I have recived word from our Office 11 beta insider, Ditto, that beta 2 kit for Office 2003 contain the following CDs. Surprising enough Office 11 beta 2 also contains Windows .NET Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Beta 2 Demo CD
Beta 2 Evaluation CD
Beta 2 Developer Resource CD
Office 2003 Installation CD
Beta 2 Language pack CD 1 & 2
Publisher 2003
Frontpage 2003
Infopath 2003
Sharepoint Services
SharePoint Portal Server v2.0
Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager
Exchange Server 2003 beta 2
Onenote 2003
and last but not least Windows .NET Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
The Redmond-based company is betting its new software, called threedegrees, will define hipness in greasing teen social connections -- and help it capture a budding generation from competitors led by America Online.Aimed at the 13-to-24 age group, the software, now in beta testing, is like high-octane instant-messaging.
People can create groups of up to 10 people, trade messages, listen to music from each other's collections and share photos. Each group has its own icon and allows users to create new groups that add -- or drop -- others at will. Forget high-school hallways: The clique has moved online.
Microsoft has been notoriously closed-mouthed about new Office 2003 versions. Until Saturday morning. The company will, in fact, launch a version of the popular office suite for small and medium businesses with the Office 2003 System debut in June, according to Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Microsoft's Information Worker Productivity Group.
Mention of the new SKU appeared on a slide outlining the Office 2003 System lineup, due to ship in June. Microsoft has touted some new features in Office as ideal for small businesses, including a new easy-to-use contact manager going into Outlook 2003. But it has refused to comment on packaging or possible SKUs.
Jeanine Hornby spends her days at the bedsides of new mothers, infants, and children. A visiting nurse in central New Jersey, Hornby likes to make her visits personal, keeping her eyes and ears on her patients. At the same time, she's required to record each patient's progress so that her organization, the Visiting Nurses Association, can stay on top of insurance claims.
Hornby accomplishes both by using the new Acer TravelMate C102Ti Tablet PC. She can enter the data directly onto the tablet's display with a small stylus. "The tablet lets me maintain eye contact with my patients," says Hornby, 43. "I've never been able to talk and type at the same time, but I can talk and write at the same time."
The FRx Software group at Microsoft Business Solutions is working on an update to its Forecaster budgeting software. The upcoming Forecaster 6.7, which is due for release sometime in August, will add new time-card planning capabilities, easier deployment tools and tighter security, said Andy Kamlet, director of analytics marketing at Microsoft Business Solutions.
The company's analytics group continues to work on its channel plan and last fall started recruiting partners for the Forecaster and FRx financial-reporting applications. Since then, it has has signed 10 partners in North America and hopes to garner about 50 altogether, said Holly Simpson, vice president of partner sales at Microsoft Business Solutions. Those announcements were made at the Convergence 2003 conference in Orlando.
As Microsoft and Sun Microsystems prep new Web services development platforms for debut this spring, Linux developers can expect the Mono Project to be completed not long after--by early fall. At Web Services Edge East here, Ximian CTO and Mono Project leader Miguel de Icaza told attendees that the version 1.0 server-side components of the software will be delivered in September. The Mono Project is a community initiative launched by Ximian to develop an open-source version of the Microsoft .Net development platform for Linux and Unix.
It's no secret that Microsoft core will direct a special marketing pitch at Windows NT Server 4.0 users when the company releases its Windows Server 2003 operating system next month, just as it did for Windows Server 2000. And its announcement of the phaseout of support for NT Server 4.0 certainly caused hordes of users to sit up and take notice. Yet despite Microsoft's pushing and prodding, there are legions of Windows NT Server users that aren't ready to move or haven't finished their migrations.
Bob O'Brien, a group product manager in Microsoft's server division, estimates that 35% to 40% of the installed base for the Windows server operating system is using NT 4.0. He bases that in part on a year-old report in which market research firm IDC predicted it would be 33% at the end of last year.
Microsoft aims to entice solution providers to develop applications for Pocket PCs and Smartphones using its .NET Compact Framework, said Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates last week. "The sky is the limit," Gates said in his keynote address at the first U.S. Microsoft Mobility Developer conference, held here in tandem with the CTIA expo. To help fuel its mobility strategy, Microsoft has stepped forward with significant investments in research and development and developer programs, he said.
In an effort to push adoption of IE 6.0, Microsoft quietly yanked Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2 from its download site. Users running older versions of IE 5.5, which shipped with Windows Me, must upgrade to the latest browser release. Ironically, IE 5.01 SP2 is still available as it is primarily used by businesses running Windows 2000. Because business customers are less prone to upgrade, Microsoft tends to offer such fixes longer than it does for consumer customers.
Microsoft did not give a specific reason as to the timing of the removal, but a Redmond spokesperson told BetaNews that IE 5.5 SP2 had gone into the extended stage of its lifecycle. Microsoft's Support Lifecycle defines how long a product will be supported after its release.
Microsoft has stepped up its ties to academia, pledging the funding and know-how to train students at the University of Leeds to write bug-free software, the company said on Friday. The announcement comes amid repeated complaints by some security experts that Microsoft's ubiquitous software programs, a favorite target for hackers and virus writers, remain vulnerable to intrusion.
A year ago Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, launched an initiative called "Trustworthy Computing," to improve the security of its programs ranging from Windows operating systems to computer server applications. In January, though, a tenacious computer worm called "SQL Slammer" attacked computer servers running on Microsoft software, triggering a series of Internet outages and system breakdowns that drew fresh ire from the security industry.