In a roundabout acknowledgment that its Dynamics branded products are not just targeted toward mid-sized businesses, Microsoft announced Thursday it is now offering support for those applications via its Premier enterprise contracts.
To this point, Microsoft's support for the Dynamics product line has been provided via separate contracts through Microsoft implementation partners, and that support continues to be available.
However, now enterprise customers with Premier support contracts who also have Dynamics packages in place will be able unify their support under a single account. That includes a technical account manager who provides a single point of contact, as well as a single process for engagement, according to a Microsoft statement.
Microsoft's OEM and retail partners will offer Windows XP for an additional five monthsuntil June 30, 2008the software maker has decided after receiving complaints that customers are not ready to cut off and switch to Vista.
OEMs have been telling Microsoft that a small set of customers need to run Windows XP for longer than the year limit initially set, Mike Nash, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows product management, told eWEEK.
The Redmond, Wash., software maker initially told those partners they could offer XP until Jan. 31, 2008a year after the general availability of Windows Vista. "In retrospect, the original policy may have been a bit too aggressive, and we have been hearing back from customers, largely through our OEM partners, that that was the case," Nash said.
Amidst a growing chorus of unhappy customers who feel they didn't get their money's worth with Windows Vista Ultimate, Microsoft has released a key "extra" that had been promised for months.
Windows DreamScene was unveiled yesterday, according to an announcement on the Windows Ultimate Website. DreamScene is video wallpaper; so instead of a static image as a background, a full-motion video takes its place.
Microsoft, the No. 3 Web search provider in the U.S., is rolling out changes to its search engine aimed at narrowing the gap between it and market leader Google Inc.
Microsoft is quadrupling the number of sites it searches for new information and overhauled the core technology that decides which results to display, said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president for Microsoft's search and advertising group.
Microsoft said Wednesday it will replace discs of its Halo 3 Xbox 360 game that were already scratched when users purchased them.
On its Xbox 360 Web site, Microsoft said an Xbox Disc Replacement Program will replace Halo 3 Limited Edition Game Discs and Essentials Discs at no charge through Feb. 1, 2008, but only for Xbox 360 console owners in countries where Xbox is sold at authorized retail locations.
Microsoft released the highly anticipated Halo 3 Xbox 360 game on Tuesday at midnight, but some users found that their game discs were already scratched upon purchase. Some attributed the scratches to the company's packaging of the discs, which did not keep them in place. Users did not report any performance issues with the scratched discs.
Microsoft's Excel applicationwidely used by much of the business worldis having issues calculating numbers, but only in a dozen "very specific" use cases, according to the company's Excel blog on the Microsoft Developer Network site.
The problem was apparently introduced when Microsoft's development team made changes to the Excel calculation logic in Office 2007.
The issues, according to the Redmond, Wash., software maker, are not in the calculations themselvesthe result of the calculations stored in Excel's memory are correctbut in the result that shows in the Excel sheet.
Windows Home Server, Microsoft's first-ever server for home use, gets its first update today. WHS is designed to be an entry-level server for home users with multiple computers. It provides a central repository for documents, photos and other data, with centralized backup and management. It's made to be simple to set up and operate.
WHS, first announced to the world last January, was released to manufacturing on July 16. There was no official "launch" of the product; since WHS is available through system builders, it's up to the OEMs to determine when WHS servers will be commercially available.
Microsoft said Sunday it has added 20 new advertising clients since the acquisition of online ad company aQuantive closed six weeks ago.
The software maker also announced it has signed a new advertising-related deal with The Associated Press' Online Video Network.
Microsoft said SmartBrief, Reunion.com and Entrepreneur.com are among the sites that have signed on to use Web advertising management tools it acquired when it bought aQuantive.
By many accounts, Ray Ozzie stepped into some big shoes just over a year ago when he took over Bill Gates' day-to-day role as Microsoft's chief software architect.
What made Gates think he was and is up to the job? Plenty, including Ozzie's own innovative footprints going back over twenty years that still influence the tech industry.
But is that pedigree enough to help lead Microsoft into the next era of software? Ozzie is well known as the father of Lotus Notes in the early 1980s, the first -? and some would argue still the pre-eminent -? groupware/collaboration application.
It is, perhaps, the only truly popular thing Microsoft has ever done in the entertainment space: It's Halo video game series is a blockbuster success, generating over 11 million units in sales and billions in revenues. And this week's release of Halo 3, the third and final installment of the Halo trilogy, and a game that is designed exclusively for Microsoft's beleaguered Xbox 360 game console, has a lot riding on its release: The game is expected to kick-start sales of the 360 and beat the $125 million single day sales record set by its predecessor, Halo 2.