WinInsider

Microsoft is upset that the EC is painting a picture of a recalcitrant company that has spent almost three years not conforming to the EU's requirements. "We submitted a pricing proposal to the Commission last August and have been asking for feedback on it since that time," Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said. "We're disappointed that this feedback is coming six months later and in its present form, but we're committed to working hard to address the Commission's statement of objections as soon as we receive it." Smith said that Microsoft has spent "many millions of dollars" trying to comply with the EU's decision.

A judge in a San Diego court late Thursday dismissed one of several patent claims Alcatel-Lucent SA has made against Microsoft Corp. in several high-profile cases against the vendor, but that does not mean the software company is out of the woods yet.

According to Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans, a judge in the U.S. District Court in San Diego ruled that Microsoft does not infringe a patent for speech-recognition technology asserted by Alcatel-Lucent.

This is the only patent that was to be considered during a second trial in the series of claims, which had been scheduled in San Diego on March 19, he said. That trial has now been cancelled.

It seems that Microsoft will never be able to satisfy European Union (EU) antitrust regulators. Yesterday, representatives of the European Commission (EC) once again complained that the software giant's response to its 2004 antitrust ruling was inadequate, and raised the possibility that Microsoft would face further fines.

This issue has been dragging on for so long, it's hard to even keep the details straight. The short version goes like this: In March 2004--about three years ago--the EC found that Microsoft had violated various EU antitrust laws; the commission fined Microsoft approximately $630 million and ordered the company to make several changes. One of these changes required Microsoft to create a set of documentation that would help licensees create software that could interoperate with its Windows Server products.

Microsoft has released a new version of its software development kit for Visual Studio 2005, the last release that will focus on Visual Studio 2005, also known as Whidbey.

The next version of the SDK will target Microsoft's next version of Visual Studio, according to Joe Marini, director of the Microsoft VSIP program. Microsoft released the new version of the SDK on March 1.

Version 4 of the SDK "takes the Visual Studio SDK and makes it easier for people to start building integrations into Visual Studio," Marini said. And it "provides a more broad set of capabilities focused on commercial ISVs."

With Version 4, the SDK is "more approachable to new users, such as academics or community developers," said Rob Brigham, program manager for the Visual Studio SDK.

Microsoft has launched a new Web site aimed at helping novices learn to write applications and build their own Web sites.

Capping its thrust to tap the nascent market for tools for beginners, Microsoft launched its new Beginner Developer Learning Center on March 1.

Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's lead product manager for Visual Studio Express, Microsoft's low-end tool set for students and hobbyist developers, said there is a "huge number of people out there doing all sorts of things" with the low-end tools, but that number only scratches the surface of how many people would likely benefit from a tool for absolute beginners based on work they do or interest in building simple applications.

Microsoft is planning to issue a firmware update next month designed to fix a glitch that is causing some owners of the Zune music player to experience skipping when playing songs purchased from Microsoft's online store.

Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp said the company plans to issue the firmware update sometime in the middle of next month. Reindorp said the downloadable update will also offer other performance improvements, but no major feature updates to the player, which debuted in November.

Microsoft says it is wrapping up the beta test code for its first service pack for Exchange Server 2007, and plans to begin testing the update in April.

Final release of Service Pack 1, or SP1, is currently timed to coincide with the release of Windows Server "Longhorn" in the second half of the year, according to a posting on the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog.

Many customers typically wait until a software vendor ships the first service pack of a key enterprise product before rolling a new version out to their users. And with what Gartner says is 125 million registered users around the world, Exchange Server certainly qualifies.

AMD today announced the 690 motherboard chipset, the first fruits of its $5.4 billion merger with ATI Technologies last year.

Integrated graphics have long been considered a performance laggard compared to discrete graphics, but AMD said the 690 will provide performance comparable to its ATI Radeon X1250 GPU, a respectable, but far from bleeding-edge, performer.

The AMD 690 series is designed to address performance issues over Windows Vista and its Aero graphical interface. There has been some debate over whether integrated graphics could handle the demands of Aero. AMD claims the 690 can handle Vista up to the Ultimate edition.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it hopes to license the music from its collection of video games, such as Halo and Age of Empires. The software maker struck a deal with an arm of Warner Music Group, which will handle the licensing duties on Microsoft's behalf. The deal also includes the rights to future Microsoft titles, such as the upcoming Halo 3.

"We have developed a large library of video game music and are excited to make it available for placement beyond games," said Ed Ventura, a senior director in Microsoft's interactive entertainment unit. "By partnering with, we can continue to extend the value and experiences for our music and also inspire and give further recognition to the composers who are dedicated to working on video games.".

With Windows Vista complete and former co-president Jim Allchin out the door, Microsoft is embarking on yet another dramatic reorganization of its Windows Division. The hope is that the company can ship upcoming Windows versions at a much faster pace than happened with Windows Vista, which suffered through numerous delays during its five-year development time.

As part of the reorg, Microsoft corporate vice president Bill Veghte will now oversee the new Windows Business Group and will report to Steven Sinofsky, who oversees the entire Windows Division. Sinofsky will continue to report to Kevin Johnson, Allchin's replacement, who oversees both Windows and Windows Live, Microsoft's flailing online services business.