For Bill Gates, the key to business success lies in knowing your strengths and, outside those areas, in building alliances such as those Microsoft is cultivating in Japan.
"The richness of what we have been able to do together with leading Japanese companies really is quite phenomenal," Gates told a news conference here. The Microsoft chairman was in Tokyo to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company's Japanese subsidiary.
He also used the opportunity to get in a dig at IBM, which Microsoft has identified as a key rival. "IBM once stumbled because the company stretched too far, trying to cover everything from hardware to software," he said.
Microsoft still isn't talking specifics regarding its Windows Vista pricing plans. But company watchers are predicting the Redmond software maker could reap big rewards from its planned premium-edition push.
Microsoft is still holding many specifics about Windows Vista pricing among them close to the vest. But Redmond's reticence to talk isn't stopping company watchers from speculating.
Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst Rick Sherlund issued a research note earlier this month, noting that Goldman is now figuring Microsoft could garner an extra $1.5 billion per year in revenues simply by persuading users to buy the premium Vista versions.
A Texas jury ruled that Microsoft and Autodesk Inc. must pay $133 million to a Michigan man who claimed that he was owed royalties for inventions to prevent software piracy.
The Tyler, Texas, jury on Wednesday awarded Z4 Technologies, founded by David Colvin of Commerce Township, Mich., $115 million from Microsoft and $18 million from Autodesk. Colvin claimed that two patents were infringed by Microsoft's Office and Windows XP and Autodesk's AutoCAD.
Last week, I reported that Microsoft was prepping a Windows Vista interim build to deliver to beta testers and Technology Adoption Program partners. That build has been delayed, but is still coming: Microsoft now plans to ship Vista build 5365 within the week.
Last week, I reported that Microsoft was prepping a Windows Vista interim build to deliver to beta testers and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) partners. That build has been delayed, but is still coming: Microsoft now plans to ship Vista build 5365 within the week.
Microsoft's "Live Drive" will provide users with a virtual hard drive, according to Redmond officials. The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data.
Microsoft archrival Google is developing similar technology, code-named Gdrive, according to information Google accidentally shared with analysts in early March.
Google's Gdrive solution is expected to provide both consumers and business customers with an unlimited amount of online storage for their data. Google has declined to provide further specifics or a timetable for its planned Gdrive rollout.
A federal appeals court Tuesday approved the dismissal of antitrust claims by 39 individual computer owners against Microsoft
Company spokesman Mark Murray called the 19-page ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., "an overwhelmingly positive decision that essentially marks the end of this case."
The plaintiffs said the suit merited more than $10 billion in damages, according to Microsoft.
Three judges on the appeals court unanimously ruled in Microsoft's favor. Chris Lovell, a New York-based attorney for the plaintiffs, couldn't be reached after hours to ask whether he plans to seek a rehearing before the entire court or an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
As first meetings go, it wasn't exactly private -- or long. But by all accounts, the world's richest man and the leader of the world's most populous nation got along just fine.
With more than 100 people looking on, including a phalanx of media from around the world, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates ushered Chinese President Hu Jintao into the Redmond company's main conference center Tuesday afternoon to begin what the company hopes will be a positive relationship between the men.
"Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I'm a friend of Microsoft," Hu said, according to an Associated Press pool report from their meeting. "Also, I am dealing with the operating system produced by Microsoft every day," he added, to laughter from those around him.
Microsoft on Tuesday claimed rapid adoption of its Sender ID framework for email authentication to fight spam, but at least one analyst firm said the software maker is waging an uphill battle in the industry.
On the eve of the second annual Email Authentication Summit in Chicago, Microsoft got the market machine humming for Sender ID, claiming its adoption has increased in March to 21 percent of Fortune 500 companies, compared with 7 percent the same month a year ago.
Sender ID uses Microsoft's proprietary Purported Responsible Address method for checking the headers with a message body to verify the legitimacy of the domain name from which an email is sent. Sender ID also supports the Sender Policy Framework Classic method, which looks only at envelope headers outside the message body; but the authentication system generally implies the PRA method.
Microsoft is preparing a Virtual Server Manager code-named Carmine that will enable users to add, move and manage virtual machines on its virtualization platform.
The product, currently called Microsoft Virtual Server Manager, will allow broad support for administration via "Monad," Microsoft's next-generation scripting platform for Windows Longhorn Server and Exchange 12, according to Microsoft's Web site.
Other sources in the partner community familiar with Carmine said it will contain some of the basic features of VMware's management capabilities in VirtualCenter, but it wont be as sophisticated.
A Massachusetts court has rejected a Microsoft Corp. request to force software rival Novell Inc. to hand over European Union correspondence that Microsoft claims it needs to defend itself against antitrust charges in Europe.
According to a court order Monday, U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf said Microsoft had not shown that the EU proceedings were fundamentally unfair or would be if it did not have access to the Novell documents.