On Friday, Microsoft revealed through a corporate blog that it will not deliver its nexgt-generation storage engine, WinFS, as a separate product as previously planned. Instead, the software giant will ship WinFS technologies as part of other upcoming products, such as the next version of SQL Server, codenamed Katmai.
"We are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release," Quentin Clark, a member of the WinFS team, wrote in the WinFS Team Blog. "With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering."
Now that the lackluster Beta 2 release is out the door, Microsoft intends to ship monthly builds to testers in the form of Community Technical Preview builds, the first of which should appear any day now (they're in the 54xx build number range). Meanwhile, consumers who signed up for the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) and installed and activated Vista Beta 2 will be eligible to receive the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version of Vista when it ships in, oh, say, August. The idea here is to put these pre-release versions of the product in front of as many eyeballs as possible during the time period where Microsoft is doing performance and fit-and-finish work. Hey, it can only get better.
Microsoft is eliminating 14 jobs in its Microsoft Learning division, and will instead have an outside vendor perform that work.
The jobs are being cut because the company decided to consolidate the work under the outside vendor, which had previously shared those duties with the in-house workers, Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said Thursday.
Microsoft Learning, which employs more than 300 people, is the division of Microsoft that provides training on how to use and implement its products, including offering classes, books and certification resources.
Note to hardware vendors: If your Windows Vista drivers stink, you're liable to get voted off the island.
Well, sorta.
Microsoft is putting its Windows Crash Analysis reports to use in a way that is sure to give new meaning to the term making the grade.
The company is launching a Driver Quality Rating system that will grade device drivers on their quality, based on how often they crash. A low grade could mean OEMs will shun the product.
The DQR system scores driver on a 1-9 scale, with one being best and nine the worst. Drivers that rarely, if ever, crash will be scored 1-3 and rated "green."
Microsoft plans in August to publicly release the privacy rules its employees have to follow when developing products.
The move, which offers a look behind the scenes at Microsoft, is meant to give the industry an example of what the software giant sees as best practices in customer privacy, said Peter Cullen, the chief privacy strategist at Microsoft.
"We think that this is information that partners and others could benefit from. Lots of people build and develop applications," Cullen said in an interview Thursday. "The privacy development standards will not only be made public, but we will actively be promoting their use so that others can benefit from what we've learned."
Speculation swirled Wednesday about the sudden exit of up-and-coming Microsoft executive Martin Taylor, but neither he nor the company offered any explanation.
Abrupt departures sometimes signal that an executive is joining a direct rival, but representatives of two of the most likely companies, Google and Yahoo, both said Taylor hadn't gone to work for them.
Others in the technology industry said they were puzzled by the news, particularly given Taylor's longtime connection to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
On Tuesday, Microsoft shipped Windows Live Messenger, an IM application that is replacing MSN Messenger, and the first deliverable from the company's wide-reaching set of Windows Live services. Windows Live Messenger combines traditional IM features with free PC-to-PC phone calls, inexpensive PC-to-telephone calls, video conferencing, and simple file sharing.
"The launch of Windows Live Messenger represents a significant 'down payment' on the Windows Live vision and an important milestone for the business," says Martin Taylor, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live and MSN. "We're proud and excited to release this product to consumers, who have helped shape the service during our beta process so we could deliver an experience that unifies their online communications experience across voice, video, sharing, and more."
Microsoft confirmed this week that the upcoming version of Microsoft's gaming libraries--dubbed DirectX 10--will be made available only to Windows Vista users. DirectX 10 will eventually be supported by hardware--typically 3D video cards--that will work on Windows XP, although it won't have any DX10-specific features. All DirectX 10 games that are released in the future will be Vista-specific. My guess is that we won't be seeing very many of them for quite a while. And here's a fun fact: Although the upcoming Windows version of Halo 2 will be created with DirectX 9.0, it will be artificially limited to running on Vista. You know, so you have at least one reason to upgrade.
Microsoft confirmed Thursday that it will offer a customer promotion for Windows Vista to prepare for the holiday shopping
season in November and December. The move is aimed at ensuring PC sales remain strong despite Vista's delay in shipping until
next year.
The company is working with partners on the issue, it said in a statement sent via e-mail by its public relations firm. But
it declined to comment on specific plans, saying more information will come later.
Analysts have suggested the company offer coupons for customers purchasing PCs that will support Vista so they can easily
obtain the OS or buy it at a discount once available.
Microsoft is following up on its plan to take a bigger piece of the financial services market by introducing technology based on the company's high-performance computing platform.
At the SIA Technology Management Conference here on June 21, Microsoft and its partners, including Hewlett-Packard and Digipede Technologies, demonstrated what the software giant said could become the standard modeling and trading platform of the future.
The solution features Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server built upon a Windows CCS 2003 HPC (high-performance computing) cluster, said Stevan Vidich, a technology architect in Microsoft's Financial Services Group.