14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista would come in six versions later this year, saying that each of them will have unique and very powerful features.
Windows Vista Business will, said Microsoft, serve as the basic business OS, suitable for both small businesses and larger organizations. Although a small business version for Vista was rumored five months ago, Microsoft has dumped the idea and created a single product for both small and large businesses.
Windows Vista Enterprise will add hardware-based encryption and other utilities to the Vista Business foundation. Windows BitLocker drive encryption will lock up data, while Virtual PC Express, a "lite" version of Microsoft's virtual technology, will be included. "Virtual PC Express enables a legacy application to run unchanged on a legacy Windows operating system in a virtual environment on top of Windows Vista Enterprise," the company said.
Windows Vista Home Basic will be designed for those home users with simple activities like Web browsing, e-mail, and basic document creation.
Windows Vista Home Premium will be an addition to Basic with Windows Media Center-like features, DVD burning, and Tablet PC technology. A Premium-equipped system will be able to connect to Microsoft's Xbox game console and display and record TV.
Windows Vista Home Ultimate was presented as "the first operating system that brings together all the entertainment features, mobility features and business-oriented features available in Windows Vista."
Windows Vista Starter won't be sold at retail, but will be pre-installed on computers in selected countries where Microsoft has launched Windows XP Starter Edition, such as India, Indonesia, and Russia.
On Tuesday, the giant announced that they developed a prototype e-mail software in which users can check e-mail and delete messages using their feet. The StepMail application uses a standard dance pad, such those that might be used with a video game. "There's a whole bunch of things that we do with our hands and feet, but computers have never really been one of those," said Kevin Schofield, general manager of strategy and communications at Microsoft Research. StepMail is one of more than 150 pieces of software that Microsoft is showing off at this year's TechFest. The annual event, which takes place Wednesday and Thursday at Microsoft's headquarters, will allow workers from product teams across the company to check out what the company's 700-person research unit has created.
Also on Tuesday, Microsoft released an Internet Explorer 6 update for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, but denied that the changes were security related. "The update is labeled as 'non-security' given that it does not include any new updates that affect the security of IE," said a company spokesman Tuesday afternoon. With the updated version, IE 6 won't run some ActiveX controls until they've been enabled by the user. Last December, Microsoft released a note to Web site and ActiveX developers warning them that the update was coming.
Microsoft's MSN portal launched on Tuesday a preview of a feature that will bring interactive street-side views to its Local Live search and mapping service. "One of the most interesting features is to put you in 'Street' view map style. In this mode, all of the street-side images are pasted flat on the map to give you a very unique overview of an area. It takes some getting used to, but once you adjust to it you'll find it provides a very compelling companion view for our Hybrid maps. Street view helps you orient yourself quickly in an area, while the street side views then show more detail presented as you would see it in the real-world," Microsoft's MSN blog wrote.
Microsoft's European President said on Wednesday that the company will introduce a search engine better than Google's in six months in the United States and Britain, followed by Europe. "What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google. The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. "Should we add a Google-like search engine, but twice as good, hard-core into Windows? Guess what. If we did that, I don't think a company called Google would be very happy," he said.
On Thursday surfaced Microsoft's offering USB flash drives to users who fill out a simple form on the company's Web site. The reason is that the drive is packed with information about Microsoft's licensing software. Although one needs a Passport account to request the free drive, the only other information requested is a name, shipping address, e-mail address, and telephone number. The offer is good only in the U.S. The company said that the drive, capacity unspecified, should arrive in 6 to 8 weeks.
Microsoft is attempting to trademark the word "Relerank", trying to find a codename for the upcoming search engine. A trademark application was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 15 on behalf of Microsoft. According to the filing, which is accessible via a search of the patent-office Web site, Microsoft is looking to trademark "relerank" for use with "computer software for organizing, displaying, and managing search results from computer search engine software." In a website blog it is said that "relerank" is linguistically close to RelevancyRank, a term used by Claria. The adware vendor defines RelevancyRank as "a patent-pending search technology that ranks Web pages in a revolutionary way. It goes beyond analyzing links to pages and hypertext matching, and instead evaluates what searchers do once they see the links displayed."
On Friday, Microsoft announced that "the company has acquired String Bean Software's WinTarget storage area networking technology and will add the software to its Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 product". "WinTarget is a software-based iSCSI storage area network technology that can be used to create a hybrid storage system which supports both file-level and block-level (such as E-mail) data storage. That will simplify storage management tasks and streamline workload consolidation. Adding WinTarget to Windows Storage Server will take some development and integration work that Microsoft expects to complete this summer. Microsoft Storage Server is sold to hardware vendors that add the software to their server products," says Claude Lorenson, Microsoft group product manager for storage.
Also on Friday, the software giant said that it had asked U.S. Federal courts to force IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Novell to give it documents in its battle against the European Commission. Microsoft is fighting against a fine of up to 2 million Euro ($2.4 million) a day for failing to carry out sanctions that the Commission, the European Union's executive arm, imposed on it in 2004 for violating EU antitrust laws.
