WinInsider

Microsoft is planning a new release this spring of its Live search product, code-named Rome. That tidbit was mentioned Friday as part of the software giant's employee Webcast to discuss the Yahoo bid. Microsoft filed a transcript of the employee meeting on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is just the first of many product tidbits one can expect as part of the regulatory filings being made in conjunction with the offer.

Monday morning at 6:00 am in Redmond, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008, which were co-developed from the same code base, were released to manufacturing. Vista SP1 is the first major update to Microsoft's desktop operating system and is expected to trigger a new wave of corporate adoption. Meanwhile, Windows Server 2008 is the server-based follow-up to Windows Server 2003 R2, which was released in 2005.

"Microsoft has worked with its partners to significantly improve the Windows Vista experience in Service Pack 1," a Microsoft spokesperson told me. "Customers will especially see enhanced value in terms of security, performance, reliability and application compatibility.

It would be a merger whose size and scope could only be rivaled by pharmaceutical companies earlier this decade. But Microsoft's objective now is to somehow convince everyone -- Yahoo's shareholders, its board, their combined customers, and let's not forget the trade regulators -- that the whole of the two companies will somehow be greater than the sum of all the other sums of their parts put together.

There are an inordinate number of questions arising from Microsoft's announced takeover bid of Yahoo, only a few of which financial analysts managed to successfully squeeze in this morning, during a conference call that was abruptly cut short at under a half-hour.

While many deals on operating systems for corporations result in a loss for one side or the other, this case could be seen as a net benefit for both. Instead of Renault switching over to Linux completely, the French car manufacturer will purchase more than 1,000 priority support certificates from Microsoft to use with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Renault is consolidating its Linux distributions in order to improve its inoperability and virtualization options. SUSE is a logical choice, since Novell is working so closely with Microsoft through its joint partnership.

Microsoft's popular Exam Retake offer -- also known as the Exam Second-Shot -- was set to expire Jan. 31, but the Microsoft Learning Group has extended the popular program for three more months. The extension puts the expiration to June 30, 2008.

Steven H., an IT administrator at a bank in Miami, who asked to remain anonymous, calls the second-shot extension good timing from Microsoft. "The [Windows Server 2008] exam will be my first, and I'm pretty sure I can pass.... The second shot just relieves me of a lot of anxiety."

On Friday, I had a brief phone interview with Kevin Johnson, president of the Microsoft division that includes Windows and Windows Live, shortly after the software giant announced its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. I tried to get more details on the how Microsoft plans to bridge the cultural gap between the two companies, which brands it is tied to and what it will do if Yahoo says no. Sorry, I don't have more concrete answers, but I've posted a pretty complete transcript so you can read for yourself.

Microsoft went public Friday with a $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo. In its response, Yahoo called the Microsoft bid "unsolicited" but did not reject it.

Microsoft's offer, which was contained in the letter to Yahoo's board, amounts to $31 a share and represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing price on Thursday. Microsoft said it will offer shareholders the option of cash or stock.

In a blog post today, Microsoft announced new APIs that will make security settings easier for developers, particularly for those writing solutions that will run on Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista and Windows XP SP3.

The APIs support Microsoft's Data Execution Prevention approach to application security.

"We want more people to opt-in to using Data Execution Prevention," the blog post from Michael Howard reads. "We've added some new APIs that allow a developer to set DEP on their process at runtime rather than using linker options. The new APIs also give developers some more flexibility if your application uses an older version of the Abstract Type Library (ATL.)"

A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe.

"Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic.

Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.

The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system.

Microsoft recently unveiled a new site for developers to download and share Microsoft-related code samples.

At the MSDN Code Gallery (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/) developers can download official Microsoft code samples, download user-submitted code, access tutorials and create their own "resource" page to upload their own code samples or other offerings.

According to S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division, the new Code Gallery is a place where all of Microsoft's official code samples, blog tutorials and other resources can be found in one place, along with the new user-generated content.