On Tuesday, Microsoft finally announced its plans for shipping Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) to over 5 million people around the world. But in various RC1-related briefings, the company also talked up some of its plans for the final version of Vista for the first time.
Though the company has not publicly committed to this date, Microsoft still plans to complete the final version of Windows Vista on or before October 25, 2006. The term "final," in this case, however, is a misnomer. Microsoft will certainly find issues with the so-called RTM (release to manufacturing) code between late October and the expected January public release, and will most certainly ship various hot-fixes and other updates for the system via Windows Update during that time.
Microsoft has reshuffled executives in its U.S. financial services group to improve its responsiveness to customers' needs in the banking, capital markets and insurance industries.
With the restructuring, announced Monday, a couple of new roles were created and others became more defined, a Microsoft representative said. The move marks the latest change the company has implemented to its operations and management structure as it seeks to become more agile when responding to shifts in market conditions and customers needs.
It's beginning to look a lot like Vista.
Microsoft on Friday issued Release Candidate 1 of Windows Vista, a near-final test version of the of the oft-delayed operating system.
Retiring Windows chief Jim Allchin announced the release Friday in an e-mail to testers. In his note, which was also posted to the Windows Vista Team blog, Allchin said there are "a lot of improvements since Beta 2," which was released in May. Among the changes he highlighted are tweaks in the user interface, more device drivers and improved performance.
Several of Microsoft's top executives began to see the benefits of its landmark 2003 shift in compensation practices, receiving millions of dollars worth of stock as bonuses Thursday for their performance.
In regulatory filings, the company disclosed annual stock awards for seven top executives, ranging in value from $7.5 million for Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes to $1.3 million for Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, based on Thursday's closing price.
In all, the company issued shares to 900 executives, most at considerably lesser volumes.
If you weren't feeling like an unhired beta tester before, Microsoft is going to make you feel like one now. In an audio blog posting, the coordinator of Vista's development cycle implored testers to be "aggressive" in testing the forthcoming Release Candidate 1.
Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista at Microsoft, talked about coordinating milestones between the 5,000 engineers working on Vista in an audio blog posted earlier this week.
Vista is currently at what's being called "pre-RC1," or Release Candidate 1. A release candidate is typically software in the final stretch before release, well past the beta test stage and nearly good enough to ship but in need of one or more final shakedowns.
Microsoft has released beta 2 of the next version of Windows Media Player for Windows XP, adding more online stores for buying
digital music and letting users share content across various devices.
Microsoft released a new test version of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP at mid-day Pacific Standard Time on Thursday.
The software is available only in the U.S. and can be downloaded here.
In addition to allowing users to download music from MTV Networks' Urge and a host of other online music services, Microsoft
also has added eMusic, VidZone and Music Giants stores to Windows Media Player 11. This brings the total number of online
stores that a user can access from within the software to 14.
JavaScript and .Net developers are getting helping hands in application-building efforts, through separate projects intended
to make it easier to use JavaScript and to document .Net projects.
Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, is looking for developer input into the next release of its tool for C, C++, and Fortran development.
In the JavaScript arena, the open source jQuery project provides developers with a JavaScript library to improve the quality of Web applications. JQuery makes it easier
to write JavaScript and AJAX, said John Resig, lead developer of jQuery and also an author.
Support for the five-year-old Internet Explorer 6 browser won't vanish overnight when the new IE 7 debuts later this year, Microsoft assured users on Thursday.
Security updates for the older IE will continue to be produced and released, said Christopher Vaughan, a lead program manager for the browser team, in a blog entry.
"IE 6 SP1's Service Pack 1 support policy will not change when IE 7 ships. Everywhere that IE 6 SP1 is supported today, IE 6 SP1 will continue to be supported until the OS it ships with expires," wrote Vaughan. "If you're running IE 6 for Windows XP Service Pack 2, you can stay with that version of IE for as long as Windows XP SP2 is around."
The edition of IE most in danger of disappearing from the support list is IE 6 SP1 running on Windows XP SP1, since that version of Windows will be purged Oct. 10.
The Microsoft official responsible for releasing Windows Vista builds explained in an interview published on the Vista Team Weblog this week some of the intricacies of how the build numbering scheme for Release Candidates works.
In the interview, Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, said the company currently has parallel build cycles in play for builds numbered 5400 through 5699 which are reserved for Release Candidates. At the same time, it also has reserved builds numbered 5700 and above for Release to Manufacturing -- the step following the last RC build and the code
that will ultimately be released to customers.
Microsoft has released another test version of an update to its virtualization software, which will be built into the
next version of the Windows Server OS.
On Thursday Microsoft released Beta 2 of Virtual Server 2005 Release 2 Service Pack 1, an update that will add new
functionality to the existing version of Virtual Server 2005 once it is generally available. The software, which should be
in full release by the first calendar quarter of 2007, can be downloaded for free.
New features included in Beta 2 of the software are support for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s virtualization technology, as
well as new integration with Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft said.