WinInsider

Intel put the last nail in the coffin of the MHz myth this week when the company canceled plans to ship a long-delayed 4GHz Pentium microprocessor so it can instead concentrate on products with "more bang for the buck." The problem is that chips with faster clock speeds are so much hotter than their predecessors that they require special cooling hardware. But the chips don't offer a huge performance boost over earlier versions. So instead of ratcheting up the clock speed, as the company has always done with desktop speeds, Intel will now concentrate on more obscure but effective methods of boosting actual processor performance.

Microsoft announced on Friday a new holiday Xbox package that essentially gives buyers two free sports games and a trial subscription to the Xbox Live online gaming service. The bundle, available starting Oct. 31, will add Electronic Arts' "NCAA Football 2005" and "Top Spin" tennis game, plus two months of Xbox Live service, for the same $150 Microsoft now charges for the standalone Xbox.

Bundles are a common way for game console makers to boost seasonal sales in between price cuts. Microsoft last trimmed the price of the Xbox in March. Competitor Sony will begin selling a trimmed-down version of its market-leading PlayStation 2 console on Nov. 1.

Wood paneling and chrome made your dad's station wagon look like a million bucks, and they might also be just the ticket for Microsoft's fledgling effort to put a Media Center PC in every living room.

Current Media Center PC designs don't handle the 2-foot part very well, Becker said, because they look too dorky for most folks to put next to the couch.

"The existing Media Center PCs are based on existing designs," Becker said. "(PC makers are) not thinking about what it means to have a PC in the living room from an interaction standpoint or an aesthetic standpoint."

A California judge has denied three motions for summary judgement in a patent infringement case filed by TV Interactive Data against Microsoft , meaning the case will proceed to trial. TVI has alleged that Microsoft's "autoplay" feature in Windows infringes upon patents it holds for the automatic startup of an application after a storage device has been inserted into a PC or other device. Microsoft had sought a summary judgement to dismiss all of TVI's claims before they reached trial, claiming they were without merit in documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Microsoft?said Thursday that a version of "Halo 2," the forthcoming follow-up to the best-selling video game for the company's Xbox console, had been leaked and illegally posted for download on the Internet. The company said it was investigating the source of the leak as of yesterday afternoon. The development isn't expected to affect the release of the game, planned for Nov. 9.

"Microsoft takes the integrity of its intellectual property extremely seriously, and we are aggressively pursuing the source of this illegal act," the company said in a statement. Microsoft warned that it considers downloading the "Halo 2" code or making it available for others to download to be theft.

Computer users have long complained that using Microsoft Windows to find files on a desktop hard drive is considerably tougher than using Google to find information in the vast reaches of the Internet.

Google itself offered a solution Thursday, beating rival Microsoft to market with a free program for quickly searching by keyword through e-mail messages, previously viewed Web pages, archived chat sessions, word-processing documents and other files on Windows PCs.

Three years after the release of the 1,500 word memo from the company's founder and Chief Software Architect , Bill Gates, those inside and outside Microsoft credit Trustworthy Computing with setting in motion vast changes that have improved the security of many of Microsoft's products. At the same time, customers and industry experts wonder aloud whether Microsoft will ever fully realize Gates' vision, taming the company's massive stores of legacy software code and reconciling its desire to please consumers with its duty to protect them from threats.

Looking to show that its $50 million software and services partnership with Microsoft is bearing fruit, Hewlett-Packard said it has realized over $600 million in sales from the joint .NET initiative.

That momentum amounts to more than 1,000 projects for nearly 700 customers worldwide, claimed Nora Denzel, senior vice president and general manager, Adaptive Enterprise at HP, who noted that the pact was not just a bunch of talk.

"We've exceeded 100 percent annual growth rate in the number of engagements we've delivered around .NET," Denzel told internetnews.com.

In a Q&A session this month, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect talked briefly about the next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn," and seemed to be describing the WinFS technologies that are supposed to have been cut.

Talking about the future of technology during a session at the University of California Berkeley, Bill Gates took this question from an audience member: "I'm just wondering what does Microsoft have to offer for the future of Windows and for advanced users who like right now are migrating out to open source systems?"

After trying for years to make the case that its products belong in the living room, Microsoft has decided its best approach is to tackle the whole house.

Although Apple Computer's combination of iTunes and iPod has proven pretty popular, Microsoft is betting that people want to do more with their music and that they want to be able to move video and pictures around as well.

Chairman Bill Gates made that case at a tony press event at the Shrine Auditorium here. With the help of singer Queen Latifah, Gates showed off a host of gadgets that use one or another Microsoft technology to access movies, music and video.