The MSN product team at Microsoft is seeking testers for the MSN 9 beta program. The beta is expected to begin in September and may last until January of next year. This test comes on the heels of arch rival AOL's announcement of AOL 9 Optimized, a special version of the client catered toward broadband services. With MSN 8.5 as its latest official version, Microsoft is striving to leap ahead in the numbers game.
But MSN 9 is off to a slow start. The final release was expected to ship in the fall of 2003, but according to the timeframe of the beta test, that date has slipped back to January 2004 at the earliest.
In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft has pushed back the release date for the second Windows XP service pack to the third quarter of 2004. SP2 was long expected to debut before the end of 2003, a year after SP1 made the rounds. The change in plans came to light by way of Microsoft's Product Lifecycle Web site, which details future support timelines for the company's products.
"It's possible that Microsoft is preparing a more substantive-than-usual service pack that would add new features to Windows XP or hybrids Media Center and Tablet PC," said Wilcox.
Russ Cooper, a moderator for the NTBugtraq mailing list claims to have uncovered a critical flaw in Microsoft's Windows Update patching process. The problem lies in the method WU uses to confirm installation of fixes - a brief inspection of information in the Windows registry.
According to Cooper's findings, should an installation fail, information may still be entered into the registry generating a false sense of security against present dangers like the "Blaster" worm. Microsoft disputes the research following its own internal testing.
The bell has sounded for round two of Microsoft's PC Satisfaction beta. Testers who bitterly complained of serious performance issues will find significant headway has been made toward resolve slumping system performance. The Redmond development team has liberally applied spit and polish to each facet of this build, as it trudges along towards a final release - one that is not without a touch of controversy.
PC Satisfaction includes a variety of services that dwell beyond the boundaries of Microsoft's usual product offerings. These include: anti-virus scanning, a self updating firewall, programmatic backups and the latest updates from Windows Update.
Microsoft has acknowledged to ZDNet Australia that Outlook Express will soon be cast to Redmond's graveyard of obsolescence. Sustained development teams will continue to issue needed fixes, while the bulk of Microsoft's emphasis in the consumer e-mail space will be directed toward MSN and Hotmail.
Outlook Express has enjoyed years of being tightly bundled with all versions of Windows and standalone downloads of Internet Explorer. The distribution has made Microsoft's freeware e-mail client one of the most pervasive products on the market.
As part of its effort to stop the progress of the MSBlast worm, Microsoft is killing off the Windows Update address that the self-propagating program was set to attack. Because the worm is programmed to attack only that address and not the site that it redirects to, the software giant has decided to eliminate the Windowsupdate.com address. The move is one of a series of efforts that Microsoft has undertaken to try to thwart an attack on its servers that was expected to be launched by infected computers starting Friday.
Microsoft said on Friday it acquired the rights to the "High Heat" baseball video game franchise from bankrupt software publisher 3DO. The company did not immediately disclose the purchase price. 3DO's assets were sold at a bankruptcy auction in San Francisco on Thursday. When the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 28, it said it would try to sell its assets.
Microsoft already has its own baseball game, "Inside Pitch," for its Xbox video game console but game critics have long considered 3DO's "High Heat" as the best among numerous competitors.
Everybody's favorite tech exaggerator was slapped down by the Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles this week and forced to refund the cost of Mac OS X to disgruntled users. The problem? Apple claimed in its early OS X advertising that the product was "fully optimized" for the aging G3 processor, which it most certainly wasn't. Then the company went and added a bunch of features that only work with the faster G4 chip. One class action lawsuit later and California consumers who feel they've been ripped off by Apple can get a nice little $129 refund. This isn't the first time Apple's been taken to court for its frequent indiscretions with reality, and shareholders have sued the company at least twice for overstating the performance of its systems.
Microsoft's Windowsupdate.com Web site was inaccessible early Friday, one day before a new variant of the W32.Blaster worm was set to spawn a massive denial of service (DoS) attack on the site.
A Microsoft spokeswoman in the U.K. said the "Microsoft.com site experienced a DoS attack at 8:45 p.m. PDT Thursday, but that it was not due to the Blaster worm, nor caused by the major power outages that have affected the U.S. East Coast." "We are currently investigating the cause of the attack but it was not Blaster," the spokeswoman said.
She added that both the Windowsupdate.com and Microsoft download center sites remained available to customers. However, as of 10:00 a.m. GMT the Windows update site remained inaccessible to IDG News Service staff in Europe.
With a new version of the W32.Blaster worm on the loose and set to spawn a massive DoS (denial of service) attack on a Microsoft Web site Saturday, the software maker released a set of security guidelines for users Friday in an effort to minimize the damage.
Ironically, the call for preventative measures came while the software maker was investigating another DoS attack on its site that occurred late Thursday. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said Friday that the current attack was not due to Blaster, however, and that they were still investigating the cause.