WinInsider

Analysts and reporters are descending on Microsoft's campus for an all-day meeting to hear the world's largest software company talk about it plans for growth.

"As IT spending picks up, Microsoft's software matures, and its benefits get cut, Microsoft's best technical people will be tempted to jump ship," said O'Kelly. "I would like to hear how the company is doing on this front so far, and what it is doing to retain employees."

Microsoft is outsourcing some of the work related to its next-generation operating system to India, according to a labor group.

The WashTech organization said Wednesday that it obtained internal Microsoft documents showing that at least two of India's offshore outsourcing companies are working on the forthcoming operating system dubbed "Longhorn." One of the documents indicates that a contract with India-based Infosys Technologies concerns a "Longhorn Migration Guide."

WashTech also said Microsoft indirectly employs more than 1,000 people in India through contractors.

Mirail said the Microsoft antivirus software will utilize two different means of detecting the destructive files, the first of which will reference a regularly updated list of known viruses to check for potential infections. The second antivirus tool will analyze computer systems to asses whether they have been hit by a virus in the past and attempt to give end users an idea of how at risk their computers might be for future problems.

The executive indicated that the antivirus package will not come with firewall security software but said a firewall would be built into the company's Windows XP operating system when Microsoft delivers its Service Pack 2 update. Mirail said the product would work with both Windows XP and the Longhorn release of Windows.

Microsoft said Tuesday that it has delayed an update to its Windows Server software as well as the first version of Windows to support 64-bit x86 chips such as Advanced Micro Device's Athlon 64.

The software maker said Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2003 for 64-bit Extended Systems and Windows XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems will all be pushed back until the first half of next year. All three products, which are being developed together, were slated to ship by the end of this year.

Microsoft said yesterday it was investigating reports of a possible Internet attack that could slow or shut down the software company's Web site. Cybersecurity experts at Symantec and elsewhere reported that the worm, dubbed "Zindos," could use computers infected with a variant of the MyDoom virus to attempt to conduct a denial of service attack against Microsoft's Web site.

Oral arguments in Microsoft's first court date with the European Union (EU) will start September 30, 2004, according to Bo Vesterdorf, the president of the European Court of First Instance. The arguments, which will last two days, will focus on Microsoft's request to suspend the penalties of the EU's antitrust decision against the company while Microsoft prepares its appeal.

And regardless of the outcome of these arguments, Microsoft will still have to face Vesterdorf and several other European judges, who will decide the substance of Microsoft's appeal. That appeal could take up to five years, according to legal experts.

Microsoft announced this morning that Longhorn, the company's next-generation OS, will include support for High Definition DVD (HD-DVD), the video-playback format that's expected to succeed DVD. Microsoft's support of a next-generation DVD format is key to that format's success; in the past, Microsoft's support of technologies such as various recordable-DVD formats, USB, and Wi-Fi (the 802.11b wireless standard) helped make them ubiquitous in the PC world.

Microsoft is testing a Web-based MSN Messenger client that will allow users to connect to the instant messaging (IM) service without the need to install a client application. The full version of MSN Web Messenger will be released later this year, according to the test Web site. Microsoft is soliciting feedback from testers. The test Web site only allows limited connections and on Monday appeared to be getting a lot of visitors because it would not allow connections to the MSN Messenger service at all.

Microsoft released on Tuesday the first major update for Office 2003, but analysts say the collection of bug and performance fixes is unlikely to spur a significant boost in sales.

Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2003 is available for download from Microsoft's Office Update site. The package contains a series of bug fixes and stability improvements for the main Office 2003 package--a collection of productivity tools such as the Word word processor and Outlook e-mail client--plus more sweeping changes and new applications.

Microsoft on Tuesday will begin testing a new online news aggregation service, as part of its growing search rivalry with Google. In conjunction with its own MSNBC news site, the software giant is creating a page dubbed "Newsbot" that will draw news headlines from more than 4,800 other sites, in a manner similar to the Google News service.

The page will let visitors create their own customized news feeds that are powered by MSN's new search technology, the company said. (Google News offers something similar, but it calls them customized alerts.)