Microsoft Office 2007 Update Due

Microsoft Corp. announced Thursday that it will start pushing Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) to customers this month.

In an entry to the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) blog, Cecilia Cole, a Microsoft program manager, said that the service pack would be posted to the update service in April. She did not name an exact date, but said that more information would be published on an Office-specific blog "later this month."

When Microsoft releases updates for WSUS users -- who are almost exclusively enterprises that feed their systems patches from their own servers -- it also makes those same updates available on Microsoft Update, the similar service for consumers and small businesses. Microsoft Update, a superset of the better-known Windows Update, provides patches for Windows and some of its other software, notably Office.

Microsoft first talked up Office 2007 SP2 nearly six months ago, when it said it would ship the update between February and April 2009.

Office 2007 SP2 includes support for Open Document Format (ODF), the document format used by the open-source OpenOffice.org; boosts the performance of the Outlook 2007 e-mail client; adds the ability to uninstall service packs; and contains all the bug fixes and security patches released since Microsoft rolled out SP1 in December 2007.

Microsoft did not issue a service pack blocking tool for Office 2007 SP1, and apparently will not for SP2 either; searches on the Microsoft site failed to dig up any mention of a blocker. It has crafted toolkits to block other updates, however, including one to keep the new Internet Explorer 8 from reaching PCs.

Office 2007 debuted at retail in January 2007, concurrent with the launch of Windows Vista.

Microsoft: Windows 7 No 'Magic Bullet' for Enterprises

Microsoft warned enterprise customers this week that the migration path from XP to Windows 7 won't be any easier than it is to Vista, and offered recommendations for how companies can move from older versions of Windows to one of its newer client OSes.

"Moving from XP to Windows 7 is not a magic bullet," said Gavriella Schuster, a senior director of Windows product management, in an interview Tuesday. "You have the same level of application compatibility from XP to Windows Vista or Windows 7."

Enterprise customers who would have had to replace applications in a move from XP to Vista will still have the same task when they move to Windows 7, she said. However, if customers have already made the leap to Vista, it will be easier to move applications to Windows 7 because it's on essentially the same code base, she said.

In a company blog post attributed to Schuster, Microsoft made recommendations to business customers to help them decide whether they should upgrade to Vista now or wait for Windows 7, which is expected later this year or, at the latest, early next year.

Many companies chose to stick with Windows XP instead of upgrading to Vista, causing Microsoft to keep new PCs with XP pre-installed in the market longer than originally planned. Once Windows 7 is released, which most expect before the end of the year, Microsoft will have two OSes built on essentially the same code base in the market at the same time, and Schuster said customers have asked the vendor how to choose between them.

To no one's surprise, Microsoft recommends that business customers still running XP or older versions of the OS upgrade as soon as possible, citing security and remote-management capabilities in both Vista and Windows 7 that weren't baked into the original XP release.

XP also was released before the majority of PCs in enterprises were laptops, and both Vista and Windows 7 have features that allow IT managers to better manage and secure laptops and mobile devices for the type of mobile workforce found in many enterprises today, Schuster said.

"When you think about Windows XP in that context -- it came out in 2001, when less than 10 percent of devices were laptops," she said. "There wasn't ubiquitous broadband. There weren't the levels of compliance and regulatory requirements. There weren't data protections."

What may be surprising in Microsoft's message, however, is that the company doesn't care which of its newer OSes customers move to -- Windows Vista or Windows 7 -- as long as they do what's best for their individual IT environments.

"What strikes me is that Microsoft is being fairly pragmatic about what the options are for customers," said Al Gillen, an analyst with IDC. "Microsoft seems to recognize the reality that customers aren't going to do what Microsoft tells them to do. They're going to do what's right for them."

Indeed, Schuster said Microsoft is "agnostic" about which OS customers upgrade to. She said Microsoft is just trying to set expectations for any upgrade that may be planned or in progress, so that customers aren't surprised by problems or complexities they may encounter.

Customers should examine their application and hardware environments closely to see which would be the best fit for them. "It really depends on the environment," Schuster said.

She did have some advice for customers depending on what OS they are currently running, and whether or not they have begun migrating to Vista already.

For customers still running Windows 2000, "they clearly need to move fast and need to move to Windows Vista," she said. Extended support for Windows 2000 ends in April 2010, and it will take a company 12 to 18 months to complete the upgrade. "They can't wait for Windows 7," Schuster said.

For companies that are halfway through a migration to Windows Vista Service Pack 1, they should continue that migration as planned, she said. However, if a company has begun piloting Vista and is not yet halfway through the migration process, moving to Vista Service Pack 2 -- which should be generally available in April -- is a better option.

Some customers have already said they plan to wait for Windows 7, and Microsoft is not recommending they change that course.

When Windows 7 is available, it won't be the first time Microsoft will have two OSes on the same code base in the business market at the same time. Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP Pro were built on the same code base as well, and many business customers on Windows 98 waited for XP instead of moving to 2000, Gillen noted.

Windows 7 is essentially the second release of Vista, an incremental update that will include some usability features but not "cause a rift for Windows Vista applications" during a migration, he said.

It will essentially be about as painful for customers to move from XP to Vista as it will be to move from XP to Windows 7, Gillen said, corroborating Schuster's warning. He agreed, too, that a migration from Vista to Windows 7 will be far easier.

However, Gillen said that Microsoft's argument that customers should pick one or the other is more in its own self-interest than an actual necessity for enterprise customers.

"[Microsoft] is trying to use every lever they have to try to encourage customers to move," he said. "But customers are going to make their own decisions based on [their own needs]." Some customers may find they can stay on XP indefinitely as long as they can continue to patch and support their applications on it. Microsoft ends extended support for XP in April 2014.

One company that has already migrated to Windows Vista, and plans to upgrade to Windows 7 as well, is computer reseller Heartland Technology Solutions in Harlan, Iowa. Heartland is a Microsoft partner that participated in the Vista beta-testing program.

Arlin Sorensen, CEO and president of Heartland, said that Vista increased worker productivity, particularly because of its the improved desktop search functionality.

Heartland serviced about 1,900 individual small-business customers last year, each with its own set of unique IT needs, he said. However, one of the most common problems customers needed help with was finding documents or files they couldn't locate.

"This is where the ability to search more quickly and efficiently for files immensely improved productivity," Sorensen said.

"The whole Vista experience has helped in simple but very productive ways," he said. "There's a significant amount of time people waste looking for documents."

Microsoft confirms MyPhone, invite-only beta coming to MWC

Remember that alleged Microsoft MyPhone beta page that popped up on getskybox.com yesterday? It's back up now and being hosted under the company's official domain, with everything apparently intact except that tantalizing "Sign In" button. According to a statement from the gang at Redmond, a limited invite-only beta is in the cards, and more details on the syncing service formerly known as SkyBox are coming to Mobile World Congress later this month. As for the beta itself, the wording's a bit ambiguous here -- will we just be getting new details on the trial or will the signup actually launch then? Looks like we'll find out for sure in just over a week.

Microsoft Charges Employee With Spying

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against a former employee, charging him with taking a job at the software giant in order to steal information that would be helpful in his patent infringement case against the company.

When Miki Mullor applied for a job at Microsoft in 2005, he said that he had been an employee of a company called Ancora that had gone out of business when in fact the company was still running and Mullor was its CEO, Microsoft alleges in the suit.

Once employed by the software giant, he downloaded confidential documents unrelated to his job about technology that Microsoft offers to computer makers, according to the suit, filed in the King County Superior Court in Washington. The technology lets end users forgo the Windows operating system activation process on PCs that come preloaded with the Windows software.

Then in June of last year, while Mullor was still employed at Microsoft, his company, Ancora, filed a suit accusing Microsoft of infringing on a patent related to the technology.

Ancora's lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, is against Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba, but because the technology in question was provided by Microsoft, the PC makers have asked the software maker to defend them against the claims.

Mullor describes a very different series of events. He claims that prior to getting a job at Microsoft, he had several discussions with a Microsoft lawyer and employees of Microsoft's anti-piracy group about the technology he developed. Microsoft said it wasn't interested in the technology, he said.

He later took a job at Microsoft because he wasn't earning a salary or benefits at Ancora, he said in a statement. When he took the job, he told Microsoft in writing about Ancora and the patent, he said.

Microsoft also alleges that Mullor ran programs on his laptop in an effort to wipe any evidence that would show he had downloaded the files. The software giant was able to detect which programs he ran and was able to recover some of the documents that he downloaded, according to the suit.

Also, Microsoft says it has e-mail evidence that in 2004, before Mullor applied for a job at the software company, he was already planning to file the patent infringement suit.

Microsoft contends that Mullor committed breach of contract for failing to disclose his continued involvement in Ancora, stole confidential documents and failed to disclose his intentions regarding the patent infringement suit. The company also believes that it is entitled to a royalty free license for Ancora's patent in part because Mullor didn't tell Microsoft that he knew of the patent even while he knew that Microsoft was still developing its own similar technology.

The company also accused him of fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets and unjust enrichment.

Mullor calls Microsoft's action a retaliation suit. "These are shameful, dishonest attacks on my character by Microsoft -- the company that stole my idea in the first place," he said in the statement. "Microsoft fired me for trying to protect my own invention -- an invention I told them about before they ever hired me."

He claims that one person he pitched his product to at Microsoft before he started working there was involved with the development of Microsoft's activation technology.

Mullor is listed as chairman and founder of Ancora on its Web site, which as of midday on the West coast appeared to be offline. His biography included his time working for Microsoft and said that he once served in the Israeli Military Intelligence and has a law degree from an Israeli university.

Microsoft sez next-gen Zune hardware / software is still "on track"

Given just how shaky the economy as a whole has been of late, Microsoft's sour news in relation to the Zune isn't quite as shocking as it might be otherwise. That said, plenty of outlets publicly voiced their concern for the future of the line, but now Microsoft has hit back with assurance that everything's still moving ahead according to plan. In a recent interview, Adam Sohn, the Zune's director of marketing, said rather defensively that "every time anything comes up, there is a set of people who pull a Chicken Little and say, 'The Sky is Falling. Zune is dead.' " He continued by stating rather outrightly that Microsoft was "still on track to deliver the next generation of Zune innovation in software and hardware," noting that the planning was "fast and furious" and that "progress" would be delivered this calendar year. Welp, that settles that, huh?

Microsoft's Woes Can't Be Blamed on Vista

The personal good news for me recently was that one of my daughters is going back to college. The bad news: She wants a new laptop. Well, back when the economy and my stock portfolio were things of beauty, I would have said sure. But that was then. So I took a look at her old Dell Inspiron, figured out the costs of parts and additional memory, and got it running for about $100. That disappointed my kid but saved me a good $350 over the cost of a new machine.

Here's why I'm telling you this: Some analysts and even a news story here at Infoworld.com are blaming Vista for Microsoft's crummy second quarter and subsequent layoffs.

As much as I wish the folks in Redmond had done a better job building that dog of an OS -- and let us keep XP -- Vista is not to blame. As Bill Clinton used to say, it's the economy, stupid.

Slow PC Sales Sink Microsoft

Earlier this month, IDC totaled up fourth-quarter PC results and found that unit sales had declined by just under half a percent. This year, results will be worse, with sales off 5.3 percent, according to IDC.

Sales aren't off because buyers don't like Vista. Although I usually stay away from generalizing much from my personal experiences in the technology market, in this case, I'd say that my decision not to buy a new PC is probably right in line with that of many other non-buyers. Money is tight these days, and the flavor of the OS has nothing to do with it. Indeed, Mac sales are off as well, and we don't hear lots of complaints about OS X.

Having said that, I believe that if Vista had been a more successful product, PC sales would have been stronger soon after the OS debuted a few years ago. But had that sales surge come about, it would have flattened out by now.

The overall math is simple. Sales in the client division, which includes Windows, were off 8.1 percent while sales in the business division, which includes Office, were up just a bit: 1.3 percent. And since Windows and Office are the company cash cows, the quarter stank.

See the numbers for yourself.

Netbooks Steal PC Profits

Meanwhile, sales of netbooks are up. And despite earlier thinking that the low-priced machines will be supplements, not replacements, for more powerful computers, it isn't exactly working out that way. And remember, netbooks generally don't run Vista.

Microsoft doesn't disclose OEM pricing, but it's likely that netbook makers like Acer are paying significantly less for XP on their lean machines than they'd pay for Vista on a more powerful system. A recent story in BusinessWeek indicates that computer makers pay about $50 for Vista versus about $13 for XP on a netbook.

I can't verify those numbers, but they make sense. After all, Windows is generally the most expensive item on a bill of materials, and since netbooks are so cheap, the percentage of costs allocated to the operating system can't increase very much.

That's good news for Acer and netbook buyers, but not such great news for Microsoft, which loses out by not selling a higher-margin product to the PC maker. Similarly, Intel, which sells the relatively cheap Atom CPU to the netbook makers, is hurting as well.

Add it up. Vista is not the culprit. And with all due respect to the analysts and the writers who quoted them, you're wrong.

Microsoft: Zune Revenue Dropped by 54 Percent

Microsoft's fourth-quarter revenue from its Zune platform dropped by US$100 million, a decline of 54 percent on a year earlier.

Lower sales of Zune portable music players led to the decline, Microsoft said in a 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The Zune platform also includes the Zune Marketplace online store and the Zune Social online music community.

Microsoft launched Zune in November 2006 with the hope of posing a serious challenge to Apple's highly successful iPod franchise.

However, the iPod continues to outsell the Zune by a mile: Apple shipped 22.7 million iPods in the quarter ended Dec. 27, up 3 percent compared to a year earlier, it said in its 10-Q filing on Thursday. While shipments increased, iPod revenue for the fourth quarter was down 16 percent on a year earlier, as a result of price cuts and the introduction of cheaper models, Apple said.

The Zune sales decline raises questions about how long Microsoft will continue to invest in the platform. The company announced 5,000 layoffs and an 11 percent decline in its net income on Thursday.

Microsoft will continue to "invest in long-term opportunities," said the company's public relations agency in London -- but the agency declined to say whether Zune is one such opportunity.

Zune is part of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, whose overall revenue increased a modest 3 percent year on year for the quarter ended Dec. 31. Zune's contribution was around $85 million, in contrast with revenue of around $185 million a year earlier.

The overall revenue increase for the division was driven by sales of the Xbox 360 gaming platform. Although the Xbox system was reduced in price over the last year, Microsoft made it up in volume, selling 6 million consoles. For the second quarter a year prior, Microsoft said it sold 4.3 million consoles.

Microsoft Extends Windows 7 Beta into February

Microsoft last week extended the deadline for downloading the public beta of Windows 7 by more than two weeks, citing continued interest in the preview.

The move suggests that fewer than 2.5 million copies of the beta have been downloaded since Microsoft launched the Windows 7 preview January 10.

Although Microsoft had originally capped the downloads of Windows 7 beta at 2.5 million, after a rocky launch -- the company's servers were overloaded as frustrated users tried to download the preview -- the company lifted the limit and said it would offer the beta through January 24.

Late on that date, Microsoft changed its mind again.

"Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don't want anyone to miss out, we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10," said company spokesperson Brandon LeBlanc in a post to the Windows 7 blog .

LeBlanc didn't say whether the 2.5-million cap had been reached, noting only that, "We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers . . . so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability of Windows 7 Beta."

According to comments made earlier this month by a Microsoft IT evangelist, the decision to keep the beta download open is a clue that download demand has not yet reached the 2.5-million mark. Two weeks ago, Kevin Remdes, a company evangelist, said that if the cap was not reached by today, downloads would continue "until the limit is reached."

Microsoft was not available for comment Saturday on whether the cap had been reached or surpassed, or to answer questions about how many copies it has provided users to this point.

Windows 7 beta availability will be shut down in stages, LeBlanc said. While the beta will be pulled from Microsoft's servers at the end of the day February 10, users who have already begun the download by then will have two more days, through February 12, to complete the process.

Users can pause the Windows 7 beta download and resume it later; an interrupted download -- perhaps due to a severed Internet connection -- can also be resumed at the point it was halted.

Activation keys will be available indefinitely for users who finished downloading the disk image file before February 12. Even users unable or unwilling to activate the beta, however, can install and run Windows 7 for up to 120 days without a key by using the same "slmgr -rearm" command that gained notoriety after Windows Vista 's debut.

Subscribers to the TechNet and Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) will be able to download the beta after the February deadlines imposed on the general public, LeBlanc added.

Users can download Windows 7 from the Microsoft site after selecting the 32- or 64-bit version, and the desired language.

Microsoft last week extended the deadline for downloading the public beta of Windows 7 by more than two weeks, citing continued interest in the preview.

The move suggests that fewer than 2.5 million copies of the beta have been downloaded since Microsoft launched the Windows 7 preview January 10.

Although Microsoft had originally capped the downloads of Windows 7 beta at 2.5 million, after a rocky launch -- the company's servers were overloaded as frustrated users tried to download the preview -- the company lifted the limit and said it would offer the beta through January 24.

Late on that date, Microsoft changed its mind again.

"Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don't want anyone to miss out, we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10," said company spokesperson Brandon LeBlanc in a post to the Windows 7 blog .

LeBlanc didn't say whether the 2.5-million cap had been reached, noting only that, "We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers . . . so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability of Windows 7 Beta."

According to comments made earlier this month by a Microsoft IT evangelist, the decision to keep the beta download open is a clue that download demand has not yet reached the 2.5-million mark. Two weeks ago, Kevin Remdes, a company evangelist, said that if the cap was not reached by today, downloads would continue "until the limit is reached."

Microsoft was not available for comment Saturday on whether the cap had been reached or surpassed, or to answer questions about how many copies it has provided users to this point.

Windows 7 beta availability will be shut down in stages, LeBlanc said. While the beta will be pulled from Microsoft's servers at the end of the day February 10, users who have already begun the download by then will have two more days, through February 12, to complete the process.

Users can pause the Windows 7 beta download and resume it later; an interrupted download -- perhaps due to a severed Internet connection -- can also be resumed at the point it was halted.

Activation keys will be available indefinitely for users who finished downloading the disk image file before February 12. Even users unable or unwilling to activate the beta, however, can install and run Windows 7 for up to 120 days without a key by using the same "slmgr -rearm" command that gained notoriety after Windows Vista 's debut.

Subscribers to the TechNet and Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) will be able to download the beta after the February deadlines imposed on the general public, LeBlanc added.

Users can download Windows 7 from the Microsoft site after selecting the 32- or 64-bit version, and the desired language.

Microsoft: Zune Revenue Dropped by 54 Percent

Microsoft's fourth-quarter revenue from its Zune platform dropped by US$100 million, a decline of 54 percent on a year earlier.

Lower sales of Zune portable music players led to the decline, Microsoft said in a 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The Zune platform also includes the Zune Marketplace online store and the Zune Social online music community.

Microsoft launched Zune in November 2006 with the hope of posing a serious challenge to Apple's highly successful iPod franchise.

However, the iPod continues to outsell the Zune by a mile: Apple shipped 22.7 million iPods in the quarter ended Dec. 27, up 3 percent compared to a year earlier, it said in its 10-Q filing on Thursday. While shipments increased, iPod revenue for the fourth quarter was down 16 percent on a year earlier, as a result of price cuts and the introduction of cheaper models, Apple said.

The Zune sales decline raises questions about how long Microsoft will continue to invest in the platform. The company announced 5,000 layoffs and an 11 percent decline in its net income on Thursday.

Microsoft will continue to "invest in long-term opportunities," said the company's public relations agency in London -- but the agency declined to say whether Zune is one such opportunity.

Zune is part of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, whose overall revenue increased a modest 3 percent year on year for the quarter ended Dec. 31. Zune's contribution was around $85 million, in contrast with revenue of around $185 million a year earlier.

The overall revenue increase for the division was driven by sales of the Xbox 360 gaming platform. Although the Xbox system was reduced in price over the last year, Microsoft made it up in volume, selling 6 million consoles. For the second quarter a year prior, Microsoft said it sold 4.3 million consoles.

The End for Microsoft Flight Simulator?

Despite the demoralizing sack of Flight Simulator series developer ACES per Microsoft's 5,000 jobs attrition plan, Microsoft says it remains "committed" to the Flight Simulator franchise. Make that a well-worn franchise, in computer game years -- perhaps the oldest.

It started with University of Illinois whiz kid Bruce Artwick in the late 1970s. Artwick's the guy who got the idea on its feet. Most folks peg Flight Simulator's birth in 1982, when Artwick officially licensed the series to Microsoft, but he was actually selling copies per his startup subLOGIC ("the computer flight people") in 1980 for the Apple II. In fact that's how I remember it: As an Apple program first.

My first serious run at the sim wasn't until 1991 on a 386. I'm sure some of you could trump me with your TRS-80s and Commodore 64s (there were versions for them, too). Sure, I had a C-64, but I didn't really catch the flying bug until Flight Simulator 3.0.

"But wasn't 4.0 out in 1991?"

It was – it came out in 1989, actually – but my CompuAdd 386sx/16 (no math co-processor, a paltry 8MB of RAM, a barely cognizant video card) ran version 4.0 like a donkey towing a freight truck. It's a "problem" that's followed the series through the decades. Until guys like id Software and Doom or Quake, you could even say Flight Sim was the benchmark for games performance (even if it's never really been a game).

Over the years I've dabbled with different versions and enthusiast peripherals – a pair of rudder pedals here, a flight yoke there. But it wasn't until Flight Simulator X that I finally took the plunge and built the home cockpit, stuck a piece of metal on my head to signal an infrared head-tracking gadget, bought a bomber jacket, signed up for private pilot's lessons, took an actual Cessna 172B Skyhawk up for a spin, and started working through Jeff Van West and Kevin Lane-Cummings's surprisingly applicative Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training.

You see, I'm actually afraid to fly. Terrified, really.

You might say Flight Simulator's been a form of therapy, then. A place to park the usual psychological control issues by taking control in a virtual safe space. Learning how everything fits together got me back in the air after nearly a decade being grounded. It's true what they say – understanding how things work and why, can completely transfigure your perspective.

So when Microsoft responded to my request last week for more information about the ACES shutdown with an ambivalent "We can say that you should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games," I was pretty bummed. Variations of the same sentence have been circulating around other news sites. It's the company water being carried.

Which, being water, tastes like everything or nothing. "Flying games" is just a catchall for whatever you want it to be, from wingtips and ailerons to jetpacks and anti-gravity belts and magic carpets.

I have no problem with arcade games like Microsoft's Crimson Skies, but it's not my bag. "Sky-Doom" has its momentary appeal, but I've never much cared for aerial combat (much less aviation 101) with D&D physics and thumbsticks.

Microsoft has to do what's right for Microsoft, of course, and whether that's relaunching the franchise internally or licensing it out to former studio members, here's hoping the folks at ACES land on their feet.

In the meantime, maybe it's time to consider the alternatives. I've been meaning to give X-Plane a go and test the community claim that its "blade element theory" flight model beats all.

Who knows. One franchise's shakeup could bring about the rise of another.

Microsoft aiming to recover lost ground in mobile

Microsoft has made some stumbles in the mobile world, but a strategy shift made more than a year ago will soon pay dividends, the company's top Windows Mobile executive said in an interview with CNET News.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discusses his Windows Mobile offerings earlier this month at CES in Las Vegas.

Andy Lees, the executive brought over from the server unit a year ago, said that Microsoft's efforts to make sure that its mobile software could run on a wide range of phones resulted in an operating system that failed to take advantage of advances in hardware.

"We aimed to go for a lower common denominator," Lees said. Microsoft was also limited by the origins of Windows Mobile, which was developed to power handheld computers that neither connected to a network nor handled voice.

"We started out when we were in PDAs (personal digital assistants) and then a phone got strapped to the back of the PDA," Lees said. The company also failed to recognize that phones--even those that were used for business--were still as much personal as they were professional.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google have joined the fray with operating systems designed from the ground up to take advantage of the latest in phone technology.