WinInsider

Windows Server users might be surprised to discover just how briefly Red Hat supports its products. The company will support Red Hat Linux 8.0, which is being replaced this week by version 9.0, and all 7.1 and newer versions of the product through the end of this year only; support for versions 6.2 and 7.0 end on March 31. Going forward, the company will support its products for just 1 year. Although I understand that Linux is evolving quickly, this policy seems a bit misguided, especially when you consider that Microsoft has extended support for its enterprise products twice in recent days. Is Red Hat essentially handing Microsoft yet another differentiator for customers to consider when comparing Windows and Linux? I think so.

Claiming it to be the most reliable and secure server operating system it has ever produced, Microsoft officials on Friday announced it has delivered the final code of Windows Server 2003 to manufacturing. In concert with the Windows Server 2003 announcement, Microsoft also announced it is releasing the final code of its 64-bit SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition to manufacturing. The upcoming data base is designed to support memory-intensive applications that require high performance.

In a press conference with reporters this morning Microsoft officials said they are still on track to deliver to both products to users on April 24, along with Visual Studio .Net 2003 at a splashy event to be held in San Francisco .

Earlier this month, SCO Group sued IBM for allegedly misappropriating SCO's Unix technology and then building it into Linux. The lawyers want to project an image of a small company's valiant battle to protect its own intellectual property against an unscrupulous bully. The reality is more complex. Even though SCO desperately wants to avoid turning this into debate over the merits of opposing models for software development, the lawsuit filed against IBM looks more like a stalking-horse for a deeper struggle between proprietary and open-source software. Here's why.

Back in 1992, Novell's then CEO Ray Noorda believed he could bring down Bill Gates by competing against Microsoft on a variety of fronts. Novell subsequently acquired the likes of WordPerfect, Borland's spreadsheet business and the Unix software code from AT&T, which developed Unix in 1969.

Microsoft's decision to wait on delivering faster, "g"-class Wi-Fi gear may have reversed huge market share gains the company made in the hot consumer category. In January, Microsoft captured the No. 2 position in U.S. retail sales of Wi-Fi wireless networking gear, only to see its share drop back down to fourth place in February, according to NPDTechworld. The market researcher tracks sales at retail, which is where the bulk of wireless networking gear is sold. Considering that Microsoft entered the Wi-Fi market in September, its early rise up the market share charts was very impressive, said NPDTechworld analyst Stephen Baker.

News powerhouse Reuters Group said Thursday that it has hired away a member of the team in charge of developing Microsoft's Greenwich instant messaging software for corporations. David Gurle, director of program management for Microsoft's Real Time Communication group, will join Reuters on April 1, where he will serve as global head of collaboration services.

Greenwich server software allows businesses to support secure instant messaging on a network. In addition, it offers a bridge to Microsoft's popular consumer MSN Messenger instant messaging network. Reuters last year became the first company to test Greenwich, launching Reuters Messaging, based on the technology. According to Reuters, Gurle was a key member of the team that developed the tool.

Microsoft is expected to announce on Friday that Windows Server 2003 has completed testing and has been certified final, or gold, code. Release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Server 2003 code clears the way for next month's product launch event in San Francisco. RTM also means that computer manufacturers can begin selling systems with the software.

"As soon as that product is RTM, the (PC makers) are ready to roll with what they want to do," Bob O'Brien, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows Server, said Tuesday. In recent years, Microsoft's practice has been to let computer makers ship systems with a new operating system ahead of the official launch date. That was the case with Windows XP and Windows 2000.

The product has undergone a number of important changes and has received its final branding as Office 2003. This Office version now boasts colorful, attractive icons and other new graphical elements, and I guess I'm finally coming around to its unique user interface. But the changes in Office 2003 Beta 2 aren't just skin deep. Instead, Beta 2 adds a host of new functionality as well as fully-working versions of its two new applications, InfoPath (formerly "XDocs") and OneNote, both of which were missing in action in the Beta 1 release. So let's take a look at Office 2003 Beta 2. There's a lot to take in.

As expected, a federal appeals court said it will consider whether a settlement inked between Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice and some state attorneys general was consistent with the public interest. The judges are required by law to hear appeals from the lower court. The judges have not set a date for oral arguments in the case, but they're likely to be held by this summer.

Legal experts predict Massachusetts and West Virginia will have a difficult time before the appeals court, especially because Kollar-Kotelly spent 32 days last spring on hearings before crafting a remedy that would be appropriate.

In an separate case filed against Microsoft by archrival Sun Microsystems, attorneys for both companies will square off against each other before a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., next Thursday.

Company readies 'Standard' versions of its Great Plains, Navision and Solomon products for 'lower-mid-market' customers. Microsoft will be taking aim at smaller businesses this spring, when it moves to standardize its small/mid-size business (SMB) application pricing by adding new, cheaper SKUs to its line-up.

Microsoft's Business Solutions division will take a page from its MS CRM playbook, and release Standard Edition and Professional Edition versions of its Great Plains, Solomon and Navision ERP/supply-chain/financial-management applications, company executives said.

Microsoft expects "huge" gains in installing computing devices inside cars in the next few years, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said yesterday. "Five or six years from now, we think 100 percent of the cars will have some sort of telematics device, and we want to have at least a piece of all of that," Ballmer said in an interview after a speech at a Microsoft automotive conference in Dearborn, Mich. Microsoft, which had average annual sales gains of 38 percent in the 1990s, had growth of 12 percent in the year that ended in June.