I've read a lot about the demise of COMDEX, but sitting here amid the throng of show goers in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), I can't call COMDEX Fall 2002 a bust. Sure, the numbers are down: Approximately 100,000 people packed the show this year, down from last year's 125,000 and far down from the high of 200,000 a few short years ago. And there are fewer exhibitors, allegedly: Roughly 1100 this year compared to over 1600 from last year's show. But I've been attending dozens of meetings this year, many of which are being held in hotel rooms and suites off-site, suggesting that the exhibitor numbers are artificially low. And this year's show feels just as busy as last year. Don't believe the hype, I guess.
AMD is demonstrating systems at Comdex and Supercomputing 2002 this week running prototypes of its 64-bit AMD Opteron processors on 64-bit Windows servers. The AMD Opteron chip is a fundamentally different approach to 64-bit systems than Intel has taken with its Itanium line, which began shipping in mid-2001. Intel created a new architecture with new instructions for 64-bit computing. AMD is using the x86 architecture and relying on the 64-bit capabilities for performance improvements. The result, AMD argues, is a more seamless coexistence of 32-bit and 64-bit applications on AMD Opteron-based systems. Microsoft committed in April to supporting AMD Opteron with Windows.
Contrary to some reports, Microsoft says the next version of Exchange, code-named Titanium, will run on Windows 2000. However, the company does say that some features will need .NET Server. Confusion has arisen because the current version of the e-mail server, Exchange 2000, will not run on the next operating system version, Windows.Net Server, suggesting that perhaps customers cannot upgrade to .Net Server until Titanium ships in the middle of 2003.
In fact, the first servers to be upgraded to .Net Server should be those acting as Active Directory domain controllers, which will give the improvements to other servers on the networks. Exchange servers should not also be domain controllers, so there would be no value in upgrading them to .Net Server.
Microsoft on Wednesday at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit will announce it has released beta 2 of its planned SQL Server 2000 64-bit database as well as a beta of a service pack for the existing SQL Server 2000 database.
The new SQL Server 64-bit beta release includes optimization for the Intel Itanium 2 chip and performance improvements, according to Microsoft. The 64-bit version of SQL Server is intended to support memory-intensive and performance-critical applications and will scale to large e-commerce Web sites that have a potentially unbounded number of users and a high volume of user transactions, the company said. This latest version also is intended for large data warehousing and analysis applications and line-of-business applications with a high OLTP workload.
At its annual Manufacturing Summit conference this week in Fargo, N.D., Microsoft Business Solutions on Tuesday announced the integration of production scheduling software from Preactor International with its Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains software. The Preactor 200 Finite Capacity Scheduling [FCS] Finite Production Scheduling software is integrated with Great Plains software to provide a constraint-based, graphical scheduling system to help companies more accurately predict and schedule production orders. The integration is a cooperative effort with Microsoft's Business Solutions division, which provides software for the small and midsized business [SMB] market, its reselling partner Quinn & Associates Inc. and Preactor.
The Visual C++ .NET 2003 release (code-named Everett) that has been released to MSDN today is perhaps the most significant and exciting release of the product since Visual C++ 4.0! Many changes have been made, resulting in a vastly different product from its predecessor. Why should you care? Well, there are important features that have been added for both unmanaged and managed code developers that illustrate a new and serious commitment by Microsoft to the C++ language. The main enhancements come in four major areas: 1) ISO/ANSI C++ Standard Compliance 2) Performance Optimizations 3) Security Enhancements 4) Managed C++ Windows Forms Designer.
Microsoft is promising customers that it will simplify the security alerts it routinely issues on problems affecting its products. The company notified customers of pending changes to security alert bulletins in an e-mail sent Tuesday to the Microsoft Security Notification Service mailing list.
"Customer feedback tells us that, while technical professionals value our security bulletins, many end-users find them overly detailed and confusing," Steve Lipner, director of Microsoft Security Assurance, wrote in the e-mail. He also noted that many people receive notices that would be "of interest only to developers or system administrators."
To address both issues, Microsoft plans to "create a less technical end-user security bulletin that we will host, while continuing to offer more technical alerts for technology professionals. The new end-user security bulletins will describe straightforward steps that customers can take to help keep their systems secure," Lipner wrote.
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates announced at COMDEX Fall 2002 that the first Windows Powered Smart Displays, a technology formerly code-named Mira, will debut on January 8, 2003. ViewSonic will be the first manufacturer to bring the product to market and is accepting pre-orders for its airpanel V110 and V150 Smart Displays. The wireless touch-screen LCD monitors run Windows CE for Smart Displays and enable a user to work on a PC from anywhere in the home. Along with ViewSonic, Microsoft partners creating Smart Displays include NEC, Fujitsu, Philips, LG Electronics and National Semiconductor.
An internal alpha build of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, made its way onto Internet sites early Tuesday. The leaked build, which is numbered 3683, appears to be from late September and sports quite a few new feature concepts - although many are not yet functional. Microsoft experienced a similar leak during the alpha stages of Windows XP, then code-named Whistler.
News of a leaked Longhorn build cropped up late last month when screenshots posted to Windows enthusiast sites purported to showcase the next-generation operating system. But the select few with access to the code initially opted to keep it under wraps rather than risk incurring the wrath of Redmond.
Microsoft Corp. is sitting on a $40.5 billion pile of cash, and its shareholders are getting antsy about doing something with it. Microsoft has made the occasional strategic acquisition in its history, mainly to plug a hole in its product offerings -- Great Plains or Visio, for example. It has not made any bet-the-company deals, which is good, but then it could be argued that Microsoft is the industry.
So if Microsoft isn't going to buy a whole lot of things with its $40.5 billion, what will it do with the cash? Invest in new product and technology development? Sure -- but product development is not the capital-intensive and time-hungry activity for Microsoft that it is for The Boeing Co. and a new plane model or a biotech spending years getting a new drug through clinical trials. Even as major a project as a new operating system doesn't mean retooling an entire assembly line or building a new factory.