Microsoft has begun reminding users of Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows Millennium that it will cut off all support for the aging operating systems in July.
"Microsoft is ending support for these products because they are outdated and these older operating systems can expose customers to security risks," the company said in a notice posted to its Web site. "We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible."
After July 11 -- the scheduled release date for that month's security bulletins -- Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for the OSes. Only online self-help support will be available, and that's guaranteed only through July 11, 2007.
As Microsoft works on delivering new tools for creating and maintaining Web sites, it also plans to quietly kill off FrontPage at the end of the year.
"After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006," says a statement posted on Microsoft's Web site. The announcement comes at the end of a short Q&A promoting the new tools. The impending end of FrontPage was first reported by the ActiveWin news site.
Microsoft on April 11 is expected to unveil a new Internet search engine to locate scholarly material, as it steps up its features war with rivals Google and Yahoo.
Windows Live Academic Search, as the feature is known, "has some unique features, and is a worthy competitor," said Dean Giustini, a reference librarian at the University of British Columbia Library, in a blog posting about his experiences with the new facet.
A Microsoft representative said the company has an Internet search announcement set for April 11 but would not reveal additional details.
Microsoft this week released the April Community Technology Preview of ASP.NET, code-named "Atlas." Atlas is an ASP.NET 2.0 framework for building cross-browser, cross-platform AJAX applications. The company announced with last month's CTP that it feels Atlas is stable enough to issue a "go-live license" that lets developers put their Atlas applications into production.
Atlas provides client-side script libraries that integrate with ASP.NET 2.0's server-based development framework and provides the same type of development platform for client-based Web pages that ASP.NET provides for server-based pages.
Microsoft will tell a European Union appeals court that an EU antitrust order violates international law by forcing the company to share information with rivals, court documents show.
Microsoft is seeking to overturn a 2004 ruling and cancel a $601 million fine during a five-day hearing starting April 24 at the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. The company was ordered to license so-called network protocols, which would let competitors make products that can share files and printers with the Windows operating system.
A week after providing this massive documentation to its Technology Adoption Partner members, Microsoft has posted its Windows Vista Product Guide to the public. The product guide is a 313 page overview of the features of Microsoft's next generation operating system.
"The Windows Vista Product Guide provides a comprehensive overview of the innovative features and functions that make Microsoft Windows Vista the next-generation Windows client operating system and successor to Windows XP," Microsoft's Fred Pullen writes in a blog entry. "This guide also provides information the benefits Windows Vista offers diverse users as well as information about the different editions available."
Microsoft last week shipped the latest version of its NAS solution, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, to its hardware partners for inclusion in new storage servers. (In the year ahead, it will ship the storage solution to systems builders as well.) Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 is a specially tuned version of Windows Server 2003 R2 that includes only those features needed to facilitate file storage and management.
Unlike most other Windows Server versions, Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can't be purchased by itself. Instead, you acquire it by buying Windows Storage Server-enabled hardware. This latest version includes three major new features.
Microsoft will begin beta testing Speech Server 2007, the latest version of its interactive voice response platform for call centers, in May and plans final release before the end of the year.
At the top of the list of additions, Speech Server 2007 will finally add native support for Voice Extensible Markup Language. It also will provide enhanced support for Speech Application Language Tags, according to a Microsoft statement.
"With the newly included VoiceXML support, customers will be able to write World Wide Web Consortiums VoiceXML 2.1-compliant applications within Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and deploy those applications, or existing VoiceXML 2.1-compliant applications, on Speech Server 2007," the statement said. The company also announced it has joined the VoiceXML Forum at the Promoter level.
Microsoft gave customers a status check on a range of SQL Server-oriented plans on Thursday, including the intention to ship the long-awaited database mirroring technology for SQL Server 2005 this month.
Those updates will be included in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1, which will not only include database mirroring, but will also add the scaled-down management tools dubbed SQL Server 2005 Management Studio Express, said Senior Vice President of the Server Applications Paul Flessner in a letter to customers.
According to research firm Millward Brown, the company with the
strongest brand in the world is--ta da!--Microsoft. Microsoft? Yep,
that's what the data says. Microsoft is followed by General Electric
(GE), Coca-Cola, and China Mobile. China Mobile? OK, this whole thing
confuses me. GE has a strong brand? People actually like Microsoft? Who
the heck is Millward Brown??