Daily Debrief: For Microsoft, one step forward, two steps back

Tuesday brought a mixed bag of Microsoft news. On the Daily Debrief, I sit down with CNET News senior writer Ina Fried to discuss the good, the bad, and the downright embarrassing.

Let's start with the good. The company announced the pricing of the new, pay-as-you-go business apps for the Web. The whole suite of business tools, which includes a variety of office communication tools, will run you $15 a month. Individually, the apps will go for $3 a pop. Ina suspects these tools will be very handy for professionals on the go or for companies who choose not to employ IT support.

The bad and embarrassing news is all wrapped into one. On Tuesday, the company launched the Vista Compatibility Center. Yes, you read that right. We're still talking about Vista, the operating system that Microsoft released 18 months ago. The need for the Center speaks volumes about consumers' slow adoption of the OS. Ina makes the point that if this were Apple, the company would have already moved on to a new cat. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the online Center was down and unavailable for most of the morning.

[FS1982!]

Hehehehehe...........hehehehhehehehe...................hehehehehehe. I love my iMac, just wish my work did too!

[JCPayne]

1) I hope the centre is equipped with enough telephones and bandwidth to keep the place churning something tells me it may need some magic fairy pixi dust to get all those problems resolved.....

2) If the Vista centre is involved in releasing patches, something tells me they will easily break FireFox's download record....