Channel Insider Staff

TORONTO—Microsoft is delaying by a full year two of its four software patching/upgrade systems, company officials told those attending the worldwide partner conference here. Microsoft’s Windows Update Services, the product formerly known as Software Update Services 2.0, is now due to ship by mid-2005, rather than mid-2004. And the new Microsoft Update Service, a new […]

TORONTO—There are 600 million Windows PCs today, according to Microsoft. By 2010, there will be more than 1 billion of them, one company official said. Will Poole, the head of Microsoft’s Windows client business, made these bold predictions here at the annual Microsoft worldwide partner conference in his keynote Monday morning. Poole said Microsoft expects […]

TORONTO — Microsoft is readying a new Web site it’s calling “Windows Marketplace” via which it plans to provide customers with drivers, applications and services from both Microsoft and its partners. Company officials offered a bit of information on the forthcoming service during the Sunday morning keynote at Microsoft’s annual worldwide partner conference here. Kevin […]

TORONTO — Microsoft’s channel partners here grilled Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) chieftain Doug Burgum more pointedly than did lawyers in the Oracle/PeopleSoft antitrust trial. Burgum kicked off the opening day of Microsoft’s annual worldwide partner conference with an open, hour-and-a-half question and answer session. And questioners were not shy about expressing their concerns about Microsoft’s […]

TORONTO — Microsoft plans to invest $850 million over the next year in sales, marketing and research and development programs dedicated to beefing up its Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) division. And as part of the renewed MBS focus, Microsoft is considering creating an MBS Global Services plan, via which the division will offer more consulting […]

Microsoft’s competitors smell blood in the enterprise waters. They are swarming around NT 4.0 like sharks. And Apple is among the school of circling predators. Like Red Hat Inc., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and other vendors, Apple Computer Inc. sees a silver lining in Microsoft’s decision to phase out support for NT Server 4.0 […]

Is that cell phone a Trojan horse? It might be, according to a recently released report, “How to Tackle the Threat From Portable Storage Devices,” by The Gartner Group discussing the security risks associated with the proliferation of small USB- and Firewire-enabled electronics and peripherals. As as the cost of RAM chips and hard drives […]

On Tuesday, Microsoft officially took the wraps off a new line of low-priced tools aimed at nonprofessional programmers. The first betas of both the full Visual Studio tool suite and the so-called “Express” versions of Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J# and SQL Server (as well as a new product, Visual WebDev Express) […]

Gateway’s eMachines division launched a trio of new machines on Monday, all geared at a budget-minded audience. eMachines launched the T2824, the T2958, and the T3092, all priced at less than $600. All three machines are designed for consumers wishing to purchase a cheaper alternative than higher-priced, more powerful PCs, such as a computer for […]

Microsoft’s embedded operating system platforms are set to take center stage next week at the company’s Embedded Windows Developers Conference (a k a Embedded DevCon) in San Diego. Microsoft offers two different embedded Windows flavors: Windows XP and Windows CE. Windows XP Embedded, a subset of Windows XP, is typically integrated into retail point-of-sale terminals, […]

How you can negotiate better software licensing deals with Microsoft — even if your company recently signed a new contract with the Redmond software kingpin? The question is especially pertinent now, with many users’ three-year-old Software Assurance (SA) licensing deals set to expire on June 30. But negotiating a licensing deal with Microsoft is a […]

On Monday morning, it looked as if Microsoft Corp. had done yet another about-face by extending NT 4.0 support past the rapidly approaching support-cut-off deadlines—despite repeated claims that it had no intentions of doing so. But by Monday evening, Microsoft was working overtime to correct any misunderstandings caused by its vaguely worded press release about […]