WinInsider

Microsoft is expected to release the first service pack for Windows XP sometime next week. Sources close to the Redmond, Wash., software company told eWEEK on Wednesday that SP1 could be made available as early as next Tuesday, immediately after the Labor Day weekend. The service pack, which has been in beta since June, will include all the security fixes, application compatibility updates and updated drivers released since the launch of the product last October. In addition, a number of elements that comply with the changes required by the consent decree between Microsoft, the Department of Justice and the nine settling states are also included.

Despite new technology, Netscape continues to lose ground to Internet Explorer, which now has well over 90 percent of the market. A twice-yearly study from StatMarket, a division of WebSideStory, showed that despite recent technological advances, AOL Time Warner's Netscape browsers, which use technology from the open-source Mozilla project, have ceded more ground to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

According to the study, Netscape browsers are losing market share at a steady clip, falling to a new low of 3.4 percent as of this week. A year ago, Netscape Communications' market share stood at 13 percent, but fell steeply to 7 percent by March as IE 6 gained popularity.

"The newest versions of Netscape have failed to win over users so far," Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing for StatMarket, said in a statement. "Unless AOL makes a move soon, Netscape may find itself battling Opera for the last 1 percent to 2 percent of the market."

The effort to standardize the Web services arena is but six to nine months from completion, but the work necessary to implement all the standards to create a totally services-oriented architecture is at least a year to two years away, according to one IBM executive. Robert Sutor, IBM's director of e-business standards strategy, demonstrated at the XML Web Services One conference here interoperability between an IBM WebSphere-based Web services system and a Microsoft Corp. .Net Web services system. The scenario included a client, a brokerage house and trade desks at an institution, where each point was able to swap code between WebSphere and .Net.

Microsoft and Japan's Sony on Wednesday announced fresh price cuts for their video games consoles in Europe, adding fuel to a raging price war between the two rivals. Within an hour from each other, both Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, a unit of Sony Corp, and Microsoft said they would cut the suggested retail price of their consoles to around 249 euros ($244.80), from 299 euros. Console makers traditionally lose money on the sales of their hardware, which they make up with some $10 royalty revenues they receive on every game sold. Games sell at between $40 and $50 and gamers typically buy four to five titles a year.

Originally expected today, and then delayed until the end of this week, Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) will now ship within ten days, according to Microsoft. The software giant announced the delivery schedule late Tuesday in an effort to comply with part of its proposed settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), which specifies a time table for delivering compliance changes. These changes are part of SP1, Microsoft says.

Furthermore, XP SP1 will usher in the release of two new XP versions, XP Media Center Edition, which will power new Media Center PCs, and XP Tablet PC Edition, which are designed for a new generation of portable computers that can be used with a stylus and active digitizer screen. XP Media Center will be available only with a new HP PC in the US, while a variety of PC makers will release Tablet PCs in the coming months.

Following its agreement with the FCC, the latest beta version of Windows Media Player 9 Series lets users control the amount of information that's shared. Microsoft has begun to incorporate new privacy policies and procedures in upcoming products, apparently in response to this month's settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The newest beta, or test, version of Windows Media Player 9 Series prominently displays Microsoft's privacy policy for the program and offers consumers options for controlling just how much information they share when using the product. Unlike competing products, Windows Media Player 9 Series presents consumers with these options the first time the program is used.

Microsoft this week made available an add-on to its Visual Studio development platform that makes it easier for developers to build applications that support the Web services specifications it is forwarding. Yet the specs are strongly backed by Microsoft, and thus inclusion of them in the popular Visual Studio not only puts them into wide use, it sets up a scenario that could push rivals -- such as Sun Microsystems -- to back the specs or push its developers in another direction. That begins to move the battle over Web services specs out of the standards bodies and into the marketplace.

A federal court in Baltimore Tuesday set Oct. 1 as the date for a hearing on whether more than 100 antitrust suits filed by consumers against Microsoft should be grouped together as a class action suit, according to people who attended the hearing. In a pretrial conference before Judge Frederick Motz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Oct. 1 was scheduled as the date for a class certification of the cases. The parties also set Oct. 24 as the date for a hearing on whether Microsoft can be bound by findings already issued in the U.S. Department of Justice's case against the software maker, according to people who attended the hearing.

Intel will discuss further details of its forthcoming mobile Banias and 3.0GHz Pentium 4 processors, and reveal its plans for dealing with demand for sophisticated communications devices at its semiannual Developer Forum conference, it said Tuesday. The architecture of the Banias chip, scheduled for release in the first half of next year, will be revealed during keynotes from Paul Otellini, Intel's president and chief operating officer and Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and general manager of the mobile platforms group, on both Monday and Tuesday of the conference, scheduled for Sept. 9-12.

"Banias is the first time we've developed an architecture from the ground up," said Frank Spindler, vice president of the Intel corporate technology group. "It addresses all the needs of the mobile user."

Microsoft this week released a new feature for its SQL Server 2000 database that can generate personalized notifications to a range of devices, including mobile devices. SQL Server 2000 Notification Services, in beta since April and now available for free download, is an application platform built on top of SQL Server that can match user preferences and subscriptions with events and incoming data to generate personalized notifications ready for delivery in such formats and devices as mobile phones, SMS (Short Messaging Service) aggregators, e?mail and instant messaging.