Microsoft on Monday released the results of a sponsored study that concludes Windows 2000 is generally cheaper for businesses to run and support. Operating a server based on Linux free software ends up costing businesses more than Windows server software, the study commissioned by the software giant and released by IDC said. Personnel costs involved in the upkeep of Linux-based servers, which manage networks of computers, far outweigh the benefits of being able to obtain the software for free or at lower costs, the report from technology researcher IDC said.
Servers based on Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system were cheaper to own and operate when used for networking, storing and sharing files, printing and security, the IDC study found, while Linux servers were cheaper to operate when used for Web hosting.
Microsoft's legal worries will continue on Tuesday, when it squares off against Sun Microsystems in an antitrust suit filed by its bitter rival. Microsoft's own arguments, submitted in a series of filings with the court, say that "Sun can cite no antitrust case that has ever granted a mandatory injunction before trial on a preliminary injunction motion." In addition, Microsoft claims that Sun waited approximately four years to file this lawsuit, that any monopoly Microsoft has was lawfully obtained, and that Sun's proposal is nearly identical to one that Kollar-Kotelly considered and rejected.
Home Depot the world's largest home-improvement chain, hired Microsoft and NCR to develop a faster, more accurate checkout system. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. NCR's FastLane self-checkout stations will be installed in four U.S. stores this year and 500 next year, The Home Depot said in a statement yesterday. The upgrade also includes adding monitors to the cash registers so cashiers can see what they are scanning. Microsoft will supply its operating system, Harrison said. NCR is the largest seller of automated teller machines.
Remember Palladium? That was Microsoft's summer fun announcement this year--security add-ins for Windows that turn it into a 'trusted system'. In other words, both data and software running on your computer will be able to guarantee that it--and you--are what they claim to be, and deny access to anything that hasn't been approved. Not in itself a bad thing even if Microsoft insist on selling it as some sort of super antivirus package, entirely intended to make the lives of the users better.
Predictably, there's been a lot of fuss about Palladium. For some reason, people find the thought of Microsoft setting itself up as the creator and arbiter of trusted systems risible. Perhaps it's the idea of trusting a company that piously intones "we're doing what's right for the users" while religiously making 85 percent profit from those users. And it's true that Palladium could easily be used for very heavy-handed rights management, with the creator of a program or data being able to restrict or destroy your access even after you've bought and registered it. Microsoft says that what people do with it is up to the users and the applications writers and not the company itself--a tad disingenuous, given the company's history of writing most of the important Windows applications.
Windows .NET Server 2003 Release Candidate 2 is here. Upgrade or join the Customer Preview Program today and see what's new. Sign up now to receive trial software for Windows .NET Server 2003 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) via CD or download. Read more about Windows .NET Server 2003 and the Customer Preview Program (CPP), available in English, German, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified), and then register to upgrade to RC2 or to become a new participant in the CPP.
West Virginia's attorney general said on Monday that the state will join Massachusetts in appealing a judge's decision to endorse the settlement of the Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O antitrust case. West Virginia attorney general Darrell McGraw filed a notice in federal court that the state will challenge last month's decision to approve the settlement by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. In a statement, McGraw said the state will join the appeal because the settlement, negotiated between Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department last year, does not go far enough to end all of Microsoft's illegal practices.
Code-named Photon, Communicator has been in development for close to two years, although AOL has made no decisions on how to market the product. But sources say a faction of the company is pushing for Communicator to succeed Netscape, which has all but disappeared from users' screens.
AOL began work on Photon after the release of Netscape 6 in November 2000 was met with harsh criticism. Netscape 6 was based on slow and unstable beta builds of Mozilla, the open source Web browser, and developers within AOL wished to make the mail and IM clients more appealing to experienced users.
Communicator utilizes the Gecko engine and XUL user interface language found in Mozilla, but it was developed entirely in-house and is not open source, according to AOL.
After coming to a crescendo as key player in Liberty Alliance, AOL has disbanded the Magic Carpet product team and refocused limited resources on its core subscription and advertising businesses. This leaves the Internet giant with no viable alternative to Microsoft's Passport authentication service in implementation, which currently boasts 200 million accounts. Magic Carpet was a unified single sign-on similar in concept to Passport.
AOL has faced intense pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commissions, as well as a reshuffling of its top executives. After the fallout hit from the reorganization, Magic Carpet was not the hand of choice, according to the CEO of a Liberty Alliance affiliate who wishes to remain anonymous.
Groove Networks Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are extending their technology partnership as each readies new versions of their respective collaborative applications. Groove is expected this month to release Version 2.5 of its namesake peer-to-peer collaboration software, Workspace Professional Edition, which offers improved support for Microsoft's .Net and Web services integration.
Microsoft last week made available Version 1.5 of its MSI (Microsoft Solution for Intranets), which uses the Redmond, Wash., company's Content Management Server, SharePoint Portal Server, SharePoint Team Services and other technologies to build collaborative applications.
The preliminary injunction hearing begins this week to decide if Microsoft must include a current Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in its Windows XP operating system. The hearing, which begins here Tuesday, is the first proceeding in the private antitrust suit Sun Microsystems filed against Microsoft last March. According to documents on Sun's Web site, Green is expected to testify that Microsoft is willfully trying to "undermine both the distribution channels for compatible Java platforms, and the demand for development of compatible Java-based platforms" by dropping support for Java in Windows XP.
Microsoft has defended its move to take Java support out of XP by citing a January 2001 settlement to a lawsuit Sun filed against Microsoft in 1997 over Microsoft's implementation of Java. That settlement agreement restricts what Microsoft could do in its implementation, Microsoft said.