Attendees at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here got an in-depth and deeply technical keynote outlining the changes to the Windows kernel and other key areas, and how partners can take advantage of these.
In his presentation on May 16, Mark Russinovich, a technical fellow in Microsoft's platform and services division and the third keynoter of the day, talked about how uniprocessor kernel variants were now gone from Windows Server 2008, which reduces the need for downtime by supporting hardware configuration changes without the need to reboot the system.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates may have one foot out the door, but he hasn't let go of his crystal ball quite yet. And he still has the name recognition to draw more than 100 of the world's most powerful executives to the company's annual CEO Summit.
In a webcast of his keynote speech at the kick-off of the two-day summit at Microsoft, Gates kept it familiar and addressed the innovation in convergence, communication, collaboration and media and how it will affect our lives. But he said we still have a long way to go for some things.
Keenly aware that no one person can replace Microsoft's cultural icon, the company has divided his responsibilities among two top executives. Ray Ozzie has taken over as chief software architect, but Gates' role overseeing technical strategy and policy has gone to Mundie.
While Ozzie is tasked with trying to reorganize Microsoft's product units to better prepare for a world of online services, Mundie is focused on issues such as how to get PCs in the hands of the next billion users and how the software industry must retool itself as chipmakers add more cores to chips instead of trying to simply speed them up.
A computer science student and a developer at Microsoft Research have created a technique designed to make it easier to select
items on a mobile-phone screen with a finger and not a tiny pointed stylus.
The development comes just before Apple Inc.'s much anticipated iPhone, with its touch screen, hits the market in June.
The Microsoft Research project, called Shift, automatically displays an image on the screen above where users place their
finger showing the area under the users' finger. The image is circular and includes a small X. By toggling the tip of the
finger, users can move the X to place it on top of the item they want to choose. Lifting the finger from the screen selects
the item.
A video just shown here during the Day 2 morning keynote session at WinHEC showed Microsoft's "crack" server team working hard on the critical task of naming its new server operating system. After considering such candidates as "Windows Server Server Edition" and "I Can't Believe It's Not Windows NT," the team leader ends up tinkering with the name "Windows Server 2003" on the whiteboard, changing the "3" to an "8."The message of the video was well-taken: Microsoft's taking itself a little less seriously now, coming to grips with its own legendary geekiness.
At a special event in Los Angeles late Tuesday, Microsoft announced that its highly-anticipated "Halo 3" title for the Xbox 360 will hit store shelves on September 25. A multiplayer beta for Halo 3 begins today, and Microsoft is launching a Halo-styled Zune next month.Halo 3 is the final installment in Microsoft's most popular gaming franchise, which was created by developer Bungie Studios. The game promises to "set a new standard for interactive storytelling and social gaming by engaging consumers worldwide in Master Chief???s epic battle to save humankind." Multiplayer support through Xbox live is a major selling point.
Microsoft has signed up more vendors to build hardware for its forthcoming Windows Home Server, expanding the sales channel for the company's first server OS aimed at home PC users.
U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc., French external storage maker LaCie Group SA and German consumer electronics company Medion AG will join Hewlett-Packard Co. in building hardware for the OS, and the company also will offer a version of Windows Home Server for custom system builders. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the news in a keynote Tuesday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles.
Along with officially naming the product to little surprise, Microsoft said at WinHEC in Los Angeles Tuesday that Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3 had been downloaded over 100,000 times in just three weeks. Now known as Windows Server 2008, the release will drive the next-generation of hardware innovation, said Bill Gates.New in Windows Server 2008 will be built-in virtualization technology, the Server Core installation option that removes the graphical user interface, Server Manager, Internet Information Services (IIS 7.0) and Windows PowerShell. Microsoft is already working with manufacturers to ensure hardware will be available to help drive adoption of the new server operating system..
The 2,700 attendees at Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here are going to get an earful about Windows Vista, the upcoming Windows Server "Longhorn" and Windows Home Serverand that's just from the keynote addresses.
"There are three big themes for this conference, the first of which is the industry impact of the Windows platform," Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft's Windows client group, told eWEEK in an interview ahead of the WinHEC conference.
"We really want to demonstrate and underscore how important Windows remains as a platform for innovation, and we will try and showcase that as much as possible," he said.
Microsoft is launching a qualification program for phones that are compatible with its unified communications products.
On Monday, Microsoft will show off 15 phones made by a variety of vendors including Samsung, LG-Nortel, NEC, Plantronics, Asus, GN, Polycon, Tatung and Vitelix that will carry a sticker alerting customers that they are certified for use with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007.
The Microsoft communications software is available to users that are part of a public beta program. Combined with other Microsoft programs, they unify e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing functions so that users can do things like click on an e-mail message to make a VOIP call to its sender. The software also supports standard desk phone features.