update Microsoft said Thursday that it will take a $1 billion charge as it extends the warranty on the Xbox 360, after an investigation showed the game console can be prone to hardware failures.
"As a result of what Microsoft views as an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles, the company conducted extensive investigations into potential sources of general hardware failures," Microsoft said in a statement.
Microsoft said its probe found "a number of factors" that can cause a general hardware failure indicated by three red flashing lights on the console. The company said that, in addition to extending the warranty, it has made unspecified design changes to the product.
Amid challenges getting enough foreign programmers admitted into the U.S., Microsoft plans this fall to open a development center in Canada.
The new software development center will open somewhere in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area and will be "home to software developers from around the world," Microsoft said in a statement on Thursday.
"The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft's corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S.," Microsoft said.
After 13 years as the world's richest person, Bill Gates appears to have been dethroned. But there will probably be no sobbing inside his Medina estate.
In fact, based on his past remarks, the Microsoft chairman might welcome the news.
At a Microsoft conference in Redmond last year, advertising executive and TV host Donny Deutsch asked Gates if he would be upset if someday he were no longer the world's richest man.
"I wish I wasn't," Gates replied. "There's nothing good that comes out of that."
"It's better than being second," Deutsch said.
"No," Gates replied. "You get more visibility as a result of it."
Iain McDonald, a guy with the humble title of Director of Project Management for Windows Server, has had a long and deep impact on Microsofts Windows organization.
The 15-year Microsoft veteran has served on a variety of teams, from Product Support Services, to Exchange Server, to Windows Server. He was a leader on Windows 2000, ran the "War Room for Windows XP and has been a key member of every recent Windows release team.
Microsoft is simplifying the processes via which its PC-maker partners will be able to provide "downgrade rights from Windows Vista to Windows XP for their customers.
Microsoft will implement the first of the policy changes for its Gold Certified (top-tier) OEM partners within the next couple of weeks. The company will streamline downgrade-rights policies and procedures for the broader channel somewhat later, said John Ball, general manager of Microsofts U.S. Systems Group.
Just before its fiscal 2007 came to a close last week, Microsoft snapped up two datacenters from Savvis, an infrastructure provider.
Microsoft was the sole customer of the Savvis datacenters that it purchased. The datacenters are located in Santa Clara, Calif.
Update: A reader notes that, technically, Microsoft didn't buy these datacenters outright. Instead, "Microsoft simply acquired the leases from Savvis. Both buildings continue to be owned by Digital Realty Trust, reader John Starta said, citing the Digital Realty press release. "Digital Realty Trust had been leasing the buildings to Savvis, which in turn had a colocation contract with Microsoft. With this deal Microsoft is now the direct tenant.
North American software developers are expecting to devote less of their efforts toward developing for the Microsoft Windows operating system, with some of the slack being absorbed by Linux and niche operating systems, according to a survey conducted by Evans Data
Those findings are part of Evans Data's Spring 2007 North American Development Survey, which found a 12 percent decline in the "targeting" of Windows by developers compared with last year.
The survey measured the responses of more than 400 software developers and IT managers. Evans Data distinguishes the concept of "targeting" vs. actual use. While targeting for Windows showed a decrease, the "use of Windows on the development desktop remains steady," according to an announcement issued by the company.
Microsoft plans to buy another large property near its Redmond headquarters, continuing to expand its massive footprint in its hometown.
Nintendo Co. said Tuesday that it reached a deal to sell Microsoft a vacant 28-acre parcel across from Nintendo's North American headquarters. The agreement confirms widespread assumptions that Microsoft would buy the land.
Microsoft will keep the land in reserve for possible development in the future and use it to help alleviate a parking shortage in the meantime, said Lou Gellos, a company spokesman. The parking garages at the company's adjacent RedWest campus are often filled to capacity.
Microsoft is shipping two new "reference applications packs" or RAPs for its Office Business Applications initiative ? one providing guidance for how to build effective plant analytics applications and the other for how to successfully create electronic forms management workflows.
Both are provided as free Virtual PC virtual machines that demonstrate how developers can build applications to address specific tasks using Office 2007, SharePoint Server, and other Office tools such as InfoPath services. (Virtual PC is free.)
Microsoft has released a new community technology preview of the ADO.NET Entity Framework, which allows coders to program against data defined in a conceptual fashion instead of directly interacting with information stored in traditional table-and-column fashion.
The CTP released this week includes a number of changes, among them tweaks to Object Services, Query, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio, according to Microsoft.
There is also a range of new features, including support for referential integrity constraints, better support for stored procedures, and native SQL read-only views.