Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates revealed that the next Xbox will ship "this year" and that his company expects the device to dominate the video game market for years to come. The original Xbox secured a "solid" number-two position in the market behind Sony's PlayStation 2. The Xbox 2, Gates says, will be a different story.
Appearing at a meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), Gates talked up the Xbox 2, which is code-named Xenon. He noted that the Xbox 2 will be a more credible digital hub that offers features that more closely integrate with the digital media content on home PCs and uses a Media Center-like interface. He also suggested that the Xbox 2 will offer advanced home-networking capabilities and push High Definition (HD) video formats to the mainstream.
Chairman Bill Gates warn that the United States is in grave danger of losing its economic advantages to fast-growing nations like China, unless the country restores its lead in education and other policies supporting growth.
"If you look at the trend 10 years ago, the U.S. and China were not that different in terms of the number of engineers graduated," Gates said. "Now we have one-quarter the number of engineers, and the trend is continuing, with the U.S. number going down, and China going up quite a bit...We need to improve our own game, to make sure own slice of the pie stays very large."
Microsoft has created a Web services software platform to make call center operations run more efficiently and cost effectively for service providers.
The Customer Care Framework decreases average call times by removing extraneous data requests and delivering more accurate information faster to agents who helm call centers.
With Web services as the core architectural approach, the software will aggregate disparate customer relationship management, operations support and business support applications service providers already have in place.
Although Microsoft is recommending that computers be pretty modern to fully run the next version of Windows, Longhorn will probably also run on a good number of older machines.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Longhorn is going to look and run quite differently on those older systems. Computers with a 3GHz processor and 512MB of memory, for example, will get all of the bells and whistles including fancy graphics and the ability to handle multiple video streams. According to its early testing, Microsoft says that older PCs--probably those with as little as 128MB of memory--will be able to run Longhorn, but the OS may not look like it does on a newer, more powerful machine.
Microsoft plans to restart its stalled Longhorn evangelism effort with another all-volunteer army. Microsoft employee, Longhorn evangelist Robert Scoble, announced on his blog this weekend that he has been authorized to restart the "Team 99" Longhorn evangelism effort. On Microsoft's Channel 9 Web site, Scoble is soliciting member nominations for the third-party evangelism team, which initially is expected to include about 20 individuals.
"All (Team 99 members) will need to sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) cause there are things in Longhorn that we don't want to leak out, but they'll be your proxies," Scoble blogged. "They'll tell us where we're screwing up, what we're doing well, and will be world's top authorities on Longhorn."
Microsoft is set to debut two Windows XP thin clients, one for low-end PCs for task-oriented workers, and another for mobile workers, according to sources.
The vendor is developing the Windows XP-based thin clients, code-named Eiger and Monch, to make it easier for system builders and partners to deploy pre-packaged thin-client solutions instead of customizing software on their own or using ISVs, sources said.
Microsoft declined to comment on the upcoming thin clients. But sources said the thin clients are not low-end versions of Windows but rather alternative operating systems for customers that choose to use thin clients and a server-centric computing model rather than full PCs. Thin clients offer several benefits, including reduced management costs and enhanced security.
Investment wizard Warren Buffett said Sunday that adding fellow billionaire Bill Gates to the board of Berkshire Hathaway will help ensure Berkshire's success, even after Buffett is gone.
"With Bill you've got one of the best minds in the world. He's got a good business mind, and he is interested in things beyond business," said Buffett, the 74-year-old chairman and chief executive of Berkshire.
Gates, the 49-year-old founder and chairman of Microsoft, the world's largest software company, and Buffett are both worth more than $40 billion each and are the two richest people in the world. They have been friends since 1991.
Bill Gates wants hardware companies to consider making small but fully functioning personal computers -- running a standard Windows operating system and normal PC programs but still tiny enough to hold in the hand.
Microsoft's other founder is already way ahead of him.
Paul Allen's company, Vulcan Inc., has been working for the past few years to develop a hand-held computer that functions like a regular laptop but weighs about a pound and measures less than six inches across. The Vulcan machine, called FlipStart, runs on Microsoft's Windows XP.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and the leader of Ford Motor Co. outlined a future yesterday in which software enables cars to fix themselves and never crash.
Gates and Ford Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr. said having high-definition screens in vehicles, speech recognition, cameras, digital calendars and navigation equipment with directions and road conditions will set car companies apart from their competitors. Eventually, Gates said, there could be a car that wouldn't let itself crash.
Microsoft is migrating many of its internal servers to the new 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003, but concedes its 64-bit desktop product remains a work in progress.
Danny Beck, Microsoft Windows client senior product marketing manager, confirmed on Friday that servers running the company's Web site and MSN Search and Messenger applications had been migrated to the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.
"Our MSN search engine is actually built on several thousand systems running the x64 version of Windows," Beck said. In addition, "the entire Microsoft.com site has been migrated, and we serve 30 million unique visitors every day."