WinInsider

Thanks to IBElite for bring it up this story.

"Is MS watching the underground XP people?? See Map

EDITORS NOTE: Although the submitter of this news says MS is watching the people who download Window XP, it seems to me like it shows Beta Testers/Windows Preview Program members, because of the fact that it is on the Windows BETA website."

Another manufacturer is expected to start producing Pentium 4 chipsets that will use Rambus memory, a development that could help revive support within the industry for the memory standard. A chipset maker is in the final stages of negotiating a deal that will allow the company to manufacture a chipset that links a Pentium 4 processor with Rambus-based RDRAM memory, according to several industry sources. The announcement is expected to take place within the next two weeks.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has issued her first order since being appointed to oversee the remedy phase of the Microsoft antitrust trial, and it looks as if she's in it for the long haul. The judge asked Microsoft and the government to reveal how much discovery information they plan to present and how many witnesses they'll call Kollar-Kotelly appears eager to avoid the controversy surrounding her predecessor's decision to skip remedy-phase proceedings; she could find herself facing down Microsoft and the government for months.

Microsoft goes after Palm's PDA clients. Can it win this late in the game? Over the last couple of years, the personal digital assistant, or PDA, has gone from the newest toy of the technology crowd and has emerged as one of the hottest-selling products in the market. Although PDA sales have cooled during the economic downturn, they are still on track to become the latest battleground. Many vendors realize that PDAs could eventually outsell PCs and someday become the one piece of technology people would carry with them everywhere.

Long-distance telephone company Sprint said Thursday it has formed a pact with personal computer giant Dell to focus on Web hosting and electronic-commerce product offerings for small and medium-sized businesses. Sprint did not provide specific financial terms of the deal, but said the pact would generate "hundreds of millions of dollars" in sales over the next seven years. Under the agreement, Sprint and Dell will work together to develop bundled hosting solutions for small and medium-sized business customers.

Microsoft Confirms That the European Commission Has Merged Two Separate Pending Cases. Commission Confirms That it Has No Plans to Block Launch of Windows XP.

Microsoft Corp. confirms that the European Commission has merged two previously separate pending cases. Today's action merges a statement of objections issued by the Commission last August with a review of Microsoft Windows 2000 that it began in early 2000, which focused on similar issues. Microsoft has long believed that the merger of these two cases is a prerequisite to a resolution of the company's issues in Brussels and therefore welcomes this merger as a constructive step in the ongoing dialogue on these issues.

Microsoft's HailStorm initiative has been described as everything from a weapon aimed at America Online to a crucial component of the software giant's move to a subscription-based business model. But how, exactly, will HailStorm work, and where does Microsoft make money on the service?

A lot is riding on the success of HailStorm, the company's first offering from its .Net strategy and a key element in an overarching plan for moving business computing to the Web. As a component of .Net, HailStorm is crucial to Microsoft's initiative for delivering content, shopping, banking and other services, such as e-mail, over a variety of devices ranging from cell phones to PCs and handhelds.

In short, HailStorm is considered a "foundation service" in that it will house a range of personal information such as calendar items, contacts, credit card numbers and even photographs.

Microsoft's Platforms Group vice president talks about the company's new OS.

C|Net Video (high speed connection)

Allchin, a group vice president and 11-year company veteran, is in charge of Windows XP, the operating system upgrade that Microsoft--and a good part of the computer industry.

I think the way we're operating with other people in the industry is evidence of our cooperation. We're giving up a tremendous amount of intellectual property to standards organizations, working with others to try to create the new foundation for programming. It's good for growing the overall market. I think we're doing much better at listening to consumers. We will compete. That's the name of the business here--but making sure we listen to people so they can see any opportunity that we create.

Intel will bring the Pentium 4 to the notebook market in the first half of next year and then follow a year later with Banias, a new portable chip the company says will greatly increase battery life. More speed and less power are the themes dominating Intel's chip strategy in portables. The Pentium 4 will run at more than 1.5GHz when it emerges next year and hit 2GHz by the end of 2002, Frank Spindler, vice president of Intel's mobile products division, said during a keynote address Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum.