Microsoft Archive

Microsoft on Thursday released to manufacturing Exchange Server 2007, a product developers say they 'bet the company on'. According to Exchange team lead Terry Myerson, Microsoft has 120,000 mailboxes running on Exchange 2007, with 200 partners utilizing the software for another 55000. Acting as a unified messaging server, Exchange 2007 handles e-mail, calendaring, faxes and even voicemail.

The holiday season hasn't gone exactly as Microsoft had hoped and Ballmer sits down with CNET News.com to discuss life after Vista, battling the iPod, and the rising importance of mobile devices.

There are two drawbacks to being a company that has a virtual monopoly in its biggest markets. For starters: where do you find growth? And there is always the nagging worry that someone out there is working on a rival product that just might blow you out of the water. As Andrew Grove, one of the founders of computer chip giant Intel, once put it: "Only the paranoid survive!" Software giant Microsoft is working hard to address both problems.

Consumers cannot run home versions of Windows Vista as virtual machines because virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption, says Microsoft. They claim "that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM".

"Buried in a Knowledge Base article that Microsoft published to the Web on November 14 are details of Microsoft's plans to combat Office 2007 piracy via new Office Genuine Advantage lockdowns. Microsoft's intentions are clear: Just as it is doing with Vista, Microsoft plans to incorporate what basically amounts to a 'kill switch' into Office 2007. Office 2007 users who can't or won't pass activation muster within a set time period will be moved into 'reduced-functionality mode', according to Microsoft."

Now that Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been released to manufacturing, the spotlight is on Windows Server 'Longhorn'. Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli at TechEd: IT Forum to give an update on Longhorn's road map, discuss the company's controversial deal with Novell, and give his thoughts on Sun Microsystems' decision to license Java under the GNU GPL. Meanwhile, CNet interviews Bill Gates.

After a nine-month long beta run, Microsoft on Wednesday announced the final version of Office Live, which provides a first outline of the firm's Internet services vision. Other than the name may suggest, Office Live is not an extension of Word and Excel, but a service hosting package that makes it easier for small businesses to establish their presence on the Internet.

It seems Microsoft has released the long awaited Windows Vista to a selection of its larger customers. If you're a Microsoft Volume License customer, you can now download Vista from the MVLS Volume Licensing site. Since around 10am (GMT) this morning, Vista has been properly released into the wild via MVLS - but no news yet as to when it will be available to the developer-centric MSDN community. The Inq also gives a rundown of what Aero-capable video cards you can buy if you have a machine that lacks AGP or PCIe slots. Meanwhile, the EU is threatening to fine Microsoft again.

Microsoft has released Office 2007 on it's Microsoft Volume License Services website. Confirmed versions available for download are the Office 2007 Enterprise at 559MB and Office 2007 Groove at 189MB. MSDN subscribers can expect to get it on November 12th. Office 2007 went gold on November 6th 2006.

Microsoft said Monday it has finalized the code for Office 2007, marking the completion of the first of two key projects for the software giant. Both Windows Vista and Office are slated for release to big businesses on Nov. 30. Microsoft has issued near-final test releases of Vista, but has not yet completed the final, or 'gold', code for the new operating system.

Microsoft's Sender ID e-mail authentication technology can now be used without fear of the software giant's intellectual property lawyers. The company said Monday it is making the 'Sender ID Framework' available under its Open Specification Promise program. That means Microsoft will not sue anyone who creates products or services based on the e-mail technology.

For more than two decades, Microsoft's software and Intel's processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel. But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source of chip design: its own labs.

Microsoft has restructured its Windows Core Operating System Division into five teams in a move designed to better focus on PC hardware and provide a richer set of customer solutions. The software giant is also making changes on the security front by bringing its security, Trustworthy Computing and Engineering Excellence teams together in one group, known as the Trustworthy Computing Team, Jim Desler, Microsoft's group public relations manager, told eWEEK Oct. 12.

Considering how many industry giants have partnered with Microsoft in WMA and PlaysForSure it would appear that Microsoft is a leader in successful consumer electronics technology. That's not the case. All of these partners hooked up with Microsoft simply because they had no idea of what to do on their own. Few even experimented with their own independent technology plans; they simply picked Microsoft because the company seemed like a safe bet at delivering technology. They obviously didn't do their homework. The big secret they missed is that Microsoft hasn't ever earned significant profits in the consumer hardware business, nor has its executives proven any business acumen in delivering what consumers want in hardware or creative entertainment, excluding, of course, Microsoft's impressive and highly sophisticated keyboard and mouse division.