Recent
Articles |
Enabling IIS 5.1 on Windows XP Pro
Windows XP Home Edition does not support IIS.
Thoughts on Microsoft's Future
The recent Microsoft news (Scoble leaving, Gates
taking a reduced role, Ray Ozzie stepping up) combined
with...
Microsoft Taking On JPEG
Microsoft
has unveiled its new image compression format,
called Windows Media Photo, which will be...
Symantec Sues Microsoft
Symantec has sued Microsoft, claiming that it is violating a 1996 agreement with Veritas, which Symantec bought last year for $10.2 billion.
Monad Command Line Shell Becomes...
"Power Rangers"… Uh, I Mean "PowerShell" . Microsoft has given its command line interface/scripting language product Monad a brand name.
Make XP Media Center Look Like Vista
Green Button community member CM_MC has created a theme for Windows XP's Media Center that gives it some of Windows Vista Media Center's stylings.
Media Player 11 Expected This June
CNet
reports that the Windows XP version of Windows
Media Player 11 is scheduled to arrive...
Vista Pirates Won’t Get Aero Glass
Microsoft has come out with a new weapon in their war on piracy: Aero Glass.
Run XP on a Mac? Cool!
Apple today announced Boot Camp, which lets you
run Windows XP on one of those new Macintoshes...
Windows XP Hibernate Bug Solved!
Oh, thank god thank god thank god thank god!
Everybody Needs A “Vista-Capable” PC Logo
Aviran
shows an image of the "Designed for Windows
XP / Windows Vista Capable" logo that manufacturers
will start slapping on new PCs to indicate...
Vista 60 Percent Rewrite Is All Speculation
A report from an Australian publication citing a source at Acer Australia claimed up to 60 percent of the Windows Vista code needed to be rewritten, and Xbox engineers were being moved over to help with the programming.
|
|
|
07.13.06
A Nail In The Coffin For Windows 98
 By Doug Caverly
From this day forward, users of Windows 98 and Windows ME may be on their own. Microsoft will stop offering updates and support (even of the "paid" variety) for these products. The company seems to be hoping this will lead to increased sales of newer Windows versions.
"Microsoft works closely with leading retailers to undertake promotions such as upgrade discounts to encourage users to upgrade to Windows XP," said Peter Watson, chief security advisor of Microsoft Australia, to ZDNet Australia. But there are some who believe this move could lead users to switch to Linux.
Michael Silver, the research vice president of client platforms at Gartner, is of this opinion. "I suspect that Microsoft's original extension of the Windows 98 support date a couple of years ago was, in part, to make sure Linux was not brought in to replace these systems," Silver said, according to CNET. Support of the operating system was initially due to be cut off in late 2003.
Mikko Hyponnen of the Finnish security firm F-Secure isn't sure that users of the older operating systems need to upgrade at all, whether to a newer version of Windows or Linux. Speaking to Mark Ward of the BBC, he said, "In fact, 98 users are not at that great a risk as people might think: most of the new malware we see simply won't run there."
Nonetheless, this act may leave a lot of people feeling abandoned. The BBC reported that "more than 70 million users will be hit by the change."
Ballmer Hints At Launch Date For Next Windows
By Doug Caverly
Microsoft is arguably king of the delayed product launch. From older versions of Windows to the latest Office and Vista releases, things often come out much later than was first scheduled. But Steve Ballmer has assured the world there will never again be as much of a wait as there was (and is) between Windows XP and Vista.
Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, made this comment at a conference. "I think it's probably important for me to tell our partners that, rest assured, we will never have a gap between Windows releases as long as the one between XP and Windows Vista," Ballmer said, as reported by USA Today. "Count on it. I can go through the history of how we got through here, but just count on it. We will never have this kind of gap again."
Vista's release was most recently pushed back into January, which means Microsoft will miss the holiday season. A lot of vendors were upset to lose those Christmas sales, and many software and hardware manufacturers were also displeased. Bill Gates has spoken up in defense of the delay.
"We got to get this absolutely right," Gates said. "If the feedback from the beta tests shows it is not ready for prime time, I'd be glad to delay it." According to USA Today, the Microsoft chairman thought "there was an 80% chance that Vista would be ready in January."
XP was released on October 25, 2001. Therefore, assuming Vista is released in January (or soon thereafter), Ballmer's promise means we'd see the next version of Windows before midyear of 2012. And so, for whatever that's worth, there it is.
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news. |
