft, its ecosystem...

TheStreet.com Video - Microsoft's Vista OS is just plain awful, says Michael Comeau. (Contains some profanity. Viewer discretion is advised.)

Excerpt - Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes. That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. “Windows is too monolithic,” says Silver. ~ snip ~

With the market preparing for the next -- and final -- phase of the life of Windows XP with the forthcoming general availability of Service Pack 3, the old operating system continues to show itself to be a spry performer. In head-to-head tests between Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta (Release Candidate 2) against Windows Vista Service Pack 1, it's clear that XP still holds a measurable performance advantage overMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s next-generation desktop operating system. Our CRN Test Center conducted a faceoff-type of performance evaluation. Testing was done on two identical desktops: HP (NYSE:HPQ)'s rp5700 model with a single...

Journal written by symbolset (646467) and posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday April 05, @07:21AM from the also-duke-nukem-forever dept. Microsoft's efforts to get businesses to adopt Vista may come to a screeching halt now that Bill Gates has announced "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version", referring to Windows 7, the next expected version of the company's flagship desktop operating system.With a new version available soon, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether.

Microsoft said today it will continue to sell Windows XP Home beyond its scheduled June 30 kill-date for the emerging class of "ultra-low-cost PCs," or ULCPCs. The operating system has been granted a reprieve until mid-2010, but only for the diminutive laptops such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC which lack the hardware necessary to run Windows Vista adequately. The cut-off date for XP licenses in mainstream boxes remains the end of June, 2008. Free live support and warranty-based technical support will dry up next April. After that, customers need to pay for phone support until April...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it plans to save $3 billion annually over the next three years by closing its Austin, Texas desktop computer manufacturing plant and cutting thousands of jobs. The company's shares rose 1.1 percent following the announcement after closing up 1.6 percent on Nasdaq. Dell, the world's second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research), also repeated its goal of cutting 8,800 jobs, or about 10 percent of the work force, and said it will review "ownership alternatives" for its Dell Financial Services business. The company said...

Symantec, Windows users beset by Vista SP1 flaws By Tom Espiner, ZDNet UK Monday, March 24, 2008 10:56 AM Security vendor Symantec has said that updated drivers to replace those adversely affected by Windows Vista Service Pack 1 are not yet available. The company said users will have to wait for the updated drivers, which will be available "in the coming weeks". The drivers in question are for Endpoint Protection and Network Access Control, two of Symantec's flagship enterprise security products. Microsoft released Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to Windows Update on Tuesday. However, in the Vista team blog, Vista...

Microsoft has sought to appease frustrated Windows Vista customers by giving away free support to anyone struggling to install service pack one (SP1). A huge swath of people has been frozen out of the upgrade until an unknown date in April, but some were able to manually download SP1 as of last week via the firm’s Windows Update website. However, a heap of complaints have been stacking up on the firm’s official Vista blog, over troubles with the service pack install. So, in an apparent attempt to ease some of the grumbles, Microsoft blogger Brandon Le Blanc says that anyone,...

According to Microsoft's timeline, XP is on its way to becoming an ex-operating system. The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000. Why? For a couple of reasons: XP is the most widely used operating system on...

SEATTLE (AP) -- A major package of updates and security fixes for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system will be available for download Tuesday, according to Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site. The retailer is selling copies of Vista without the service pack and advising customers that they can download the free SP1 upgrade starting Tuesday. Amazon is also taking pre-orders for boxed copies of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which it said it will start shipping Wednesday. In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft said it is on track to release SP1 in mid-March. The software maker acknowledged Amazon's claim that the upgrade...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows didn't attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores, a spokeswoman said Monday. "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien. To test demand for systems with the open-source operating system, Wal-Mart stocked the $199 "Green gPC," made by Everex of Taiwan, in about 600 stores starting late in October. Walmart.com, the chain's e-commerce site, had sold Linux-based computers before and will continue selling the gPC. This was...

Class Action Suit Airs Intel and Microsoft's Vista Dirty Laundry Jason Mick (Blog) - February 29, 2008 1:07 PM One of the most iconic images of Microsoft's Windows Vista launch in January 2007 was the small "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on computers months before, reassuring customers that when the new operating system came out, their computers could be updated to the latest and greatest. Unfortunately for the consumer it appears that the capabilities that these stickers promised were intentionally exaggerated to benefit Microsoft and chipmaker Intel. A class action suit filed against Microsoft in April 2007 accused Microsoft of intentionally...

I got an interesting problem with Microsoft Office 2007 that I need to find out if anyone else has seen. I've been running Office 2003 for quite some time now and it does what I need it to do. One of these days I'm going to try using Linux but that's a ways off. My job at a military base is making it mandatory to use Office 2007. Why the military is pushing Vista and Office 2007 I'll never know because it causes all kinds of headaches with our XP programs. I decided to get the Home Use Office 2007...

Last week Microsoft rolled out three prerequisite updates to prepare users computers for the first service pack for Windows Vista. However, one of these updates apparently caused serious issues among some users, prompting Microsoft to quickly suspend automatic installations of KB937287 after customers complained that their PCs wouldn't boot up properly once the update had been applied. For affected users who already received the update, the only solution is to reboot their computers, boot from their original Vista disc and restore their computer to a state several days prior. However, some users have reported hardware and hard disk problems after...

Quoting extensively from internal Microsoft Corp. e-mails, plaintiffs' lawyers argued Friday that the company knowingly misled consumers by allowing PC makers to emblazon "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on PCs that could run only the most bare-bones version of the operating system. The new documents are the latest development in a lawsuit filed against Microsoft last year, charging that the company deceived consumers into thinking that the PCs they were buying could run Vista's most highly promoted features, even when they couldn't. The slogan was part of a campaign by Microsoft to maintain sales of Windows XP computers during the 2006...

Excerpt - A recently-release roadmap for the next major Window release – Windows 7 – indicates that Microsoft is planning to release the new operating system in the second half of 2009, rather than the anticipated release date of some time in 2010. There are apparently three “milestone” builds planned for 2008, and the first one – M1 – has already shipped to key partners for code validation. M1 is for the English language build only, but is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will most likely be the last Windows operating system...

We asked a simple question: what Microsoft product could have used a little more polish before release? The answer astounded us. We would just like to thank Bill Gates for his honesty and his openness.

It’s official, manufacturers are starting to dump Windows XP support entirely and some new models won’t even have Windows XP drivers or any kind of support available, anywhere. One reader, “Mark” contacted us regarding installing Windows XP on his HP V6610 (AU) laptop which is the V6620 in the US. “Mark” said when he went to the HP driver/downloads section that very few Windows XP drivers were available for it and he was right, there were almost no useful drivers for the laptop there. His call to HP support didn’t get very far as “HP is no longer supporting Windows...

MicroSoft is making the Release Candidate for Windows Vista Operating System available to the public at the URL link above. I very recently purchased a new computer which came with Vista, there have been many "gliches" in using this new computer with Vista. I finished installing the Sevice Pack RC about 6 hours ago and I've found significant improvement in the performance and stability of the system. My personal tips: 1) The download is approximately 448MB in size so you you might want to consider your download speed when and if you choose to download this RC. 2) The install...

Excited and whimsical speculation about future versions of Windows is a popular pastime, almost as much as complaining that newly-released versions are too different from the "old reliable" releases that everybody knows and (sometimes) loves. With Windows Vista recently celebrating its first birthday and preparing for the release of Service Pack 1, a team of developers at Microsoft is already busy working on its successor. While Microsoft has been pretty good about keeping the details of "Windows 7" under wraps, a few enthusiastic employees have leaked out a few details. As is usually the case in these situations, people have...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Microsoft Corp. is fast becoming engulfed in the technical mapping of its own products, even as a judge's decision looms on whether to extend antitrust restrictions placed on the company for an additional five years. According to a status report filed by Microsoft on Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the number of outstanding technical issues requiring documentation jumped nearly 60% from the end of October to the end of November. Such technical documentation is demanded of Microsoft, with the aim of making its market-dominating software products more compatible with those...

REDMOND, Washington (Reuters) - Microsoft Corpintroduced on Tuesday three new models of its Zune digital media player that wirelessly and automatically update their music, photos and videos when placed near a user's computer. They mark the second generation of Microsoft's answer to Apple Inc's iPod, which has sold more than 100 million units in various shapes and sizes since its 2001 launch. By comparison, Microsoft joined the fray last year with a single 30-gigabyte Zune model and has sold 1.2 million units. The new Zunes will come in 4-gigabyte, 8-gigabyte and 80-gigabyte models. All will come with a feature that...

Bowing to pressure from customers and computer makers, Microsoft plans to keep Windows XP around a little longer. Large PC manufacturers were slated to have to stop selling XP after January 31. However, they have successfully lobbied Microsoft to allow them to continue selling PCs with all flavors of Windows XP preloaded until June 30, a further five months. Microsoft also plans to keep XP on retail shelves longer and will allow computer makers in emerging markets to build machines with Windows XP Starter Edition until June 2010. The move indicates the continued demand for the older operating system, some...

How Not to Install Windows Vista SP1 Beta Chris Pirillo Commentary I thought I would have been fine with installing the first Windows Vista SP1 beta last night (after having been invited and accepted into the feedback program). Guess what?Everything seemed fine after the first three installer-induced reboots, but then I came to see a black screen of… nothing but my mouse cursor. No matter what I tried, I could not move past this snag.I tried rebooting in Safe Mode a few times - and the first few times, it showed me that SP1 was installing itself again. Eventually,...

We all learned how to multiply with pencil and paper, even great big numbers and decimals. But when it comes to something important like a blueprint or a scientific formula we reach for a calculator - or a spreadsheet. That's much more reliable, right? Well, not if the spreadsheet is Excel 2007. Over the weekend a member of the microsoft.public.excel newsgroup revealed that Excel 2007 thinks that 850*77.1 is 100,000. What's the correct answer? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody? Right, it should be 65,535. Other members verified that the error carries over into some (but not all) calculations based on the...

September 11, 2007 Running the numbers on Vista Ina Fried, for News.com Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report. Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5 percent. The findings largely mirror the sales pattern NPD saw for Vista during its first week on...

The Storm worm botnet has grown so massive and far-reaching that it easily overpowers the world's top supercomputers. That's the latest word from security researchers who are tracking the burgeoning network of Microsoft Windows machines that have been compromised by the virulent Storm worm, which has pounded the Internet non-stop for the past three months. Despite the wide ranging estimates as to the size of the botnet, researchers tend to agree that it's one of the largest zombie grids they've ever seen -- one capable of doing great damage. "In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away,"...

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Wednesday it will release a major package of updates and fixes for the Windows Vista operating system in the first half of 2008. The company said a "beta" test version of Service Pack 1 will be released "in a few weeks to a moderate sized audience." The SP1 beta includes updates Microsoft has already made to the operating system it started selling to consumers at the end of January. The service pack fixes some common problems that cause computers to crash or freeze, Microsoft said, including compatibility problems with some newer graphics cards,...

Excerpt - The tip, incredible. The source, ironclad. Microsoft has apparently told executives at one of the world's largest PC makers not to expect a formal release of Windows Vista SP1 -- the first major set of upgrades and bug fixes to its Vista operating system -- until 2009 at the earliest. That explains why Microsoft was so desperate to correct erroneous reports, spread by a careless team of developers at Microsoft, that a beta version of SP1 would be out last week. Microsoft now says it "currently anticipates" a beta of SP1 later this year. Anticipations, of course, are...

Excerpt - Microsoft is planning to ship its next major version of Windows--known internally as version "7"--within roughly three years, CNET News.com has learned. The company discussed Windows 7 on Thursday at a conference for its field sales force in Orlando, Fla., according to sources close to the company. While the company provided few details, Windows 7, the next client version of the operating system, will be among the steps taken by Microsoft to establish a more predictable release schedule, according to sources. The company plans a more "iterative" process of information disclosure to business customers and partners, sources said....

Excerpt - SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) released its next-generation Windows Server "Longhorn" software for public testing on Wednesday and said the product is on track for a debut in the second half of 2007. The world's largest software maker said it expects hundreds of thousands of information technology workers to download the test, or "Beta 3," version of the next server operating system code-named Longhorn. Longhorn, which will replace the current Windows Server 2003, is the server operating system equivalent of Microsoft's new Windows Vista PC operating system with an emphasis on many of the same...

A vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error in the handling of animated cursors and can e.g. be exploited by tricking a user into visiting a malicious website using Internet Explorer or opening a malicious e-mail message. Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code. NOTE: The vulnerability is currently being actively exploited.

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. said Monday it sold 20 million consumer copies of the new Windows Vista operating system worldwide in February, but analysts said the data shed little light on the program's popularity during its first month on the market. By comparison, Windows XP, Vista's predecessor, sold 17 million copies in the two months following its 2001 launch, Microsoft said. "It's a stronger than expected start," Bill Mannion, a director of product marketing for Windows, said in an interview. But given that the personal computer market has nearly doubled since XP launched, Vista sales "probably should...

Can anyone explain how to upload DVD to Youtube? I converted a VHS Tape to DVD with a Wal Mart Conversion VCR and the DVD disk will play everywhere except on the computer, (Windows Media player 10-XP) or load in the simple 2 step Youtube upload process. It seems to me this should be a no-brainer even for those of us with no brains, but somehow it escapes me ie, it is not so simple a caveman can do it. I hope the topic is not too politically incorrect. If so, are there any evil right wing sites that will...

Bill Gates, the chairman of Micro­soft, on Wednesday warned that restrictions on the number of skilled workers allowed to enter the US put the country’s competitiveness at risk. The comments marked the latest attack on restrictive US immigration policies by the technology industry, which is facing a shortage of skilled workers even as demand for their skills is increasing. Speaking before the Senate committee on health, education, labour and pensions, Mr Gates said that tighter US immigration policies – governed partly by concerns over terrorism – were “driving away the world’s best and brightest precisely when we need them most”....

Excerpts - NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A disgruntled hacker with a personal grudge against Symantec, which provides anti-virus software to leading Fortune 500 companies, could be behind a new, crippling computer virus that's already hit a division of at least one big U.S. corporation on Thursday. If it spreads, technology experts warn the latest strains of the insidious RINBOT computer virus could hijack network systems of businesses worldwide. ~ snip ~ Cluley said this strain appears to be hitting MS SQL servers. It looks for networks that run the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98,...