Mary Jo

On August 1, Microsoft officials said that Brian Valentine, long-time senior vice president in charge of Microsoft’s Core Operating System Division, was planning to move to another part of the company after Windows Vista went to manufacturing. Instead, Valentine has decided to leave the company and join Amazon.com. On September 5, Microsoft announced that 19-year […]

Windows Vista beta testers didn’t let Labor Day weekend in the U.S. stop them from laboring over their reviews of Windows Vista Release Candidate (RC) 1, which Microsoft dropped on September 1. Installation time for the latest Vista build is much better, according to tester Brandon LeBlanc. eWEEK’s Jason Brooks had some XP migration problems […]

We almost missed this one, from “Inside Higher Ed” last week, which reported on a last-minute wording change in a Higher-Ed Commission report, at the request of Microsoft Corporate VP Gerri Elliott. Elliott, in addition to overseeing Microsoft’s public sector business, also sits on the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. […]

Microsoft Research has put the finishing touches on “BrowserShield,” a program designed to zap malicious code before it can attack Internet Explorer users. (The filtering is done at run-time.) BrowserShield is an outgrowth of “Microsoft Research’s larger “Shield” malware-defense effort.

From Microsoft Watch: On September 1, Microsoft made available for download to the first set of testers the Vista Release Candidate (RC) 1 (Build 5600) bits. We’re hearing Microsoft is going to broaden the availability beyond the initial set of technical and Technology Adoption Program (TAP) participants to as many as six million testers. (In […]

In a week where pundits have given plenty of virtual ink to the potential impact of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s joining the Apple Computer board, we have a different hypothetical question to pose. What do you expect Google to do in the hopes of raining on Microsoft’s Vista parade? As of this week, we believe […]

David Morgenstern, over on eWEEK, wonders aloud why Microsoft isn’t taking a page out of the Apple playbook by allowing new PCs to ship with both XP and Vista. When Mac OS X came onto the scene, Apple was shipping Macs with both Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X preloaded. Apple continued offering both […]

Some Windows watchers are questioning the math of a business user mentioned in the Microsoft Watch column “Is There a Business Case for Windows Vista?” They note that users will be able to run Vista Enterprise on cheaper, less powerful PCs than the robust and expensive “Vista Premium” PCs that will be on the market. […]

In late July, Microsoft acknowledged it had to recall the Windows Small Business Server R2 code it released earlier that month, due to a build gaffe (sending out the wrong build of the code) on its part. As a result, product delivery was pushed back to September. On August 31, Microsoft officials said they had […]

As testers continue to post their mostly positive and quite detailed impressions about Windows Vista Build 5536 (a k a the “pre-Release-Candidate 1 build that Microsoft began distributing last week), there have been other, later builds (like Vista 5538, which ExtremeTech reviewed recently, as well as 5552 that’s making its way around the Torrents). There […]

On August 30, Microsoft opened up the beta for its Windows Live parental-controls service (formerly code-named “Vegas”), that is now known as Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. (Whew. What a mouthful!) The reason for the cumbersome name? Over time, Family Safety will be integrated into Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare backup and security service. As a […]

“Thank you for your interest in Windows Vista. The Customer Preview Program is now closed. We have reached our goal of 100,000 downloads for the pre-RC1 release and the program is now closed. Windows Vista RC1 will be available in the coming weeks. Please refer to the Customer Preview Program website for information, including DVD-burning […]