Microsoft announced late Tuesday that it has widened testing of the next service pack for Windows XP to anyone who wants to take it for a test drive.
That is, Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 is now available from Microsoft's Download Center.
"Were broadening the availability of the release candidate in order to receive further user feedback prior to the release of Windows XP SP3," a company spokesperson said in a statement e-mailed to InternetNews.com.
Outlining a major push for software interoperability, Microsoft today announced that it would make key elements of some its most widely distributed products freely available to developers.
Open source developers and competitors will now make available a vast repository of documentation to create products compatible with the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products.
"Today Microsoft is describing a set of fairly broad changes to our technology and business practices, designed to further increase the openness of our products, and to drive greater interoperability and choice for developers, for partners and for competitors," CEO Steve Ballmer said on a call with press and analysts.
Its final release has been pushed back to as much as six months after Microsoft's big launch party for it, which is still slated for next week. In the meantime, potential customers are being given a taste of some new and game-changing functionality. Yesterday afternoon, Microsoft posted its Community Technology Preview for SQL Server 2008, which will be general businesses' first, best look at the next edition of what analysts perceive to be Microsoft's fastest growing product line -- faster than even Windows itself.
Efforts by countries such as China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure,
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told an audience of Stanford University students Tuesday.
"I don't see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet," he said. "You cannot
control the Internet."
China has grappled with the issue of Internet censorship in recent years, and Microsoft, along with several other U.S. companies, has come under fire for aiding in this effort. In
late 2005, Microsoft shut down the blog of journalist Zhao Jing, also known as Michael Anti, when he blogged about a newspaper strike in the country.
The first public beta of Silverlight 2.0 is expected from Microsoft in the next few weeks. By all accounts, those that have seen the private beta report that the features outlined by the General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Division, Scott Guthrie, in a November blog posting are pretty much on track.
Silverlight 2.0 will provide a subset of the .NET Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation so that developers and designers can build rich Internet applications. Silverlight 1.0, which shipped in September, is primarily a media player for video and other content that uses a JavaScript programming model.
Microsoft is giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites, a move that intensifies its competition with Adobe Systems Inc. and could challenge open-source software's popularity.
The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday that it will let students download Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment; Expression Studio, which includes graphic design and Web site and hybrid Web-desktop programming tools; and XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program.
Microsoft revealed on Wednesday details of the next version of its Windows OS for small businesses and formally introduced
a new product line aimed at SMBs.
Microsoft Windows SBS 2008, formally code-named "Cougar," is one of two software bundles in Microsoft's
new Windows Essential Server Solutions line; it also includes Windows Essential Business Server 2008, formerly code-named
"Centro" and aimed at mid-sized companies. Both products are based on the same code as Windows Server 2008, the next version
of Microsoft's enterprise server OS.
Why would anyone want to buy a Tablet PC? Tablet devices are perceived as little more than heavy and slow laptops with small screens and large price tags. The payoff? You get to write on them with a stylus and take notes as if you're writing on paper. Wake me when you're done.
Poor sales prove that the costs exceed the benefits in the minds of most potential buyers.
InkSeine is interesting because of the audaciousness of its pen and paper centricity, and the invention of an entire new language of gestures and menu conventions.
Microsoft shrugged off HD DVD's demise on Tuesday, declining to say if or when it would support Blu-ray Disc for the Xbox.
Microsoft steadfastly backed HD DVD, selling an external drive for the Xbox for $129.99. That offer was still on the U.S.
Xbox Web site as of Tuesday, despite the news that Toshiba will scuttle the format. Toshiba had been the lead electronics manufacturer in a coalition of companies pushing that format but content producers
have thrown their support to Blu-ray.
Microsoft's decision to make the HD DVD drive external rather than within the console "was quite a strategic move on their
part," said Paul O'Donovan, principal analyst with Gartner.
Microsoft this week officially gave developers the right to freely use code and specifications for translating between its older proprietary Office file formats and Office 2007's newer XML formats without fear of being sued.
At the same time, company officials must be sitting on pins and needles as a key meeting over whether or not its newer formats will become an international standard looms.
Microsoft officials announced today that they have placed the older Office binary file format specifications for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (.doc, .xls, .ppt) under the company's Open Specification Promise. The OSP is a legal program whereby Microsoft promises not to sue developers who use specifications that it puts under the program's aegis.