Microsoft

The final version of Silverlight 3 has been released to the Web, a day ahead of the product's launch event in San Francisco.

The release, noted by enthusiast site Neowin, marks Microsoft's latest effort to take on Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft detailed Silverlight 3 at the Mix09 event in March, releasing a beta version of the software.

Among the product's new features is technology that allows the software to utilize a PC's hardware to accelerate graphics processing. It also allows for programs that run outside a browser on both the PC and Mac.

NBC has said it will use Silverlight to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver. The technology will allow the Games to be broadcast in 720p HD quality as well as provide a TiVo-like ability to pause and rewind a live stream.

I'm not sure "spell check this" has the same ring as "I'll be back," but I have enjoyed the series of promo videos for Office 2010 that try to cast the software as the plot of an action movie.

Microsoft has a series of videos pitching Office 2010 as if it were an action flick.

(Credit: CNET)

The latest installment shows the grave of Clippy, the oft-mocked help tool that has been absent from recent versions of the productivity software.

It also features an interrogation to find the missing font. However, the female captive will give up only that it is somewhere between "Arial" and "Wingdings." (I guess that rules out Zapf Chancery.)

Anyway, if you are into computer nerd fun like me, it's worth a watch.

For those who want more hard-core information on the next Office, you shouldn't have to wait too long. Microsoft has said it will have a technical preview of the software this month. The software maker says it is taking sign-ups for that invitation-only release on its Office 2010: The Movie Web site.

Steven Sinofsky is set to gain further control over Microsoft's Windows business, Microsoft confirmed on Wednesday.

Sinofsky will become division president, assuming both business and technical responsibility for Microsoft's flagship operating system, according to Microsoft.

Sinofsky

(Credit: Microsoft)

He had been jointly running the Windows business with Senior Vice President Bill Veghte, with Sinofsky leading the engineering team and Veghte running the business side. Veghte is slated to move to a new, unspecified role within Microsoft.

"Steven Sinofsky has demonstrated the ability to lead large teams that deliver great products," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. "The work he and the team have done in getting ready to ship Windows 7 really defines how to develop and ship world-class software. He is a perfect fit to lead the Windows group."

In addition, Microsoft said that Windows division CFO Tami Reller will take on marketing duties.

Microsoft noted in its press release that the transition of marketing duties from Veghte to Reller will take place after Windows 7 is finalized "in late July"--thereby throwing cold water on rumors that Microsoft would declare the code final in time for next week's Worldwide Partner Conference. Windows 7 is set to go on sale on new PCs and to hit retail shelves on Oct. 22..

The executive shuffle was noted earlier on Wednesday by Seattle-area tech news site TechFlash.

Veghte and Sinofsky had both reported to division president Kevin Johnson, but Johnson left almost a year ago to become CEO of Juniper Networks.

The announcement also comes within 24 hours of Google confirming that it plans to launch its own Chrome operating system, although the executive move had been in the works for some time.

Update, 1:07 p.m. PDT: Here's the memo from Ballmer to Microsoft's staff regarding the executive shifts.

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 11:55 AM
To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Windows Management Changes

Windows is one of the franchise brands and products for Microsoft. Each new version of Windows is a visible and significant milestone for the company. We will soon finish Windows 7 and hand it off to our partners for general availability on October 22nd.

With this transition, we want to ensure we are setting up for the next release and continue the market leadership and momentum that we have with Windows today. Accordingly, I am pleased to announce today that Steven Sinofsky will be promoted to President of the Windows Division. Windows 7 is receiving terrific feedback from customers, partners, analysts alike, and the entire Windows team has done a great job.

With this promotion, Steven assumes responsibility for the Windows business including both the engineering and marketing functions for Windows, Windows Live and Internet Explorer. Jon DeVaan will continue in his role as senior vice president, reporting to Steven. In this role, Jon will continue to manage the engineering team responsible for creating the core components of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and is responsible for the PC ecosystem engagement and technical readiness.

We are also pleased to announce today that Tami Reller, currently CFO for the Windows Division, will take on the additional responsibility of marketing for the Windows Division. Tami brings a strong background in delivering successful brands to market, most recently with the introduction of Dynamics in her previous role as marketing vice president for MBS.

Tami takes over the marketing responsibility from Bill Veghte who will take a new leadership role in the company to be announced later this year. Bill and Tami will work closely together through this month to ensure we deliver on the momentum currently building for the launch of Windows 7.

Under Bill's leadership, the team has re-energized our approach to marketing and selling Windows and the PC, built stronger relationships with our partners and has laid the right plans for delivering Windows 7 into the market. In particular, the "I'm a PC" campaign has really helped energize the brand and create emotional connections between our product and our customers. Bill has a long track record of success at Microsoft in a variety of capacities and we look forward to his continued contributions.

As we start the new fiscal year, we do so with a full slate of great products, healthy businesses and strong leadership. We would like to recognize Steven, Bill and Jon for their leadership of Windows and congratulate Tami on her new expanded role.

Steve

The announcement of Google's Chrome OS plan puts an exclamation point on the challenge faced by Microsoft, but actually doesn't really change the core threat to Microsoft.

In short, Google is aiming to render desktop software irrelevant. To thwart them, Microsoft needs Windows to do things that a browser can't--or do the same things significantly better.

Interestingly, if Microsoft wants some tips on how to do this, it might want to look toward Apple. Essentially, this has been Apple's challenge all along: make the Mac experience enough better than a generic PC that it is worth the added cost.

The Mac's resurgence came when it had a strong OS--Mac OS X--combined with iLife applications that really nailed the experience for the tasks that people wanted to do on their computer at the time.

If Microsoft wants a blueprint on how to make the PC worth paying for, it might want to take a page from Apple's playbook.

(Credit: Apple)

This is an area where Windows has been languishing in recent years. Although most people wouldn't want to give up their favorite desktop applications (Windows or Mac), the Web has been gaining ground. Even areas that were once squarely in the desktop's domain--such as photo editing, productivity software, and personal finance--are making their way onto the Web. What Windows really needs is a new generation of killer apps.

Microsoft also has to do something that Apple doesn't--aim for the masses. Part of Apple's success story has been about choosing its battles and accepting that it can't win everywhere. The Windows model depends on ubiquity, so it needs answers with nearly universal appeal.

One area where Microsoft has been investing is around the area of doing the same things better. Its focus on touch screens in Windows 7 is an example of this. Although multitouch is likely to remain a niche in the short term, it shows the power that a desktop interface can have.

Microsoft also needs to minimize the downsides associated with Windows. On that score, Microsoft has made significant strides with Windows 7. The operating system boots quicker and behaves better than its predecessor.

On the Office side, Microsoft needs to create software that is enough better than Google's that companies want to pay for it.

Next week, Microsoft is expected to talk more about Office 2010, the next version of Office, which is due out next year. Microsoft is taking a two-pronged approach.

First, it is taking Google Apps head-on with lightweight browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that can run on Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

It will offer them to consumers via its Windows Live service--a service that today is free--and businesses will also be able to give the browser-based apps to their workers.

But Microsoft is also doing more on the desktop, adding in the kinds of features it hopes will make the Office suite worth paying for.

The path for Microsoft is clear. The big question, though, is whether Google will be able to be "good enough."

Microsoft has some time, but not a ton. Google's operating system won't even arrive on PCs until the second half of next year. Plus, for now, Windows has the advantage of legacy application support--i.e., businesses and consumers want to run their existing programs. But to stay in front for years to come, it will have to do better than that. It needs to figure out--and quick--the next set of tasks users want to do with their computer and how to make those tasks demonstrably better on a PC.

The company also has another option as well. It can work on Windows' successor. It could be that it needs a lightweight browser-based OS of its own.

Indeed, the thinking beyond its Gazelle research project is that the browser needs to be more like an operating system. In that case, the browser doesn't actually take on the operating system's complete role, but rather relies on Windows. However, Microsoft has other operating system work under way as well, including its top-secret Midori project.

My guess is Microsoft will take both approaches, but hold off on the latter unless and until it needs to. That's pretty much what Microsoft has done with Office vis-a-vis Google Apps. It was only after large business customers started threatening to go to Google Apps that Microsoft conceded that it needed to offer full-on browser apps.

There was already little doubt that Google was aiming at Microsoft's empire, but the announcement of a Chrome OS takes the competition to a new level.

For those who missed it, Google said late Tuesday that it plans to enter the operating system game in the second half of next year with a Linux-based OS that can run on both traditional PC chips and the ARM-based chips popular in cell phones. The idea behind Chrome OS is to create an extremely lightweight operating system that boots directly to the browser, in which all applications run.

In a blog, Google lists the advantages of such an approach.

"People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, wrote in the blog. "They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates."

While it is hard to deny the appeal of those attributes, it's worth pointing out that some awfully big names have taken that approach and seen it fail.

Notably, it's the same pitch Apple initially made with the iPhone. There was no need for direct access to the phone's operating system, Apple said. Developers could simply write Web apps.

Even on the iPhone, developers and users demanded more.

That said, this is Google--and Google brings a considerably larger arsenal. With Google Gears, Google Native Client, and a host of other projects, Google is trying to blunt many of the browser's shortcomings, including the inability to fully tap local processing and storage.

This effort will take time, as Google itself acknowledges, but the company's full-frontal assault on Windows is definitely out in the open.

Obviously, this will be a fun one to watch. I've asked Microsoft for its take, and I hope to have more to say once I've had a chance to sleep on all this--literally.

Microsoft has had "preliminary talks" with European Union officials with the hopes of settling several regulatory probes, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to the report, Microsoft is aiming to settle the matters before EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes steps down at the end of the year. One issue is the EU's well-publicized concern over the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows, while the other pertains to Office software, Bloomberg said.

The EU earlier this year issued a preliminary finding that the inclusion of a browser in the operating system violated European antitrust law and has been exploring a variety of potential remedies, including forcing Microsoft to distribute rival browsers with its operating system.

Last month, CNET News reported that Microsoft was planning to ship Windows 7 in Europe only in versions that had the browser feature removed, aiming to sidestep regulatory action. However, both the EU and rivals issued concern over that approach.

As for the Office inquiry, Microsoft has said it was opened in January 2008 and resulted from complaints filed by a trade association of Microsoft's competitors.

An EU spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report of settlement talks and a Microsoft representative declined to comment. Both Microsoft and an EU spokesman declined to comment in the Bloomberg report.

Many people think that the browser is starting to replace the operating system as the center of the personal computer.

Naturally, the view that Windows is on a path to irrelevance is not one generally espoused by Microsoft. That said, at least some inside Redmond's walls argue that the Web browser needs to start acting more like an operating system.

Helen Wang

(Credit: Microsoft)

"Some of today's browser policies are not very safe," says Microsoft researcher Helen Wang.

Wang, who has been at Microsoft since getting her doctorate from University of California at Berkeley in 2001, argues that the Web browser should act as more than just a file clerk that rubber-stamps each request that comes its way. Rather, it should act more like a traffic cop, keeping things moving smoothly and ensuring that the computer's resources are fairly allocated.

In short, Wang says, the browser needs to act more like Windows does--making sure that different Web applications are protected from one another--even those running within the same site. So Wang and her team came up with a prototype, called Gazelle, that does just that.

Microsoft first outlined Gazelle earlier this year, but has only recently started to detail its thinking. Wang plans to present a paper on Gazelle at the Usenix security conference next month, and last week Microsoft posted an article on its Web site explaining more about Gazelle.

Wang isn't trying to suggest Windows is going away. Indeed, she says, Gazelle depends on Windows, acting merely as the middleman for Web pages seeking to access a computer's resources.

"We're really trying to leverage the decades of operating system experience and apply that in the Web and browser setting," Wang said.

Microsoft is also trying to be clear that Gazelle is not the immediate replacement for Internet Explorer, which has been losing share to rivals, including Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari. The company has yet to commit to commercializing Gazelle in any way, meaning it remains just one of scores of projects incubating inside the company's research labs.

Many outside Redmond, though, see the browser finally starting to take on the preeminence that many had assumed it might back in the early days of Netscape. Google's decision to offer Chrome, some think, was more about having an engine for running its Web applications than it was offering an alternative means for serving up traditional Web pages.

Modern browsers, Wang said, have taken a step in the right direction by isolating different browser tabs so that if one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn't get taken with it. Wang said that Chrome and Microsoft's IE 8 take steps toward increasing the reliability of Web browsing, but she argues far more drastic steps are needed.

"I think Gazelle marks a significant departure from all previous browsers, including Chrome and IE 8," Wang said.

For now, Gazelle is very much a prototype. It borrows much of its actual rendering technology from Internet Explorer itself. And although it can display 19 of Alexa's top 20 Web sites, there are still plenty of things it can't do. It also runs more slowly than Internet Explorer, particularly when opening new Web sites.

But Wang said it offers Microsoft--and the industry--a road map for how the Browser should evolve.

"I think this is the right way to go and I think this can be practical," Wang said. "It will also take a lot of work."

Going from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is relatively straightforward. So one might think that moving from a pre-release version of Windows 7 to the final version would also be simple.

One would be wrong.

That's because the upgrade versions of the Windows operating system (the cheapest way to move to the final version) check for a previous, non-test version of Windows on the drive. That means, if a user did a clean installation of Windows 7 on their test system (as recommended by Microsoft), that same user will have to back up their data, reinstall their original operating system (XP or Vista), then install Windows 7, restore their data, and then reinstall their applications.

For testers who were running XP, that means doing a clean installation of Windows XP over their Windows 7 test build and then a clean installation of Windows 7 over that. Vista users have the option of reinstalling that operating system and then doing an in-place upgrade or a clean installation of Windows 7.

Testers looking to move from a test version of Windows 7 to the final product may find the move not only costly, but time consuming.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft says that, for what it's worth, that's roughly the same thing that was required for those moving from pre-release versions of Windows Vista to the final release.

Even so, it's an unfortunate burden for those who have provided lots of feedback and indeed been some of the operating system's biggest champions. Users were also pushed to do a fresh installation when moving from Windows 7 beta to the latest test version, although some users found ways around having to do this.

It's just one of several scenarios in which users may find getting to Windows 7 to be a tricky proposition. In general, most people get Windows through buying a new PC. But there are still plenty of folks who decide to update their existing machines.

That's proving to be tricky, not just for testers, but also for people who want to upgrade their Netbooks. That's because such machines, by their nature, don't come with a DVD drive. However, a source says Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 via flash drive--a move that could make that upgrade easier.

Microsoft is also trying to lower the other barrier to those moving from a test version to the final Windows 7--the cost. The software maker has a limited promotion--through July 11 in the U.S.--that lets people buy an upgrade copy of Windows 7 for as low as $49.

As for those who haven't been testing Windows 7, Microsoft notes that the upgrade version of Windows 7 just looks for a copy of Windows XP or Vista, so users don't need to find their original system discs. It should be able to tell by looking at the hard drive.

Users can also use the upgrade as a chance to move to a higher-end or lower-end version of Windows. To move from Windows Vista Home Basic, for example, to Windows 7 Home Premium, a user need buy only the upgrade version of Windows 7. Likewise, one could move from Windows XP Home to Windows 7 Professional just by purchasing that upgrade version.

Moving down in versions is also possible, say from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional. However, with any downgrade, a clean installation is required.

Although Windows 7 won't go on sale until October, Microsoft is actually slated to be done with the code that ships on those first PCs within a couple of weeks.

Some enthusiast sites are predicting that Microsoft will peg the release-to-manufacturing date of Windows 7 to July 13, the start of the company's Worldwide Partner Conference. A report on GeekSmack.net suggests that Microsoft will finish the OS by the 13th and post the software to its MSDN and TechNet developer sites shortly thereafter.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Although the timing would certainly be convenient, it's also the case that Microsoft is primarily focused on making sure it has stamped out any last-minute bugs.

Microsoft said when it announced the October ship date for Windows 7 that it would have to finalize the code and get it to computer makers by the second half of July.

To meet that goal, Microsoft is no doubt doing long-term regression testing on any builds it thinks could be the final one.

Another Windows 7 date to keep in mind is July 11. That's when Microsoft plans to end a preorder program through which people can buy an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium for $49 or Windows 7 Professional for $99. The software maker has also said that preorders could end earlier if it hits a predetermined sales level, although it hasn't said how many copies it is willing to sell.

The preorder program has been a hit on Amazon, where the Home Premium upgrade remains the top seller in both the software section as well as the overall "computers and add-ons" category.

Microsoft appears likely to offer a "Family Pack" version of Windows 7, according to language in a leaked test version of the operating system.

This week enthusiasts started buzzing over wording in the license agreement in the test build that suggests Microsoft will have an option to buy a license for Windows 7 that covers up to three PCs in the same household.

Wording in a leaked test version of Windows 7 suggests that a long-anticipated Family Pack option may become reality.

(Credit: Microsoft)

According to blogger Kristan Kenney, the license agreement included with the recently leaked version states that "if you are a 'Qualified Family Pack User', you may install one copy of the software marked as 'Family Pack' on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there."

Microsoft would neither confirm nor deny that it plans to offer the family pack.

"We will continue to work with our partners and expect to have other great offers in the future as we lead up to and beyond general availability," a representative said. "We have nothing to announce at this time."

Since 2002, Apple has offered a Mac OS X family pack that covers up to five Macs in the same house. Microsoft briefly offered a deal with Windows Vista that allowed Vista Ultimate buyers to purchase discounted copies of Vista Home Premium for additional PCs, but discontinued that offer after just a few months.

Vista Ultimate users are already upset that Microsoft's first discount offer for Windows 7 allows for discounted upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional, but offers no upgrade options for them. Microsoft said it may have more offers, but users will have to gamble if they want to skip the current pre-order program.

That option allows $49 upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium and $99 upgrades to Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft said that those deals will be offered only until July 11.

Windows 7 is slated to arrive on store shelves and new PCs on Oct. 22.