Peter Galli

Analysts expect 2008 to be a better year for Microsoft than 2007 if the company can overcome the generally poor market reaction to the introduction of Windows Vista. The upcoming launch of Windows Server 2008 and the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 could help improve overall market perceptions of the operating system in […]

Microsoft released a slew of product updates over the past few weeks, but the one IT administrators seem to care the most about is Windows Vista SP1, with many already having rolled out the release candidate for the service pack or planning to do so in the near future. In addition to the release candidate […]

Microsoft has finally started talking publicly about the next release of its Internet Explorer Web browser, and expects to deliver the first beta for IE 8 in the first half of 2008. The IE (Internet Explorer) development team is also pledging that while IE 8 will deliver advancements and enable Web developers, designers, and Internet […]

Sun Microsystems is offering distributors and OEMs backline support for the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which is a free alternative to its own branded StarOffice offering. Sun also announced Dec. 17 that it has created a StarOffice server product, which is a large batch conversion engine that converts documents in any of the 40 formats supported […]

No sooner had Microsoft announced the availability of the public beta for Hyper-V, its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, than VMware went on the attack, claiming its ESX Server is a comparable, but better, product. “Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hypervisor, while ESX Server is ours. But I don’t think you can really compare Microsoft’s newly announced beta […]

Microsoft has released a public beta for its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology known as Hyper-V, which will be included in three versions of Windows Server 2008 when it ships early next year. The release of the Hyper-V beta is ahead of schedule. Microsoft officials said previously it would be available in the first quarter of […]

Microsoft moved to shore up its mapping and location platform services, announcing on Dec. 12 that it has bought Multimap, which it describes as one of the leading online mapping services in the world. The software maker, which did not disclose the terms of the deal, intends to use the new Multimap location and mapping […]

While commercial open-source solutions are being broadly adopted, there are obstacles slowing that adoption, particularly around interoperability, the Open Solutions Alliance has found. The Alliance, which was established in late 2006 by companies including CollabNet, SpikeSource, SourceForge.net and Unisys as a consortium to help drive the interoperability and adoption of open solutions, sponsored a series […]

Even as Microsoft prepares to make the release candidate for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 broadly available to all users this week, the Windows Serviceability Team has released a preview update that improves Vista’s performance and reliability. As the update, which will be available at the Microsoft Download Center, is a preview release, it could […]

The Office team beat its own deadline of early 2008 and will release Office 2007 Service Pack 1 Dec. 11. In an unusual move, the software maker limited testing of the update to the productivity suite to a few months and only at large enterprises in its Technology Adopter Program, as well as internally at […]

The public beta for Microsoft Office Live Workspace will go live Dec. 10. The service, which lets customers access, share and collaborate on documents online, was announced Oct. 1, at which time Microsoft said the beta would be released before the end of the year and that the company was accepting registrations from customers who […]

Microsoft has a long history of buying technologies that it then integrates into its own products to make them more competitive, and 2007 was no exception. The software maker made a number of acquisitions this year, both big and small, particularly in areas where it had either been late to the game (think unified communications) […]