Windows Powered Smart Displays Delayed Until 2003
Microsoft alerted me Thursday evening that the Windows Powered Smart Displays--code-named Mira--are now delayed until the first quarter of 2003. So if you've been pining for such a device, it's not happening this holiday season, sorry. I will, however, be reviewing some final Windows Powered Smart Display hardware by the end of the year. Stay tuned!
Want To Buy a Media Center PC? Here's Where To Find Them
Later this month, new Hewlett-Packard (HP) Media Center PCs will begin shipping in the US, and if you're in the market for such a device--which will retail for $1400-$2000--HP has announced the retail locations that will be selling them. According to HP, retailers Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA will offer Media Center PCs, and HP will also sell them directly from its Web site. My review of XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE) is currently available on the SuperSite.
Intel Working on Pentium 4 Updates, Pentium 5
Microprocessor giant Intel is now working on its successor to the Pentium 4, using a new chip architecture that will be substantially different from today's designs. Dubbed Nehalem, the new chip will include better power management, and a slew of secret features to be revealed at a later date, according to company insiders. Before that chips ships, however, Intel will release new Pentium 4 designs, including 2003's Prescott, which features the Palladium security subsystem, and Tejas, due in 2004. And you thought your wimpy little 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 was state of the art.
Eighteen months ago, Microsoft opened up its source code to large organizations. After years of pressure from the open-source movement, it gave 2,300 companies the chance to see the innermost secrets of the Windows operating system. But, says Microsoft, only 150 wanted to look.
But in the long term, there are lots more things to be said. In the end, the open-source community will thank Microsoft for pushing the debate on. Let's face it, the polarization of the debate can get pretty sterile--it's all too easy to apply the usual cliches of Open-Source-Good and Microsoft-Evil.
"One of the great myths of open source is that everyone wants to look at source code," said Jason Matusow, shared source manager at Microsoft. "We have approached many hundreds (of companies), but most have turned us down. Most say 'We are manufacturers, we don't do source code--that's your job', and others say they expect their systems integrators to deal with any source code issues."
Microsoft this week released an updated beta build of Windows Media Player 9 Series to Technical Preview participants. The new build, numbered 2903, features a completely revamped setup along with numerous bug fixes. The default "Corona" skin has been updated and is now resizable according to beta testers. In addition, a sleek new skin dubbed "Quicksilver" is available for Windows XP users.
"We have fixed numerous bugs since the last beta refresh (build 2800). We encourage everyone --all web developers, ISVs, ICPs, etc...-- to install and provide feedback as we work towards our final release of Windows Media Player 9 Series," beta coordinators wrote in an e-mail to members of the Corona Technical Preview.
In January 2002, I got my first look at Microsoft's Freestyle software--a remote-friendly front-end to digital media tasks--and immediately wanted it. Back then, of course, it was unclear how the software would be delivered, and I had hoped that any XP user would be able to get Freestyle through a cheap, Plus!-type add-on. However, in the days since January, Microsoft decided to ship Freestyle as Windows XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE), which will be made available solely with powerful new PCs, logically dubbed media center PCs. While I understand the reasoning behind this decision, I still have my doubts, since there is a large crowd of digital media enthusiasts who might have paid $50 for an add-on package but have no interest in shelling out $1800 or more for a new PC, just to get this software.
Microsoft and its allies have quietly expanded an effort to gain acceptance for C#, the software giant's competitor to Java and a foundation for its next-generation Internet services. To convince potential customers that C# is a sound, independent technology, Microsoft already succeeded in getting it recognized by an international standards group known as ECMA, formerly called the European Computer Manufacturers Association. Microsoft has now used that as a stepping stone to gain the imprimatur of a more widely recognized standards group, the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, which governs standards for items as diverse as dental equipment, nuclear fuels and shoe sizes.
A judge ordered a computer retailer to pay Microsoft the equivalent of US$4.5 million in damages for the retailer's unlicensed use of the software giant's products, according to a court judgment released Friday. High Court judge Mary Yuen sided with Microsoft in a copyright infringement lawsuit alleging that the authorized Microsoft retailer, Able System Development, had illegally pre-loaded unlicensed copies of the Office and Windows programs onto computers it sold between 1996 and 1998. Retailers in Hong Kong commonly preload a wide variety of software on computers they sell, but Able had no permission to do that with Microsoft's software.
Every time Microsoft rolls out a major new enterprise product, the software giant claims itself as a long-running early adopter in production systems. At MEC 2002 in Anaheim, Calif., Microsoft corporate vice president and CIO Rick Devenuti explained how his IT department reconciles its top priority of being "Microsoft's best and first customer" with its more standard role of making sure employees in this global Fortune 500 company always have access to the applications they need to do the jobs that keep the revenue flowing.
"Internally we use the term, 'Eating our own dogfood,'" Devenuti said of the company's efforts to use beta releases of its flagship software in production systems. Such dogfood eating only became a top priority for Microsoft's IT group three years ago, he says.
Microsoft corporate vice president and CIO Rick Devenuti is seeing several benefits from an internal early deployment of Windows .NET Server 2003 and expecting others with the Exchange Titanium release. Devenuti laid out some of those benefits on Wednesday during a keynote for attendees of the MEC 2002 show in Anaheim, Calif. Microsoft's IT group is in an unusual position for an IT department. In addition to the usual priority of a Fortune 500 IT department, which Devenuti describes as "providing a world-class utility," a higher priority for Microsoft's IT group is being Microsoft's first and best customer.
Internally, Microsoft calls the process "eating its own dogfood," and right now that means using Windows .NET Server 2003, which is supposed to be released to manufacturing by the end of this year, and Exchange Titanium, which is scheduled to arrive in mid-2003.
In a surprising move, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced that it will open up a portion of the source code of its Passport identity service on a limited basis. Speaking at a conference on digital identity in Denver, Microsoft CTO Craig Mundie said the company will make the source code of its Passport Manager available to licensed companies, academics, developers and governments as part of its Shared Source Initiative. Passport Manager is a small piece of code that runs on a Web site that is affiliated with the Passport network and manages communications and integration with the service. The code will be made available in November through the new Passport Manager Licensing Program.
Next month, Intel will bring its hyperthreading technology to desktops, another advance in the chip world that can be traced to Digital Equipment Corp. Although Digital often floundered when trying to sell its own chips, the defunct computing giant left behind technologies and engineers that are at the core of many recent and coming advances.
"There is all this cool technology coming out on PCs that came from Digital," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. Nonetheless, McCarron, among others, noted that these breakthroughs rarely helped Digital's bottom line. Digital was acquired by Compaq Computer in 1998, and its remnants became part of Hewlett-Packard earlier this year when HP completed its acquisition of Compaq.