April 4th, 2008
Microsoft weekend roundup: The’no’s’ have it
As the week draws to a close, there are a few Microsoft-related “no’s” worth noting — beyond the no more extensions for Windows XP’s preload cutoff date of June 30.
Other no’s I noticed:
Microsoft decided no release of Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server before the company fixes the data-corruption bug reported months ago. Microsoft had solicited WHS user feedback regarding whether they’d prefer Microsoft to hold back Power Pack 1 in order to get the corruption bug fix done. This week, company officials said they have decided to delay the Power Pack 1 release.
No more juicy Vista memos will be released — at least for now — in the “Vista Capable” class-action case. As Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Todd Bishop notes, a Seattle federal judge has granted Microoft’s motion to stop the lawsuit from proceeding while it asks the 9th Cirtcuit Court of Appeals to review the decision to grant the case class-action status. If the suit proceeds, a number of executives with major Microsoft PC partners have been asked to testify, as has former Windows chief Jim Allchin.
Still no new official updates from Microsoft regarding “Fiji,” the next, out-of-band release of Windows Media Center — despite the fact that there is new activity reported in the private Fiji beta forums. Microsoft has been soliciting more input from potential Fiji testers for the past few months. DirectTV support is one feature expected to be added to Media Center in the Fiji release.
No new info on Windows 7’s internal release schedule. Microsoft is sticking to its last public statement: Windows 7 is due in 2010. There are some new bits of interesting Win7 information out there, but don’t believe everything about 7 that you read (especially if it’s being celebrated as gospel by Slashdot).
April 4th, 2008
Windows 7: The delivery-date speculation continues
Over the past couple of days, I’ve noticed more new speculation about Microsoft’s timetable for delivering Windows 7, the next version of Windows.
Now, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ words are being parsed for hidden meanings. According to my News.com colleague Ina Fried, Gates said this week during a speech before the Inter-American Development Bank: “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new (Windows) version.”
Microsoft officials are insisting nothing has changed: Windows 7 is due out roughly three years after Windows Vista’s consumer launch (which was January 2007), meaning in early 2010.
As I have mentioned before, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Softies actually deliver the final Windows 7 code in late 2009, given the current Windows Client team’s emphasis on underpromising and overdelivering — not to mention the self-imposed rule among the Windows folks that they should deliver a new Windows release every two years, alternating between “major” and “minor” updates. And given the fact that pushing out a new Windows release early in a new calendar year is not optimal for PC makers, who need final Windows code from Microsoft by late summer/early fall in order to preload a new operating system on holiday PCs, an early 2010 RTM date also seems wonky.
Remember, however, Microsoft still has yet to release a wide-scale test build of Windows 7. Milestone 1 of Windows 7 went to a limited set of testers in December 2007. I’ve heard mentions of Milestone 3 from a couple of folks recently. Windows client milestones are primarily internal builds that also go to a hand of OEM partners.
Beta 1 of Windows 7, last I heard from rogue tipsters, might hit in late fall at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. Typically, it takes Microsoft a minimum of a year to beta test a Windows client build. So, if Microsoft sticks to its usual way of operating, it’s currently looking a very late 2009 delivery for Windows 7 at best.
Why do these nuances matter? It is in Microsoft’s best interests right now, one could argue, to insure customers they shouldn’t wait for Windows 7 and should go ahead and deploy Vista. If Windows 7 were to hit in mid-2009, a number of users (especially corporate ones) would likely just wait for the next Windows release, hoping that the driver and application incompatibilities that plagued Vista might get ironed out and that changes that might introduce new problems would be kept to a minimum.
Would you like to see another new version of Windows client in 2009?
April 4th, 2008
Microsoft blogger publishes Silverlight 2.0 timetable
Microsoft officials have been (mostly) careful about talking about their Silverlight 2.0 release schedule.
(I say “mostly” because one Microsoft official told me at the Mix ‘08 conference last month that the Redmondians were planning to deliver the final Silverlight 2.0 release this coming fall.)
Earlier this week, a Microsoft blogger published what he claimed is the company’s internal schedule for Silverlight 2.0, Microsoft’s next version of its Adobe Flash competitor.
Microsoft blogger Ashish Thapliyal blogged on April 3 that Microsoft is targetting “late summer” for the final release of Silverlight 2.0. Here’s the rest of the “rough” timeline, according to Thapliyal:
- Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 (Q1CY08 with limited (non commercial) Go-Live) — this was released at Mix ‘08 in early March
- Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 (Q2CY08 with Go-Live)
- Silverlight 2.0 RTM (Summer 2008) – Exact timing TBD
- Silverlight v.next – We are working on a v.Next plan and have nothing to announce at this time
- Silverlight for mobile – No date available
(Microsoft has said it will release Silverlight 1.0 on Windows Mobile 6.0 phones in the second quarter of this year, but hasn’t released any timing information on its Silverlight 2.0 for Mobile release that I’ve seen.)
Bottom line: By late summer or sometime this fall, Microsoft should be releasing the final Silverlight 2.0 code, if it holds to its current timetable.
(Thanks to Ars Technica for the pointer to Thapliyal’s blog post.)
April 3rd, 2008
Microsoft: June 30 Windows XP cut-off set in stone
Microsoft made it official on April 3: There will be no new reprieves for Windows XP (other than on Ultra Low-Cost PCs).
Some customers and partners had been hoping the company might extend again the deadline for all PC makers to be allowed to preload Windows XP, rather than Windows Vista, on new PCs. But today, Microsoft officials said the current June 30, 2008 cut-off date would remain in place for the vast majority of machines.
The one new exception, as some were anticipating, are Ultra Low-Cost PCs (ULPCs), which Microsoft defines as systems like the Asus Eee and Intel Classmate — “significantly more restricted hardware with less expensive processors and more limited graphics capabilities. ULPCs should not be confused with the higher-priced and more robust UMPCs, or Ultra-Mobile PCs (a k a “Origami” devices); Microsoft is continuing to encourage UMPC makers to build their systems around Vista.
As Microsoft officials announced on April 3, makers of ULPCs will be allowed to continue to preload XP on ULPC machines until June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows, whichever comes first, according to Microsoft.
(Microsoft has said that its target delivery date for Windows 7, the next version of Windows, is some time in 2010.)
The majority of, if not all, ULPCs are incapable of running Vista, with its higher RAM and graphics requirements. But they can and do run Linux. That proved to be a good incentive for Microsoft extending the XP cut-off deadline for those low-end machines.
For plain-vanilla PCs, Microsoft is holding fast to its June 30 preload cut-off for XP. (In September, Microsoft granted PC makers a five-month extension, allowing them to continue preloading and selling at retail Windows XP until June 30 of this year. ) As Microsoft noted previously, users still will be able to get XP preloaded on new machines from white-box vendors/system builders through January 31, 2009. And Vista Business and Ultimate customers with volume-license contracts can still get XP via their “downgrade” rights.
Microsoft will still provide mainstream (free) support for XP until April 2009. Extended support (free for security fixes and paid for other help) ends in 2014.
What’s your take? Did Microsoft make the right decision in holding fast to the June 30 XP cut-off date?
Loading …April 2nd, 2008
Microsoft: XP SP3 RTM date a typo
Some sharp-eyed folks over at Neowin.net noticed Microsoft had posted to its Support Live Cycle Web site a release-to-manufacuturing date of March 31, 2008, for Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3.
Microsoft officials told me on April 2 the date was a typo and that XP SP3 still has not RTM’d.
(I am posting this as a number of readers have sent me pointers to Neowin and other sites reporting the published RTM date.)
Microsoft’s exact wording in response to my query about the March 31 RTM date on its site:
“The March 31st date you saw for Windows XP SP3 RTM on Microsoft.com is incorrect. This information was published due to a site publisher error, and Microsoft is currently working to update the site. The final version of Windows XP SP3 is still on target to be released the first half of calendar year 2008.”
The wait goes on….
April 2nd, 2008
Report: Office 2007 demand ‘healthier than thought’
There is quite a bit of difference of opinion as to when and whether business users should upgrade to Windows Vista, but Office 2007 isn’t suffering from the same fate.
According to Forrester Research (which has really been cranking out the studies in the past few days), businesses are deploying Office 2007 at a rapid clip. More than 40 percent of the 259 IT decision makers in North America and Western Europe that Forrester surveyed already have deployed Office 2007.
“The adoption of Office 2007 appears a lot healthier than what people thought,” said Kyle McNabb, principal researcher for the study. “Lots of enterprises are adopting it with Service Pack 1.”
Other findings from Forrester’s “The State Of Microsoft Office 2007 Desktop Adoption” study (which is only available to subscribers to Forrester’s research service):
- The majority of those surveyed plan to deploy Office 2007 within the next 12 months (21 percent immediately, 43 percent within 6 months and 29 percent within 12 months)
- SharePoint Server 2007 is being deployed at almost identical rates and often in tandem with Office 2007.
- Of those surveyed, 43 percent said Office 2007 rollouts were tied to upgrades in PC hardware
- *The release of Office 2007 SP1 “removed a hurdle keeping many from moving forward in calendar year 2007.”
According to conventional wisdom, many businesses prefer to deploy new versions of Windows and Office at the same time to reduce costs associated with upgrading to a new release. With Windows Vista and Office 2007, however, that rule doesn’t seem to be holding true. As part of the findings of a different survey released earlier this week, Forrester has found business adoption of Vista to be sluggish, with adoption of Vista by enterprises growing “a little more than five percentage points during 2007 to end at 6.3%.
(Microsoft doesn’t break out for public consumption the percentage of Vista sales that have gone to businesses vs. consumers.)
I asked McNabb whether any IT pros surveyed as part of this study expressed any ambivalence about waiting for Office 14 vs. upgrading to Office 2007. After all, Office 14 is still rumored to be a 2009 release. McNabb said those who were weighing this choice were “very much in the minority,” a fact he attributed to “Microsoft telling many customers not to expect major changes in the desktop with Office 14.”
And what about Google Apps? Any IT pros surveyed looking seriously at a completely Google-hosted alternative to Office 2007?
“Enterprises are looking at Open Office and Google, but they are not yet looking to move to them,” McNabb said. “Less than one percent are giving any real fuel to (Microsoft) alternatives.”
April 2nd, 2008
Microsoft builds out its first containerized datacenter
James Hamilton, one of the all-star architects on the Microsoft Windows Live Core team, has been a champion of using modular datacenter containers to build out datacenters.
On April 1, Microsoft announced publicly its plans to build a completely containerized production data center. The company made the announcement at the Data Center World show. The Microsoft containerized datacenter facility will be in the Chicago area (Northlake, Ill.).
Hamilton detailed Microsoft’s announcement on his external blog:
“The Microsoft Chicago facility is a two floor design where the first floor is a containerized design housing 150 to 220 40’ containers each 1,000 to 1,000 servers. Chicago is large facility with the low end of the ranges Mike (Manos who leads the Microsoft Global Foundations Data Center team) quoted yielding 150k serves and the high end running to 440k servers. If you assume 200W/server, the critical load would run between 30MW and 88MW for the half of the data center that is containerized. If you assume a PUE of 1.5, we can estimate the containerized portion of the data center at between 45MW and 132MW total load. It’s a substantial facility.”
Microsoft isn’t the only one testing these kinds of shipping-container-based datacenter configurations, Hamilton noted. Rackable Systems and Sun Microsystems announced such a solution, with Rackable shipping the first production container, which included more than 1,000 servers, Hamilton noted. Other vendors shipping modular, container-based datacenter solutions include IBM, Dell and Verari, Hamilton blogged.
April 1st, 2008
Will XP’s ‘execution stay’ for emerging markets apply to other countries?
Speculation continues to swirl as to when and whether Microsoft will extend the June 30, 2008, cut-off date on which many PC makers will be expected to cease bundling Windows XP with new PCs.
But some pundits seem to have forgotten that when Microsoft initially granted Windows XP five more months to live, back in 2007, the company left itself a loophole. (And I don’t mean just the early 2009 cut-off date it granted white-box vendors/system builders). Late last year, Microsoft officials said that vendors preloading Windows on PCs aimed at “emerging markets” wouldn’t have to stop selling Windows XP until 2010.
From Microsoft’s September 27, 2007, press release:
“(S)ince some of the systems that ship in emerging markets don’t meet the requirements for Windows Vista, we will be extending availability of Windows XP Starter Edition to June 30, 2010. This will allow our OEM partners who sell PCs in emerging markets more opportunity to offer genuine Windows licenses.”
The new question that company watchers are asking this week is whether Microsoft will extend this 2010 date to cover “low-cost” PCs — like the Asus Eee ultra-cheap laptop — even if those PCs aren’t running XP Starter Edition.
I would expect Microsoft would find offering XP for another year-plus on those PCs to be a lesser evil than conceding the low-cost PC market to Linux. If these machines do not have enough processing power to run Windows Vista (not even the Home Basic edition), what else can Microsoft expect their manufacturers to do, other than to continue to offer the systems with XP?
Will Microsoft extend its XP-preload cut-off date again, outside of these fringe cases? My bet is no. Microsoft will be shooting itself in the foot if it does this, as it would be concedinng that there are real reasons that users and its hardware/software partners might not want its latest Windows release (which is now over a year old, mind you)….
What’s your take? Will any amount of outcry stop Microsoft from making good on its June 30 XP preload cut-off date?
April 1st, 2008
Another unannounced piece of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile puzzle: eLive
Microsoft seems to be continuing to keep most of its Windows Mobile cards close to the vest, even though it is CTIA Wireless week.
At the show on April 1, company officials are talking up some of the new features slated for the updates of Windows Live Search for Windows Mobile and Windows Live Search for Blackberry that are due out later this spring. There will be new mapping and voice functionality, among other mobile Live Search upgrades that the LiveSide guys have outlined in full.
So far, however, no word from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 6.1, the refresh of its mobile operating system that some expected Redmond to debut at the CTIA show.
Microsoft did take the wraps off Windows Mobile 6.1 at CTIA, it seems. It’s due out from carriers some time in Q’2 of this year. Microsoft also announced a forthcoming corporate mobile-services plan that will take effect with Windows Mobile 6.1, as well as a new version of System Center Mobile Device Manager, two mobile enhancements aimd at enterprises deploying Windows Mobile phones.
But there’s still no word on Microsoft’s plans to more tightly integrate Windows Mobile with some of its consumer products and technologies. Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Todd Bishop attempted to get new Windows Mobile marketing chief Andy Lees to discuss, among other topics, the “Pink and Purple” initiative about which I keep hearing rumors. (Supposedly “Pink” has something to do with taking Zune features to Windows Mobile, tipsters have said.)
There are other Windows Mobile initiatives in the rumor phase I’d like to hear more about, as well. One of these is known as “eLive,” according to sources.
When I first heard mention of eLive, I wondered whether it might be Microsoft’s brand name for the “Connected Entertainment” strategy to which its top execs have been alluding for years now. Or maybe eLive is the name of the “device mesh” that Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie outlined in very broad-brush strokes at Microsoft’s Mix conference last month.
Another source of mine said that a key element of eLive will be a single, unified “entertainment marketplace” where consumers will be able to go to buy music, videogames, and other kinds of content that will work on Windows PCs, Xboxes, Zunes and Windows Mobile phones.
Anyone out there have more scuttlebutt on Microsoft’s eLive strategy?
April 1st, 2008
OOXML said to win ISO standardization approval with 75 percent of the vote
While ISO isn’t set to announce the official voting tally until tomorrow, the OpenDoc Society has posted to a mailing list what it claims are the final results indicating that Microsoft will be granted ISO approval for its Office Open XML (OOXML) document format.
According to the alleged results page, OOXML received a 75 percent “approve” total. It needed 66.66 percent to become an ISO standard. Here is the alleged ISO ballot information on OOXML (zipped PDF file).
ISO officials aren’t commenting on the leaked ballot tally. Nor is Microsoft. ISO officials said on March 31 that they planned to notify privately the national bodies who participated in the standards vote before publicizing the final results on April 2.
Update: Microsoft is now confirming (in a rather long-winded way) that OOXML won the vote for ISO standards approval. From the company’s April 1 press release:
“While the final vote has not yet been announced formally, publicly available information shows overwhelming support for Open XML. According to documents available on the Internet, 86% of all national body members support ISO/IEC standardization, well above the 75% requirement for formal acceptance under ISO and IEC rules. In addition, 75% of the Participating national body members (known as P-members) support standardization, also well above the required 66.67% requirement for this group.
“Open XML, IS29500, now joins HTML, PDF and ODF as ISO- and IEC-recognized open document format standards.
“The ratification of Open XML is proof that the consensus-building process worked.”
OOXML is currently an ECMA standard. Microsoft has been advocating for OOXML to receive ISO standard status, as that is seen as more of a “gold” standard by many governments when evaluating standards compliance of new software.
In a note sent to its mailing list recipients, OpenDoc Society Board Member Michiel Leenaars portrayed the alleged OOXML victory as having “minimal”impact on OOXML vs. Open Document Format (ODF) adoption. Leenaars wrote:
“OOXML which was submitted by Microsoft to ECMA, and by ECMA to ISO, has literally crawled through the needles eye. After a year of discussion and repairs it still receives the very minimum of support. The BRM convinced some yet unconvinced others, and counter votes from large countries like China, India, Brazil, Canada, South Africa and Iran speak volumes. This must be one of the worst results ever for a standard to pass within ISO/JTC1 in years.
“Appartently (sic) the chair from the Norwegian comitte(e) has filed a protest against the national outcome. Although one vote would not make much difference, others may follow.”
(Thanks to ITWire for the link to the mailing list post.)
Update on April 2: Here’s the official ISO statement on OOXML obtaining standards approval.
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