Category: Microsoft

Writes Business Week:

Microsoft now believes that networking devices, known as routers, may be the key to controlling the digitally wired home. By selling routers that link PCs to game consoles, TVs, and other household devices, Microsoft is hoping to serve as the gatekeeper connecting consumers to the multibillion-dollar world of digital entertainment: games, movies, music, and other services.

In Microsoft’s vision of the future, all these home devices and appliances will be connected through the router not just to one another but also to the Internet. Thus, rock fans could download the latest tunes from a Net service and then access the song on their stereo. And families could share a high-speed Net connection so teens could swap instant messages with their pals at the same time Mom pays bills online.

A Linux Server should be able to do all this just fine.

Walter Mossberg (WSJ) calls for Family pricing for MS Office, stating that “Office represents a big percentage of the price of a new PC. At CompUSA, the standard edition of Office XP costs $479.99, and the upgrade version, for folks who have an earlier version, is $229.99. To put that in perspective, CompUSA sells an entire Windows XP computer, the eMachines T1220, for $474.99 — less than the full price of a single copy of Office. Even if we use for comparison a more typical Compaq or Hewlett-Packard model costing $800, Office is still a huge percentage of the cost of the PC — about 60% if you pay full price.”

The numbers become even more striking if you convert them to local currencies. In India, for example, a new computer with Windows XP and MS Office could cost upto Rs 60,000. Compare this with the cost of a Thin Client running Linux of about Rs 10-12,000. One new desktop can buy 5-6 computers for people in a residential complex or an office.

Imagine if, next year, instead of selling 1.8 million new PCs, computer companies can sell 5-7 million PCs (some new, some used) in India. These are the numbers required to give the domestic software industry a huge boost.

Writes the Seattle Time on what was earlier codenamed Freestyle:

Microsoft, in its latest attempt to place its software in consumers’ home-entertainment systems, is disclosing details today of a dramatically new version of Windows that’s scheduled to debut on special PCs this fall.

Called Windows XP Media Center Edition, the software will run a class of computers built to record and play music and television shows, as well as process words, crunch numbers and surf the Internet.

The software displays a simplified control screen on the computer monitor and may be manipulated by remote control. It’s designed to allow users to sit on a couch with friends as they peruse digital photos or watch DVDs on the computer monitor, rather than crowd around someone sitting at a keyboard.

A small group of computer companies is set to begin selling specially designed Media Center Edition PCs this fall. Priced at roughly $1,500, the machines will be aimed at college students, teenagers and digital-media enthusiasts.

News.com writes about the new features planned in Exchange and Outlook:

The new version of Exchange, code-named Titanium, will be more secure because the company will, by default, disable certain messaging features to prevent hackers or virus makers from taking advantage of openings, said Jim Bernardo, Microsoft’s Exchange product manager.

Outlook will sport a new look, with Microsoft moving the window that previews the text of an e-mail from the bottom of the screen to the right-hand side, Bernardo said.

Another new feature is the ability to group e-mail based on when messages arrived. “It will provide some visual cues and better navigation of what’s important and timely in my inbox,” he said. “You can group messages from when they came in–today, yesterday, last week, two weeks ago.”

Outlook will also feature improvements in sorting mail, including new multicolored flags that people can use to determine each e-mail’s importance. Computer users can then put flagged e-mail in multiple folders in their inbox. If they forget where they put the flagged e-mail, they can do a search to find all their important messages all at once, Bernardo said.

The changes, while good, seem to be cosmetic and incremental. The real leap in productivity will come through the use of blogs and RSS syndication on the desktop, as part of the Digital Dashboard.

From News.com:

The tool tracks leads, accounts and orders–features he said can improve sales force productivity and customer satisfaction. Microsoft CRM will also help service reps track and resolve customer service cases.

Microsoft CRM will be priced from $395 per user to $1,295 per user, depending on the features people pick, the company said. It will run on a Windows 2000 server.

The software maker’s CRM is tailored for companies with between 50 to 500 employees. Microsoft said it’s looking to compete with FrontRange Solutions’ GoldMine, Interact Commerce’s Sales Logix, and products from SalesForce.com and Upshot.com.

Adds WSJ:

Small- and medium-size businesses are a target of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who faces declining growth in Microsoft’s core Windows and Office software franchises. But he has already had to perform a delicate balancing act with Great Plains.

Although Microsoft insists the new customer-relationship management product won’t compete with higher-end software sold by current business partners such as Siebel Systems Inc. and SAP, many analysts said they believe Microsoft will eventually try to move into the higher-end market.

Microsoft’s next battleground is the enterprise software arena. Two-thirds of Microsoft’s revenues still comes from the desktop (Windows and Office), a market whose growth is slowing. Recent acquisitions of Great Plains and Navision have given Microsoft a base to enter into the SME segment in developed markets. Emerging markets need software which is much much cheaper. That opportunity still lies untapped.

Writes Gillmor: “A year ago this week I “declared independence” from Microsoft. I’m back to tell you how it’s going — pretty well in some respects, mediocre in others.”

A few comments from Gillmor, who now uses a Mac:
– I still think Linux is going to make some inroads on desktop computers. Just not on mine, not yet.
– The real test, as I noted when discussing Linux, was with applications. For what I do, and for what the vast majority of other people do, this is not a problem on the Mac.
– Whether you go Mac, Linux or anything else, I hope you’ll join an independence movement. We may lose in the end, but we must try.

Well, I’ve had a nearly Microsoft-free existence for a month now with the Linux Thin Client. It has convinced me that “independence” is possible. There are uses with some applications for some people, but for the most part of what most people do, one can live, with a little learning, without Microsoft apps on the desktop. The ideal mix is to have everyone on Linux Thin Clients talking to a Linux Thick Server, and have a few Windows desktops (and the applications) which are accessible from the Linux TC if needed. Cuts the cost dramatically.

WSJ on Microsoft’s plans for the successors of Xbox:

What Freon stands for is a souped-up successor to the Xbox console — capable of playing games but also offering television capabilities, such as pausing live TV and recording shows onto a computer hard drive, say people familiar with the effort. Though it is unclear whether such a product will ever be built, its core concept appears to have the backing of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who wrote in an internal memorandum in January that he was a “big fan” of a machine that would combine video services with gaming.

Such a device, which could cost around $500, would have another big advantage: It could beat video-game market leader Sony Corp. to the punch.

Some numbers from the video game industry regarding the installed base: Sony Playstation 2 at 32 million, Nintendo Gamecube at 4.5 million and Microsoft Xbox at 3.5-4 million.

11 of them, so far, dating back to 1995.

Digital media: Will Microsoft win again?:

Microsoft hopes to use its Windows monopoly as a launching point for making its file formats the de facto standard for digital content, which is why the company gives away its authoring and serving tools with Windows 2000 server and its media playback software with Windows XP, Gartenberg said. Companies such as Apple and RealNetworks charge for some of these products.

“It’s the typical Microsoft strategy, where they use this almost as a Trojan horse to bring something into play,” Gartenberg said. “The more ubiquitous it can make its file formats, the more they think that will drive adoption rates. This is a critical, critical effort for them.”

Whoever controls the most popular file formats can harness them for selling server software. This is something Microsoft demonstrated with its Office productivity suite, in which the ubiquity of file formats is considered a major catalyst for driving Windows sales.

“Microsoft’s main goal with Windows Media services is to sell as many servers as possible,” said Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff. “That’s why it’s only possible to host and stream and create Windows Media Format files on Windows servers.”

More than anything, control on file formats (DOC, XLS and PPT) is the biggest entry barrier for desktop alternatives.

Fortune story on Bill Gates and his interests in software, family and philanthropy. Never miss a story on Gates — there’s always a lot to learn.

Writes Fortune on Longhorn, the forthcoming OS from Microsoft:

Gates’ geeks are completely overhauling the operating system, they’ll also have to redesign most of the company’s other software products and services to take full advantage, including the MSN online service, its server applications, and especially Microsoft Office, the productivity suite that accounts for nearly a third of the company’s sales and profits. If this enormous undertaking succeeds, it will make computers more personal than ever. Equipped with Longhorn, your PC will keep track of how you work, whom you talk to, what sites you look at, how you make documents and whom you share them with, which data on the network are yours–making all those things easier.