Visual Studio 2008 To Ship A Half-Year Early
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TechWeb - The software will ship this summer. It had been scheduled for February, along with major upgrades of Windows Server and SQL Server.
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Microsoft Corp. will announce the release date of the next version of its Exchange Server in the first half of 2005, but until the upgrade arrives users can expect more management tools for existing versions, a company executive said this week.
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A native version of the free OpenOffice.org productivity suite for OS X may ship next year.
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Microsoft has announced that start shipping its next version of its Windows operating system in 2006. However to meet the new tight deadline a number of technical innovations will have to be dropped from the OS.
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Microsoft will releaseWindows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)&#160;on Monday, Feb. 4, according to reports Friday from Tech ARP.com, a Malaysian Web site.Vista SP1 will make RTM on Monday, said Tech ARP, with computer makers receiving media later in the week to install the updated operating system on new laptops and desktops. Bits will also be posted for download on Monday, the site claimed.&quot;Microsoft will be deploying SP1 in two &#39;waves,&#39;&quot; said Tech ARP. The first, on Monday, will include just five of the 36 available language packs -- English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The second wave, slated for one to two weeks later, will include all 36 language packs.Previously, Microsoft has said it would break SP1 into two stand-alone installers for businesses: a 450MB package that includes the five packs and a 550MB installer that offers three-dozen languages. Both are expected to be available for download from Microsoft&#39;s Web site.SP1 will also be offered to users through Windows Update, Microsoft Update and presumably Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). That update will weigh in at around 65MB. Microsoft explained the smaller size in a change log posted to its support site: &quot;Windows Update ... utilizes an efficient transfer mechanism to download only the actual bytes changed.&quot;Microsoft last issued an SP1 build on Jan. 24, when it updated the code offered to an invite-only group of approximately 15,000 testers. That build, along with one the week before, gave credence to accounts that SP1&#39;s pace had quickened, and that the service pack&#39;s release was imminent. At that time, a report out of Taiwan pegged SP1&#39;s RTM as Feb. 15.Microsoft repeated Saturday what it has said all along: Vista SP1 would go final in the first quarter of 2008, which ends March 31.&quot;We are targeting to deliver SP1 RTM in Q1 CY08,&quot; a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. Representatives of the Windows Server team, however, were not available for comment. The company has previously announced plans to launch Windows Server 2008 on Feb. 27 at an event in Los Angeles.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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BREAKING NEWS - In the clearest sign to date that not all is well in the state of Redmond, Microsoft cheerfully announced this morning that the release date for Windows Server 2008 is being pushed back to Q1 2008.
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A Microsoft vice president confirmed this week that the company intends to ship a new version of Office, referred to internally as Office 12, in the next 12 to 24 months.
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Microsoft is planning to ship its next major version of Windows--known internally as version "7"--within roughly three years, CNET News.com has learned.
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Microsoft will announce Thursday morning the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. According to Scott Guthrie, the general manager of Microsoft's Developer Division, the release will be nearly feature complete  and will likely be the last major release before the product is released to manufacturing in preparation for its launch on February 27, 2008.
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At Microsoft's annual conference for business partners, company executives said new versions of Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio will be launched simultaneously next February.
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The wait is nearly over for the first service pack for Windows Vista, according to sources close to Microsoft.Microsoft has said the highly anticipated service pack would be out in the first quarter of this year, but some say it could be available in the next few weeks, more than a month before the quarter ends on March 31.A Taiwanese news outlet Wednesday reported in a story that Vista SP1 would be released Feb. 15, but &quot;that date is as good as any other,&quot; said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. &quot;For all we know, they could make it available tomorrow.&quot;Through its public relations agency Wednesday, Microsoft declined to comment on the Feb. 15 date beyond reiterating the software would be available in the first quarter. Still, several sources who work closely with Microsoft said a mid-February release is not unlikely, and they expect the software to be out before the end of March.Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis for the NPD Group, said that analysts have heard Feb. 15 as the target for SP1, but it&#39;s not something Microsoft would confirm publicly to give itself time to make adjustments in case of negative feedback on the current release of the software.Microsoft released Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) in December but then refreshed that software in a public release earlier this month.Several Microsoft partners said they could not confirm Feb. 15 as the date for SP1&#39;s release, but said they expect the software soon for a number of reasons.One of those is the strength of the release candidate, said Brian Randell, a senior consultant with MCW Technologies in Los Angeles. He has been using the SP1 RC, and it&#39;s stable and running well so, &quot;I can&#39;t see why [the final release] wouldn&#39;t be out soon.&quot;Microsoft&#39;s hesitancy to give a firm date for SP1 means the company is confident it can get the final release out on time, said Andrew Brust, chief, new technology for consulting firm twentysix New York. However, he agreed with NPD&#39;s Swenson that the company wants to give itself room for last-minute changes. &quot;They are not ready to promise anything beyond Q1,&quot; he said. Brust is a regional director of Microsoft partners and works closely with the company.Many believe the SP1 milestone is the one that will bring about a new wave of adoption for Vista, especially among business customers that have been awaiting the service pack&#39;s release before updating employee desktops. The combination of SP1 and Windows Server 2008, due out on Feb. 27, is expected to bode well for Vista adoption in the enterprise and medium-sized business sectors.One date Cherry said Microsoft probably won&#39;t release SP1 is the next Patch Tuesday, Feb. 12. Patch Tuesday refers to the second Tuesday of every month when Microsoft sends out software patches and updates via its automatic updating services.&quot;Hopefully, they would keep the release of monthly patches separate from the release of a service pack,&quot; Cherry said.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is planning to add the ability to develop Windows Live applications to its Visual Studio toolkit as a way to build more of a developer base for its online services platform. The company is adding controls to Visual Studio 2008 that will allow developers to connect Windows Live services to new applications they're building, said Adam Sohn, a director in the Online Services Group at Microsoft. The company is currently testing the technology internally and may also include it in the current 2005 version of Visual Studio, but that is yet to be determined, he said. A public beta of the technology is expected in October or November, Sohn said. Details of the Windows Live toolkit first appeared online a public interview posted on the LiveSide blog with Angus Logan, a Microsoft technical program manager. Microsoft Monday confirmed that the interview was done at the Mix U.K. '07 conference last week. In the interview, Logan indicated that Microsoft would discuss the technology at the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas in early November. Windows Live is the brand name for set of Web-based services -- such as search, instant-messaging, e-mail, blogging, and photo-sharing -- Microsoft offers, but the company also considers Windows Live a development platform in the same way its Windows OS and Office applications are a platform, Sohn said. Microsoft has made APIs for those services available on its Windows Live developer site. Microsoft has been savvy over the years in leveraging its large developer base to bolster new technologies and help the company compete in areas where it does not have first-mover advantage, and the area of online services is no different. Microsoft is chasing Google for online advertising dollars and hopes to use Windows Live services to compete. Microsoft also charges $.025 per user per year for developers that use Windows Live services in applications that have more than 1 million unique users per month, Sohn said. Sohn said that while the business case for growing the developer base for the Windows Live platform is obviously important, Microsoft also hopes to encourage the development of cutting-edge Web applications to help the industry as a whole promote more interesting user experiences on the Web. "Over time if the industry is doing better, we're going to do better as well," he said.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft revealed the official names Monday of the next major upgrades to its Visual Studio software development tools platform and its SQL Server database, which will be called, simply, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
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A major component of Microsoft Corp.&#39;s Application Lifecycle Management platform, Visual Studio 2005 Team System is today expected to reach beta.
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On the same day that Microsoft announced that the first service pack for Windows Vista would come out later than some had expected, it also quietly announced that the release of Windows Server 2008 has been pushed back to the first quarter of next year.
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Master the server Windows Server 2008 is due for release on February 29, and as with most Microsoft releases, the fanfare from Seattle can be heard worldwide. Will it do what you want it to? What skills do you need? Is it any good?â¦
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Blog: The software maker said Tuesday that it is ready with a near-final "release candidate" version of its software, which will find its way on to servers later this year.