Microsoft last week bowed to customer pressure and announced that it will continue extended support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows Millennium Edition until June 30, 2006.
According to officials, Microsoft also wanted to bring Windows 98 SE into compliance with the company's current life-cycle policy for new products, which provides support for seven years instead of the original four.
The move is expected to bring relief to some IT users and consumers. IDC estimates there are 58 million Windows 98 users and 21 million Windows 95 users. AssetMetrix Research Labs said more than 80 percent of companies are still using Windows 98 and/or Windows 95 in some capacity.
Microsoft has had its share of bad courtroom experiences, but lately the software giant has been taking some of its hardest knocks in city council and legislative chambers.
While government customers account for less than 10 percent of Microsoft's revenue, according to analyst estimates, they've caused a disproportionate share of headaches for the company over the past year. Ambitious projects to migrate government computers to Linux and other competing software, official decrees favoring open-source products and hard-nosed licensing negotiations have put government customers well ahead of private business when it comes to testing Microsoft's mettle.
Microsoft is readying a new version of Office for Macintosh for release in the first half of 2004 -- but it won't support many of the XML (Extensible Markup Language) features of its Windows cousin, Office 2003. Although Office 2004 for Macintosh will read and write Excel files saved in XML format, it won't support other XML file formats, including WordML, and won't have any equivalent to Office 2003 features such as XML data binding, "smart" documents, schema libraries and XSL style-sheet support.
Intel said its relationship with Microsoft remains strong in spite of its support for Linux and Microsoft's backing of AMD. The two vendors, once inextricably linked as the WinTel duopoly, continue to collaborate while backing other horses.
"Microsoft doesn't like us working with other software vendors any more than we like Microsoft working with other silicon vendors, but that's been going on," said Will Swope, general manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group, noting that Linux hasn't changed his relationship with the top brass in Redmond, Wash. "No, not all that much."
Microsoft is asking a judge to move the antitrust suit filed against it by RealNetworks to federal court in Seattle, alleging that RealNetworks chose San Jose, Calif., as the venue because it believed it would get a more favorable jury there.
"Many of Microsoft's fiercest competitors are based in Silicon Valley," Microsoft said in a court filing. "For this reason, RealNetworks likely perceives the jury pool in this district to be the most hostile to Microsoft of any jury pool in the country."
Microsoft is continuing its pursuit of Java developers. The company on Wednesday issued a beta release of Version 3.0 of the JLCA (Java Language Conversion Assistant) tool, which is designed for moving Java code to Microsoft's Visual C# .Net and .Net Framework. Featured in version 3.0 is the ability to convert J2EE 1.3 applications including JSP and EJB. J2EE 1.3 and JDK libraries can be converted.
An alphabet soup of other Java technologies can be moved over also, including EJB, JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Service), JCE (Java Cryptography Extension), JMS (Java Message Service), JNDI (Java Naming and Directory Interface), and RMI (Remote Method Invocation), according to Microsoft.
Microsoft is ratcheting up the rhetoric in its battle to contain the fallout from dissatisfied customers moving to the open-source Linux operating system. Orlando Ayala, the senior vice president for Microsoft's small and midmarket solutions and partner group, sent an e-mail to all his staff late Wednesday night, telling them that "there continues to be a great deal of noise in the marketplace about the growth of Linux."
He went on to urge them to "separate hype from reality and make sure we work to understand what is really happening in the industry."
Rumors were that Microsoft had shelved its fledgling X# programming language. Instead, the company is forging ahead with it. After news broke more than a year ago regarding Microsoft's plans to develop an XML programming language, company officials abruptly stopped talking about the so-called X# language. Some claimed Microsoft had killed the language. Others said Microsoft had temporarily shelved it. It turns out that X# is alive and well - and is now going by the code-name "Xen."
As part of the overhaul of its patch management tools, Microsoft on Tuesday released the next version of a tool that detects bad configurations that could leave users open to security vulnerabilities.
The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) 1.2 includes support for a number of new Microsoft products, including Exchange 2003 and the past three versions of BizTalk Server.
MBSA 1.2 includes support for Office 2000, XP and 2003, however, users can only scan the machine where the MBSA software is running. Remote scans of Office are not supported.
The third installment of Microsoft's monthly patch roundups came and went last week with three new security bulletins but without a fix for a well-known Internet Explorer vulnerability.
Microsoft is aware of a major problem in Internet Explorer that involves spoofed Web site addresses and provides the technical foundation for several so-called phishing scams. These scams involve an e-mail instructing a user to "re-enter" or otherwise divulge banking, credit card information or personal financial information. Some phishing scams in wide circulation use spoofed e-mail addresses that make it appear that users are being sent to sites of legitimate institutions such as Barclays or Citibank.