Microsoft has posted a page to its Windows Vista site that sorts out upgrade options for users of Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
"Certain legacy OSes require a full system installation while others will allow for an in-place upgrade," said Vista program manager Nick White on the team's blog. "Depending on where you're coming from and where you're going, you should determine which scenario applies to you."
A chart on a page titled "Upgrade Planning for Windows Vista" details upgrade paths, and notes who will be able to install Vista overtop an existing OS and who will have to scrub their hard drives before switching to the new operating system.
Microsoft has completed its purchase of application virtualization vendor Softricity, the company said this week.
The Boston-based firm is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.
"With application virtualization and software streaming, Microsoft can now deliver virtualization at the application layer [which] is an important part of Microsoft's virtualization strategy across the platform, operating system, applications and management layers to help customers achieve self-managing dynamic systems," Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, in a prepared statement.
Microsoft reported record revenue of $11.80 billion in the fourth quarter to June 30, 2006, a 16 percent rise over the same quarter of the prior year, on the back of strong customer demand for Xbox 360, SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.
The demand for all those recently released products fueled a combined 31 percent revenue growth for those business groups in the quarter, said Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, in a statement released July 20 after the financial markets had closed in New York.
Microsoft on Thursday reported earnings that were just ahead of analysts' expectations, as the company announced a plan to buy back as much as an extra $40 billion worth of its stock.
The software maker said it would buy back $20 billion through a tender offer set to be completed on Aug. 17. The company said that its board of directors has also authorized the company to buy back up to $20 billion worth of stock through June 2011. The company said it has completed the $30 billion stock buyback announced two years ago.
Microsoft on Wednesday said it has licensed 3D technology it developed in its research division to a provider of visual
content-management software and hardware.
EON Reality Inc., in Irvine, California, is licensing Microsoft's "TouchLight" technology, which allows users to physically
interact with 3D visual content by manipulating 3D images on a screen by hand.
The company said it will use the technology as part of its commercial, automotive, aerospace and defense industry product
lines. EON Reality sells applications and hardware display systems for viewing and producing 3D content.
Microsoft will ship early next month an update to its Web hosting package that takes advantage of recently released products and technologies.
The Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting Version 4.0 aims to help Web hosting providers to quickly launch new services and increase operational efficiency through tools, scripts and code samples, the company said in a statement.
The update adds support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and for ASP.NET 2.0, enabling service providers to offer managed services to customers and resellers, including hosted databases using SQL Server 2005 and security update management.
Microsoft opened Windows Live Mail Center to public beta testing on Tuesday, providing the first wide-scale look at the ad-supported e-mail client that eventually will replace Outlook Express.
Formerly dubbed Windows Live Mail Desktop, the client's code is based on Windows Mail, the e-mail application that will be bundled with Windows Vista when that OS ships in early 2007. Outlook Express served the same purpose in earlier operating systems, including the current Windows XP.
The client lets users access Microsoft's Web-based e-mail service, standard POP3 accounts, and other Web e-mail, like Google's Gmail, within one interface. It also displays RSS feeds and newsgroup threads and messages.
Microsoft pledged on Wednesday that all of its future operating systems, including Windows Vista, will abide by self-imposed rules aimed at bolstering choice and competition.
The voluntary principles will come into play after major parts of a U.S. government decree related to the landmark U.S. antitrust case against the software maker expire next year, Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft, said. They focus on the freedoms that users, manufacturers, and developers can expect in Windows Vista and its successors.
Microsoft is planning to offer three color schemes for Office 2007, letting users choose the option that best fits their tastes.
The third and final scheme called silver was recently introduced in the blog of Jensen Harris, lead program manager on the Office user experience team. The other two options are blue and black.
The silver scheme is meant to provide a neutral canvas that doesn't distract the eye, making the document design standout, Harris said. For people who want a bit more color, they can switch to the other schemes through the options tag in any of the user interface programs.
Researchers at Microsoft this week released a new report and tool aimed at preventing Web spammers from exploiting Internet search engines to drive traffic to spam URLs.
The tool, called the Strider Search Defender, identifies spam URLs that are being distributed through social networking, forum, and blog-hosting Web sites, and can prevent those URLs from being indexed by search engines, said Yi-Min Wang, group manager of the Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group in Microsoft Research.