eWEEK EDITORS

Twenty years is a human generation: enough time for a baby to be born and go off to college; enough time to get married and have children. At 20, Windows has been through several generations and is no longer young; indeed, it seems as if we have lived with Windows forever. At this milestone, its […]

Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft Corp.s platform Products & Services division, was wooed from the company he helped start, Banyan Systems Inc., to join the Redmond, Wash., software maker in 1990 with a simple promise from Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. Allchin was told that no matter how good Banyans software was, at […]

Microsoft is expected to announce the commencement of the long-awaited Office 12 beta program possibly as soon as next week, according to testers. But for now, its not clear which Office products—including a new “Office 12 for Windows Mobile” SKU—will be part of the initial test round. On Thursday, Microsoft sent confirmation notices to the […]

On Nov. 1, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie unveiled publicly Microsofts Live.com services strategy. The pair previewed for press and analysts in San Francisco a number of repackaged Windows services, branded Windows Live, and previewed their intentions to roll out a parallel set of Office services next year that […]

Sure, Microsofts products got more secure (“The Blue Hats,” Oct. 31), but at what price? I run software tests against many Windows versions and install new patches on “patch Tuesdays” on all my test systems. That, though, now takes me at least two days. The new Windows Update Service is, by far, slower than the […]

It would be interesting to learn if FN Manufacturings financial modeling of OpenOffice.org versus Microsoft Office included softer, more intangible costs (“Selective OpenOffice Deployment,” Oct. 24). The potential savings could quickly erode if you factor in help desk complexity introduced by supporting multiple platforms; client services costs due to additional PC images supported; and productivity […]

Microsoft is readying not one, but two, service packs for its Visual Studio tool suite. The company is readying simultaneously SP1 (Service Pack 1) for Visual Studio 2003 and SP1 for Visual Studio 2005, blogged Scott Wiltamuth, Visual C# product unit manager. Both are expected to ship in the first part of 2006. The specific […]

Virtualization is all the rage. Youve heard the estimates: Between 70 percent to 90 percent of data center resources are underutilized. Given the waste, the buzz around virtualization makes sense. It helps by pooling and sharing resources, allowing users to automatically grow and shrink resources based on application requirements. Its no panacea, though. Attendees at […]

Hes Got Your Number Stephen Hawking, in “God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History,” has selected 17 of the greatest mathematicians and collected their important works in one volume, with biographical information about each along with useful commentary about what their achievements meant to the advancement of society. I cant quibble with […]

The “b” word (bundling) is on the Microspeak blacklist. But theres no sidestepping the reality: Windows Vista is likely to get more bundled components. After months of rumors, Microsoft made it official last month: The company will bundle the core of the Windows AntiSpyware product into Windows Vista. We know, we know: Bundling is a […]

I am a patent attorney who has been in the field for more than 40 years. Your Oct. 24 editorial (“Getting Patents Right” or “Consumers Caught in Patent Case Crossfire”) raises many valid points but overlooks others. Most businesses are not in the business of litigation, but in the business of producing products and/or services […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Will Mondays official launch of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2005 be one of Microsofts last big launches? Thats a definite possibility, given the multiple mentions by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during his keynote address here of Microsofts need to develop and release its products in a more timely fashion. […]