While there are no shortage of enthusiast sites that trade in rumors on the latest version of Windows, they usually focus their attention on the big-bang releases.
But Ethan Allen sets his sights on the more mundane. While other Microsoft fan sites scramble to cover the latest news on the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system, Allen has his eye on Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The service pack is expected to be relatively minor and has received scant mention, even among sites devoted to all things Windows. But Allen has a whole Web site on SP3.
Microsoft wants its "Blue Hat" date with hackers to become a regular affair, with twice-yearly events where outsiders demonstrate flaws in Microsoft's product security.
In March, Microsoft invited several hackers to its Redmond, Wash., headquarters for the first time. The two-day meeting of Microsoft insiders with independent researchers provided each side with a glimpse into the other's world. That get-together was such a success that Microsoft is planning more of the events.
"We want to try and do it twice a year," said Stephen Toulouse, a program manager in Microsoft's security unit. "It had a huge benefit to our developers." The event gives executives and developers a different look at product security, he said.
Office and Windows, Microsoft's hallmark programs for personal computers, get a lot of the public attention. But another part of the company has quietly begun to rival and, in some ways, exceed the performance of both.
The company's Server and Tools division, which makes software for computer servers and tools for software programmers, posted a revenue increase of nearly 16 percent in Microsoft's recently completed fiscal year.The division has benefited in part from an expanding market for computer servers. Reporting its annual results last week, Microsoft said shipments of Windows-based servers increased at a rate comparable to the 13 percent to 14 percent annual increase in server shipments industrywide.
Along with the release of the new Windows Vista beta, developers are being treated to technologies to create applications for the new operating system. Microsoft last week gave developers access to the WinFX Runtime Components Beta 1 and the WinFX SDK.
The WinFX SDK contains documentation, samples and tools designed to help developers create managed applications and libraries using WinFX, which is the set of next-generation managed APIs provided by Microsoft, said John Montgomery, director of product management in Microsoft's Developer Division, in Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft's MSN, with its lifestyle articles and ad-supported tools like Messenger and Spaces, seems worlds away from the company's buttoned-up enterprise server business. But the two are steadily converging behind the scenes, with a plan to link them via Exchange.
Executives at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Meeting, held Thursday in Redmond, Wash., said the company wants to extend Web-based services such as Hotmail to the enterprise.
If merely saying "grow" were enough to make it happen, Microsoft might have tripled its size in the span of a few minutes yesterday.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer uttered the word or some variation 60 times during a 35-minute presentation. Other Microsoft executives echoed him repeatedly throughout the day, trying to persuade Wall Street analysts to embrace the company's view that it can boost revenue and profits.
Speaking yesterday at Microsoft's annual meeting with financial analysts, Ballmer acknowledged that many who follow the software company don't share his optimism. Microsoft's recently completed fiscal year brought the lowest revenue growth in the company's history, while younger rivals such as Google grow at a much faster pace.
Although some have suggested that the upcoming PlayStation 3 might have a more powerful engine, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said he's happy with the Xbox 360.
"Our view is basically we've got a Ferrari, they've got a Ferrari," Gates said in a question-and-answer session at Thursday's meeting with financial analysts. "Our Ferrari is leaving the starting line substantially before their Ferrari is, and in most races that's a very nice thing."
Microsoft's Xbox 360 is due to go on sale this holiday season in the United States, Europe and Japan. Meanwhile, Sony's PlayStation 3, with its powerful Cell processor, is slated to arrive next spring.
At the company's annual Financual Analyst Meeting Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had no qualms about boasting his expectation that Microsoft will win on the Web just as it did on the desktop. While MSN may be struggling to keep up with Google and Yahoo, Ballmer said the Web is now a top priority for Microsoft."When you look at the last 10 years, we have won on the desktop. I think a lot of people can now fairly say, with what we've done with Windows Server, we have won in the business marketplace. And now we really are going to win on the Web," Ballmer said in his presentation.
Some Internet Explorer 7 testers who loaded the Beta 1 bits onto their systems have found a nasty surprise BetaNews has learned: their instant messaging software crashes.Trillian, a popular multi-network IM client, Gaim and IM2 all spit out error messages when loaded alongside IE7, and the only fix is to uninstall Microsoft's new browser.
Sources tell BetaNews the problem ostensibly lies in a DLL file used by the multi-network clients to connect to the MSN Messenger service. IE7 brings a new version of wininet.dll, which causes the crash if users connect to AOL Instant Messenger while also connecting to MSN.
Microsoft on Thursday devoted an entire 40-minute session at its annual financial day here to the competitive threat posed to its business by open source software and Linux.
In a presentation entitled "Competing and Winning Around Linux," Kevin Johnson, the group vice president of worldwide sales, marketing and services group, said the company's focus was now to target some very specific workloads.
Microsoft is looking at the total Linux server installed base, targeting the very specific solutions that could be of value to its customers, and fine-tuning its value propositions with regard to these workloads, including Web serving and HPC.