WinInsider

Looking to boost sales of its iPaq handheld computers, Compaq is touting that its Pocket PC models are the only ones that will be ready to upgrade to a new version of Microsoft's Pocket PC software due later this year. Code-named Merlin, the new version of Pocket PC is said to resemble Microsoft's forthcoming PC operating system, Windows XP, according to one source familiar with Merlin. Like the current version of Pocket PC, Merlin is based on version 3.0 of Windows CE. Microsoft is introducing a new version of CE, code-named Talisker. However, the software giant has not said when that core will find its way into Pocket PC.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said subscribers to its MSN Internet access business rose 30 percent from April to total 6.5 million, the result of absorbing its WebTV operations, and of an aggressive campaign to convince people to switch from rival service AOL. The software giant said in April it had reached the 5 million subscriber mark. However, about 1 million of the additional subscribers were added as a result of Microsoft folding its WebTV service, which delivered e-mail and Web pages to television sets, into MSN, where it was rebranded as MSNTV, MSN group product manager Bob Visse told Reuters in an interview.

Ford Selects Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000, XML and SOAP for Global EAI And B2B Integration Standards-Based Solution Provides Architecture For Enabling XML Web Services.

Today at the Financial Analyst Meeting, Microsoft Corp. announced that Ford Motor Co. has selected Microsoft® BizTalk(TM) Server 2000, XML and SOAP as its integration architecture and transport protocols for its global enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business (B2B) integration project, called eHub. Ford's historic project represents the largest BizTalk Server 2000 implementation to date and is one of the first Fortune 50 technology solutions to take full advantage of the power of XML and SOAP for global integration both within the enterprise and across the Internet.

Microsoft's Gates Says Innovation Will Drive 'Digital Decade' Company Executives Highlight Strides in Enterprise, Small Business and Consumer Computing at Annual Financial Analyst Meeting.  Although the personal computer has already transformed the way hundreds of millions of people work, communicate and live, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft Corp., today told financial analysts that many of the most significant and exciting technological advances will take place in the "digital decade'' ahead.

Time is on Microsoft's side. With every passing day, the odds diminish that the ags will seek an injunction. And once Windows XP ships, any remedy that bars the bundling of features would be harder to justify. Many consumers, already having become accustomed to the new technology, would resist being forced to change. What's more, the damage to innocent parties, such as PC makers and Microsoft's other business partners, would increase. That could make an injunction seem like excessive bureaucratic meddling. And even without an injunction, trustbusters might find it harder to convince a judge to force significant changes on XP as part of any eventual settlement. "Once XP is out, it becomes that much more difficult to devise a remedy,'' says a government source. So Gates is charging ahead, desperate to hit the end zone before state and federal trustbusters can bring him down. It's sure a risky way to play ball.

AOL Time Warner Inc. is going after Microsoft Corp. with a strategy that calls for deals with computer makers to give AOL products prominent placement on new PCs, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing internal AOL documents.

According to the Post, AOL wants manufacturers to give its software for online access greater prominence than Microsoft's MSN service. In return, AOL would pay the PC makers about $35 for each customer they nab for AOL's Internet access service, sources told the Post. AOL declined comment on the financial terms, the newspaper said.

"AOL is paying (computer makers) to eliminate consumer choice, forcing people to select the most expensive service in the industry,'' spokesman Vivek Varma was quoted as saying.

Microsoft executive Craig Mundie will step out of the frying pan and into the fire later this week when he takes the stage at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego to debate open source with the movement's strongest supporters. The highly anticipated showdown will pit Mundie against Red Hat Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Michael Tiemann, with Mundie espousing the virtues of Microsoft's Shared Source program over open source.

An opinion piece published by The Washington Post earlier this month has thrown Microsoft into yet another controversy, this one regarding flaws in its SQL Server product that supposedly caused data loss in nuclear weapons centers in the United States and Russia. Center for Defense Information president Bruce Blair, who wrote the offending piece, says that a SQL Server bug causes data to "disappear" and claimed that the Russians discovered the problem and alerted the Americans, who were able to verify it. But the US Department of Energy and Microsoft are both denying the report this week, stating that security problems were fixed long ago and no data was ever at risk.

With wounds still fresh from skirmishes over instant messaging and inclusion on the Windows XP desktop, Internet and technology giants AOL Time Warner and Microsoft are girding for a new battle over single-sign-on technologies that allow one-click access to numerous Web sites and services. The stakes are high, as research firm IDC predicts the market for software that provides access and security will reach US$7.6 billion by 2004. While analysts say there is room for a number of players in the fast-growing security area, also known as access management, the giants are once again looking to dominate.

Hewlett-Packard has agreed to acquire StorageApps for $350 million, a deal that will reinforce HP's strategy for gathering a company's hodgepodge of storage tools into a vast setup that's easy to manage. HP hopes corporations with nightmarishly complicated collections of storage devices will be drawn to its vision, Federated Storage Area Management (FSAM), designed to unite storage devices from HP and others within a single, easier-to-control system.