WinInsider

Just a little more than a week before the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2005, Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin has decided to reveal some information about Longhorn, the next-generation Windows version that has suffered from innumerable delays. Now due in mid-2006, Longhorn will be a major Windows version, not a minor update, Allchin says. "So forget the naysayers," he adds, "Longhorn is going to rock."

Microsoft moved closer to significant releases of its development and database environments, both slated to appear before the end of 2005.

Officials from the Redmond, Wash., software power announced the second beta of Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0 beta 2, and the April Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2005.

Users will increasingly see future VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005 tied together, highlighting Microsoft's commitment to tying application development to back-end infrastructure.

A Baltimore federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Microsoft in which California cities and counties accused the software maker of overcharging for Windows and other programs.

U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled that the government agencies could sue under only one of two laws that they sought to invoke, and further that the statute of limitations had expired on many of the claims covered in the suit. Motz dismissed the suit, but said the cities could file an amended claim for some recent purchases.

Microsoft has a computer operating system for you to consider. Maybe you've heard of it.

The company today will launch a major marketing campaign in a bid to generate new consumer interest in the 3-year-old Windows XP operating system. Microsoft says the campaign will be one of the largest and longest-running in the 20-year history of Windows.

Microsoft declined to disclose the cost of the campaign, but the description indicates that it will be at least in the realm of the $200 million ad blitz that accompanied the original Windows XP launch. The new initiative will run considerably longer, lasting about 15 months in 11 countries, including the United States and Canada.

GridIron Software, a developer of grid computing products, and Microsoft soon will be shipping an encoding product designed to significantly speed digital video encoding by harnessing networked computing systems.

Unveiled at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas this week, the GridIron X-Factor for Windows Media Encoder divides up digital video encoding work so it can be processed by multiple computers rather than by one machine.

Although there are other encoding products on the market, the X-Factor is the first software program to handle this type of task by using grid computing, said Gord Watts, vice president of marketing at Ottawa, Ontario-based GridIron Software Inc. Many encoding products are hardware-based, he added.

Microsoft over the weekend pushed out an update for its flagship Windows Media Player to provide protection from a well-known spyware infection threat.

The update comes more than three months after Microsoft promised a fix and brings an end to an episode that raised questions about the company's handling of a legitimate security threat to customers.

In a knowledge base article that was updated over the weekend, Microsoft said the new version of WMP would block the redirection of users to rogue Web sites via the DRM mechanism.

Microsoft researchers are exploring new ways of navigating around on mobile devices, including a system that would center around a touch screen operated by thumb power.

While thumbs have already been stretched into new directions by tiny keyboards, the latest advance would have them replacing the stylus as well. According to a report on Brighthand, Microsoft is looking at two approaches which would allow the thumb to control a touchscreen menu of different choices.

Microsoft has reversed plans to deliver a bundle of systems management products under the System Center name and instead will use that name as an overarching brand for its systems management products, the software maker plans to announce next week.

System Center, announced a year ago, was originally introduced as a bundle of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and SMS (Systems Management Server) 2003 with a common interface and added reporting services. Microsoft has now dropped those plans, opting instead to deliver reporting capability in a tool called System Center Reporting Manager, which is currently in beta testing. MOM and SMS will remain standalone products.

When Microsoft distributes the preview release of Longhorn at the WinHEC at the end of this month, it will look quite different from the early Longhorn bits it distributed at the same show a year ago.

Unlike last year's Longhorn Windows Hardware Engineering Conference preview build, this year's will include the first pieces of Microsoft's built-in Windows security system.

That system-originally code-named "Palladium," (and more recently, "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base," or NGSCB)-has been one of the most controversial of the planned Longhorn components, since Microsoft first detailed it in 2003.

Could the hottest new Tablet form factor end up being a mini Tablet/eBook hybrid? Microsoft seems to be betting on it.

First it was the slate. Then it was the PC-Tablet convertible. Now it's a mini-Tablet that can do everything that a traditional Tablet PC can do, plus store electronic books, that could end up as the new gadget on which Microsoft is betting to further Tablet PC momentum.

A prototype of a new device - described by sources as a type of hybrid Tablet PC/eBook - has been making its way around the Microsoft Redmond campus, according to sources. The mini-Tablet, which measures about six inches by eight inches and features a digitizer, is just one of a number of new Tablet form factors expected to debut in the coming months.