Peter Galli

LAS VEGAS -Conspicuously absent from Microsoft’s annual MIX conference here was any discussion by the software giant about whether it plans to change the way ActiveX will run in Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft announced the first beta for IE8, the latest version of its Web browser, at the conference on March 5. The beta for […]

SEATTLE-Microsoft has snared Coca-Cola Enterprises as a customer for its dedicated hosted services, which will be phased in over the next few years. Coca-Cola Enterprises is the world’s largest marketer, distributor and producer of bottled and canned liquid nonalcoholic refreshments, with some $20 billion in annual revenue. It that has 74,000 employees, some 30,000 of […]

REDMOND-Microsoft Research is hosting its annual TechFest at its campus here this week, and is striving to show how the innovations and technologies being developed by its researchers are of interest to a wide range of people, including Hollywood celebrities. As part of the media and analyst event March 4, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief strategy […]

Users running Windows Vista Ultimate in any language other than English, French, German, Japanese or Spanish will not be getting Service Pack 1 when it is first released. Microsoft is now planning to release Vista SP1 in two waves: First, Vista PCs running the Ultimate edition in English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish will get […]

SEATTLE–When Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates takes the stage to deliver the keynote address at the annual 2008 Microsoft SharePoint Conference here March 3, he will announce the availability of both Search Server 2008 Express and the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint. Search Server 2008 Express, the free, downloadable enterprise search product announced in November, is relatively […]

SEATTLE-Google really does not understand the special needs of businesses, as its model is based around consumer search, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told attendees at the 2008 SharePoint conference here on March 3. Answering a question about Google’s competitive threat to SharePoint, Gates said that, “Its [Google’s] productivity tools do not have the features and […]

SEATTLE–As Microsoft ratchets up its software-plus-services offering, the company will use its annual Office SharePoint Conference March 3 to announce that it is expanding its existing online services to businesses of all sizes. Microsoft now plans to offer hosted Exchange Online and Office SharePoint Online together with Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting, either […]

While the bad news around Windows Vista continues for Microsoft, the good news for U.S. PC users who want the operating system is that the price of several retail versions and upgrades has been cut by as much as 20 percent. The price cuts, which come into effect when the first service pack for Vista […]

LOS ANGELES-Microsoft may have made mistakes launching Windows Vista, but the operating system was far from a failure, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Bob Muglia, the company’s senior vice president of servers and tools. The embattled OS may have gone too far in improving security at the expense of application compatibility, and ignored performance […]

LOS ANGELES-Microsoft executives are spending a lot of time thinking about cloud computing these days, including planning a Windows Server .Net cloud development platform on which people will be able to build and deploy applications, according to CEO Steve Ballmer. The software maker is also thinking about a product like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or […]

LOS ANGELES-While Microsoft is not the leader in virtualization, the company wants to drive the “democratization” of server virtualization so that its adoption will become far more widespread, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Feb. 27. Giving the keynote address at Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen {here}” event, Ballmer said this represented the launch of the company’s broad […]

LOS ANGELES-Microsoft trotted out NBC journalist and former anchor Tom Brokaw at its launch event for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, who made it clear he’s not looking for a new career writing code or designing new networks. An avid user of IT, Brokaw did say, “its inner workings remain […]