Microsoft drops Seinfeld, to target "Get a Mac" with new ads, Sep 18, 2008

Microsoft has disposed of Seinfeld's toothbrush in the bathroom and replaced it with a shiny new one.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the stories of Microsoft mergers. Once more, rumors are swirling that Microsoft might buy Citrix. By my count, this is the fifth time this particular rumor has emerged. In addition, though, this time around I'm hearing that some people think Microsoft might buy Novell.

Imagine a world without Linux. There'd be no cute Tux penguin or any notion of software freedom day. Netbooks would not have come about. But more strikingly, there wouldn't be the modern powerful tools that Windows systems administrators have come to love. That's right; Linux is keeping Microsoft honest and I'm going to expose the new Windows Small Business Server for what it is, along with those who resell it.

Microsoft’s first commercial in a campaign intended to reinvigorate the public’s perception of its Windows operating system debuted Thursday night. In it comedian Jerry Seinfeld helps recently retired Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pick out a pair of shoes at a discount shoe store in an ordinary mall.

The New York Times published an article on Friday about Windows Vista that included this: "The main problem with Vista, Microsoft said, was that given the delays, uncertainty and significant changes in the software, the rest of the industry was not ready when Vista finally arrived."

BusinessWeek reports that HP, the world’s biggest PC company, is so troubled by Vista’s ‘tepid reception’ and Apple’s resurgence that it is developing its own operating system. Meanwhile a New York Times columnist writes on his blog that Windows is “already dying a death by a thousand cuts.”

IE8 plays catch-up in other areas, too. The Address Bar replicates Firefox 3's Awesome Bar; no longer used just for typing in addresses, it searches your history and RSS feeds to provide alternative results.

If you needed any further testament to the colossal failure that is Microsoft Windows Vista, just read this Wall Street Journal article detailing PC manufacturers attempts to design around Vista's shortcomings, shortcomings that no amount of marketing are going to fix.

Microsoft's hiring of Jerry Seinfeld as a Windows Vista pitchman had the Linux community in stitches last week. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that it's an indication Windows has jumped the shark. Dell's plans to ship a subnotebook with Ubuntu gave bloggers a further boost.

Microsoft and Novell today announced an expansion of their 2006 interoperability agreement, which included a controversial covenant not to sue over patent infringement.

Vista’s death march picked up some pace yesterday, after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP.

Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal.

If Microsoft has a beating heart then the senior director of Microsoft platform strategy Sam Ramji reckons he's found it.

Microsoft's campaign to show that Windows Vista has received an unfair rap continued Tuesday with the launch of its Mojave Experiment Website, which showcases videos from a focus group Microsoft held in San Francisco earlier this month.

Pledging "open and honest" work with the community, the software giant throws in with Apache and other groups -- but not everyone is likely to be as welcoming.

'Momentum is good' for Mac OS X, but adoption rates low, research firm says

At OSCON, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, says he doubts Microsoft would file a claim against Linux developers.

Mike Gunderloy spent over a decade consulting for Microsoft, helping to build the Access and Excel versions of Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, as well as SQL Server, C#, and ASP.Net. A series of Microsoft moves, most particularly its "patent land-grab," has pushed Gunderloy away from Microsoft to the point that he's now "100 percent Microsoft-free" and has embraced a variety of open-source projects and programming languages.

Microsoft's recent announcement that it will allow low-cost PC makers to ship computers with XP make it far more likely that Microsoft will deliver a Lite version of Windows 7 --- most likely by June, 2010.

Congratulations Linux. Yesterday was the day you made Microsoft blink. Microsoft has changed its mind and has decided to keep XP Home around after all.

It was just over a year ago that Microsoft Corp. dropped a bombshell of a claim: users of Linux and open-source software were unwittingly violating as many as 235 Microsoft software patents.

Microsoft on Thursday struck a deal to make its Windows operating system available on OLPC’s low-cost XO laptops, intended to bring technology to the world’s poor.

Details of Microsoft’s recently announced plan to extend the life of Windows XP for ultra low-cost PCs are trickling out. IDG News got its hands on what it says are Microsoft documents outlining the program for PC manufacturers.

Details of Microsof's recently announced plan to extend the life of Windows XP for ultra low-cost PCs are trickling out. IDG News got its hands on what it says are Microsoft documents outlining the program for PC manufacturers.

Regular readers will know that I’ve rallied against Microsoft’s so-called “Get the facts” site for the last fortnight. Rather than give legitimate comparisons facing off Windows servers vs Linux options the site opts for bunkum and hogwash with sensational headlines that have no underlying substance. Here’s the state of play.

Bob Muglia, who handles servers and tools for Microsoft, has announced a further expansion of system management at Microsoft's Management Summit 2008. With the usual modesty we have come to expect of Microsoft, Muglia said in Las Vegas that IT management and enterprises would be re-defined – nothing more, nothing less.

Microsoft PR threw down the gauntlet; “see how Windows Server 2008 stacks up versus Linux,” they say. There’s a “Get the Facts” URL being promoted with claims of direct comparisons between the two operating systems. Anyone reading the headlines alone could be fooled into thinking there’s substance to be found.

Linux and Unix software from Microsoft? That will be one of the upshots of Microsoft's proposed buyout of Fast Search & Transfer, Microsoft officials said today. But that doesn't mean you'll see Microsoft software shifting platforms.

At the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Bill Gates gave his thoughts on where the pharmaceutical industry was going, and where it should be going. However, he also slipped up a bit and criticized the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Microsoft sees the ultra-low cost PC market as a significant opportunity and plans to pursue it with vigor, according the Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer.

In an ominous sign for Microsoft's growth prospects in emerging regions, countries that represent the world's fastest growing tech markets voted against accepting the company's latest Microsoft Office document format as an international standard.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft rolled out what’s arguably its most important product this year: Windows Server 2008, the operating system for corporate server computers. It’s a cornerstone to a bunch of other Microsoft software, and it will be used by businesses large and small.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently announced his company's "Interoperability Initiative", a pledge to work together with the open-source world for both mutual benefit, and the benefit of customers and users. Given its past history, it's impossible to take Microsoft's claims at face value, but they certainly do warrant closer inspection.

Windows XP comes to the tiny Eee PC this month and Asus has its sights set on students.

Microsoft yesterday announced a beta of its Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, an online platform were users can store documents and share them with others. Reviews of Microsoft Office Live Workspace have been varied but if you’re running Linux you won’t get to use the Live Workspace at all.

It seems that the £200 ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments not just from hyperventilating hardware reviewers, but also from ordinary people who have actually bought it.

Executive Director of The Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin blasted Microsoft's attempt to create a second certified international standard document format for Office Open XML (OOXML), calling Microsoft's argument for two standards "ridiculous" and "disingenuous."

European antitrust regulators on Wednesday fined Microsoft $1.3 billion for failing to comply with a 2004 judgment that the company had abused its market dominance.

Microsoft made headlines yesterday for its overtures to the open-source software community, including some that practically cast the move as a surrender by the company. "Microsoft to Open Source: You Win," declared the Web Worker Daily blog.

Alpine already offers a number of products, including global positioning systems, that run atop a version of Microsoft's Windows operating system designed for vehicular use.

In a few short weeks, it will be time for national standards bodies to decide whether the Microsoft Office Open XML specification will be accepted as an ISO standard or not.

Analysts and money managers have a suggestion for Yahoo shareholders mulling over the $44.6 billion buyout bid from Microsoft: Take the money and run.

Wayne Kelly, leader of the open source Ruby.Net development project, announced last week that he intends to discontinue development of Ruby.Net and join up with Microsoft's IronRuby open source efforts. This might sound good on the surface, but it is a bad idea.

Articles about Microsoft's bid have probably tired you to death by now, but this article discusses one particular aspect of the potential takeover, namely its effect on GNU/Linux and BSD users. Here's a point-by-point analysis of the impact, covering several of the key issues:

IT managers considering the future of their organization's desktops need to be wary of the amount of dependence workers have on Microsoft Office documents -- which cause the most lock-in, according to one consultant.

Previously, Microsoft has reached Linux accords with Samsung, Novell, LG Electronics, and Linux distributor Xandros.

If you read my blog yesterday, you noticed my entry about Microsoft's move to retire XP and effectively force Windows shops into a wasteful migration to Vista.

Lesson learned: Just because something can run two operating systems doesn't mean it's a "dual-boot" system.

It's a threat Microsoft can't let stand: the entire third world learning Linux as children, and growing up to use it. And Microsoft is going to get its way.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once called Linux a cancer. Now, thanks to his company's alliance with Novell, he's probably labeling the open source OS as something much more benign.

 View older news this year: Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View news from other years: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
 View older news in category Microsoft this year: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View Microsoft news from other years: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000