Microsoft likely to ship Vista on time: analyst
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Microsoft Corp.  will most  likely ship its upcoming Windows Vista operating system on time  and meet its deadline for both corporate and retail consumers,  a Wall Street analyst said on Wednesday.
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Microsoft confirmed Thursday that its invite-only group of about 15,000 testers has had the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for the past two weeks.Other Vista users, however, will have to wait until March to obtain a legal copy of the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista SP1, the company reiterated.According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the build designated Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2, which was seeded to testers on Jan. 24, is identical to&#160;the code that company developers shipped&#160;out the door on Monday as RTM.&quot;In final stages of a product, Microsoft likes to get as much validation as possible before releasing,&quot; the spokeswoman said in an e-mail. &quot;The release candidate ended up being a high enough quality to be approved to release to manufacturing.&quot;The shift in nomenclature, but not bits, is common. Eventually, a vendor must approve a build as &quot;gold code,&quot; at which point that edition becomes the shipping version. Last November, for example, Apple Inc. issued a test build of Mac OS X 10.5.1 to developers one day, then called it good to go and posted it for download the next.However, users who weren&#39;t part of the SP1 testing group must wait until March to get their hands on the update, the spokeswoman repeated today. In five to six weeks -- mid-March according to Microsoft -- the service pack will be offered via Windows Update as a 65MB optional update and posted to Download Center as a 450MB stand-alone installer that supports five languages. A month later, in mid-April, Windows Update will automatically download and install SP1 on Vista-equipped PCs whose users have set Automatic Updates to do hands-off updating.Subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet will get a slight jump on the general public. &quot;In early March, MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get the &#39;Windows Vista with SP1&#39; full DVD,&quot; the same spokeswoman said in another e-mail. The updated operating system will be offered to MSDN and TechNet subscribers through their respective download centers.Microsoft is holding SP1 so that it can identify device drivers that won&#39;t reinstall -- as they must -- during the service pack update process. On Monday morning, Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said that while SP1 had met the RTM criteria, it would not be available for several weeks because of the&#160;driver problems.That generated a firestorm of criticism from users, who vented by posting over 200 comments to Nash&#39;s announcement, calling the decision &quot;stupid&quot; and &quot;one of the all-time worst moves&quot; by Microsoft.Judging by the tone of nearly 120 comments left on Microsoft&#39;s official TechNet blog, IT professionals and developers are even angrier. The subscribers called the withholding of SP1 &quot;boneheaded&quot; and a &quot;slap in the face,&quot; or dubbed it &quot;the Vista SP1 RTM Debacle.&quot; Others questioned the value of their TechNet subscriptions, admitted that they had had to download a pirated copy using BitTorrent so that they could start testing, and said they would postpone Vista deployments for months because of the delay.Several wondered why reviewers in the press had the finished bits before they did.But a commenter identified only as Joe put it most succinctly: &quot;This is the lamest decision since Microsoft Bob. I get this the same time as my mom?&quot;The backlash may have gotten through to Microsoft. On Monday night, Kathy Dixon, the TechNet Plus team member who normally writes the blog, said that she was looking into the possibility of moving up the availability date of SP1. But as of Thursday night, she had no solution for users. &quot;I have escalated this and am continuing to push internally for a solution ASAP,&quot; Dixon wrote around 8 p.m. EST. &quot;Please hang in there, I should have something more specific soon.&quot;Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ will give analysts in New York a strategic update on the company's business Thursday, but they aren't expecting a repeat of the surprise dished up last April. "We are expecting a non-event," wrote Citigroup analyst Brent Thill in a research note released Wednesday. Since analysts' briefing with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and CFO Chris Liddell is only scheduled for an hour, "we expect it to be nothing more than a cheerleading session around Vista/Office 2007, and an update on the online and entertainment initiatives," he wrote. Last year during its April 2006 earnings call, Microsoft surprised Wall Street analysts by lowering its earning forecasts for fiscal 2007 because it expected to spend US$2 billion more on operating expenses than previously expected. The company cited marketing and other costs associated with promoting the launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 -- which were released to retail on Jan. 30 -- as one of the reasons for increased spending. Still, analysts and investors were hardly pleased with the news, and it sent Microsoft's stock plunging. There should be no such shockers on Thursday, according to a research note by Israel Hernandez, a Lehman Brothers Inc. analyst. In fact, Hernandez wrote that he expects the meeting is intended to "pre-empt any surprises" in Microsoft's financial guidance for fiscal 2008, which begins in July. Still, analysts do have their concerns about some information Microsoft may provide at Thursday's meeting. According to Hernandez, some analysts think that Vista retail sales have been slower than expected since its Jan. 30 launch, and that Microsoft "may tone down expectations" for OS sales in fiscal 2008. However, since the product was only recently released, "it is very unlikely that Microsoft will have anything negative to say about the launch," he wrote. Another risk heading into Thursday's meeting is that Microsoft may announce that it's going to increase spending in its online business, which could drive earnings down and make the stock less attractive for investors, according to a research note by Adam Holt, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst. However, Holt wrote that even if this happens, Microsoft can absorb those costs in other areas of the business -- such as reducing spending in its sales and marketing and research and development segments -- so it does not affect the company's earnings. "Even with a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in spending on new initiatives on FY08 margins could still expand substantially," he wrote.
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Microsoft Corp&#039;s  release of  Windows Vista should begin in November with roll-out to  businesses and broader release of the software to general  customers by January, company officials said on Tuesday.
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Microsoft Corp. developers have made rapid progress prepping Windows Vista for an on-time release, according to an analyst at Goldman Sachs.
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(InfoWorld) - The chairman of Acer, the world's fourth largest PC vendor, forecast the company's PC shipments will grow by as much as 50 percent year-on-year in the first quarter and 40 percent for all of 2007, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Acer Chairman J.T. Wang made the prediction on Monday at a Lunar New Year celebration, according to a company spokesman. The story was first reported in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, which said the reasons for strong growth included stronger than expected shipments of PCs armed withÂ Microsoft's new Vista OSÂ and lower PC prices resulting from aÂ price warÂ on central processing units, the brains of a PC, between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The spokesman could not immediately confirm the reasons for stronger shipments, but said Acer is seeing brisk growth in emerging markets. The report that Vista is a major cause of Acer's strong PC shipment growth in the first quarter is important because it may be an early sign the new OS is taking off, at least in some markets. Microsoft launched the consumer version of Vista in 70 countries on Jan. 30, and since then its main comment on sales of the OS has been to warn analysts that their forecasts might be too aggressive. Other technology companies have given the OS a mixed review. Quanta Computer, the world's largest contract laptop PC maker,Â credited VistaÂ with record-breaking notebook shipments in January. But Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.Â (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker, said VistaÂ won't have much impactÂ on PC sales growth this year. The company is considered an IT industry bellwether due to the wide variety of chips it manufactures. The microprocessor price war between Intel and AMD has been going on for several months, and is a key to creating great bargains for users by lowering overall PC costs. The processor is the most expensive component in a PC. On Jan. 21, Intel released a new price list, slashing the price of some desktop CPUs as much as 69 percent compared to its previous price list, published in late December. AMD published a new price list on Feb. 20, also showing lower prices for certain processors aimed at desktop PCs, including dual-core Athlons, compared to its Jan. 22 price list. The price lists for both companies can be found on their respective Web sites, and all prices are for lots of 1,000 processors. The top global market for Acer products is Europe, while Asia ranks second for the company. In recent years, the company has put a new focus on China and the U.S. Â
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Microsoft seems to be on track to release the next version of Windows on schedule.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general are concerned that Microsoft is revising deadlines that it agreed to as part of its antitrust settlement. At issue are changes that Microsoft says it needs to make in the schedule for releasing documentation related to Vista, according to a court document filed Tuesday. "Plaintiffs are concerned that Microsoft has not been able to meet its original schedule and are particularly troubled that at this late hour in the program, Microsoft is still discovering protocols that should have been included in the original documentation," the DOJ and the states said in a joint status report. "Plaintiffs are discussing this matter with Microsoft and will report to the court further at the status conference." The plaintiffs and Microsoft attorneys are due to meet with U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly next Tuesday for the status conference. Such conferences are held periodically so that the judge can assess whether Microsoft is complying with requirements of the 2003 antitrust order against the company. As part of the judgment, Microsoft is required to provide technical documentation for its software to help ISVs make their products interoperable with Microsoft's. On Feb. 15, Microsoft said that it needed to modify the schedule for documentation because protocols that must be documented were added to the Vista Server after the initial schedule for rewriting documentation was set or because those protocols were "inadvertently overlooked." For its part, Microsoft said in the status report filed Tuesday and made public Wednesday that it found it could "enhance" rewritten documentation of some existing protocols "by providing more detailed and comprehensive descriptions. This increased significantly the number of pages that Microsoft expected to produce in connection with the existing documentation." The number of pages of documentation Microsoft expects will be part of the rewrite project is "likely thousands of pages larger" than the company expected late last year. Under the revised schedule, Microsoft is expected to deliver documents related to Vista by April 3. It has already met three "milestones" that are part of the schedule and besides the Vista documentation has two other sets due May 11 and July 20 under the revised schedule. Microsoft said that the schedule, even since it was revised, is still aggressive. The antitrust case was tried in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which continues to oversee Microsoft compliance with requirements laid out in the judgment against the company.
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As expected, the PC industry is ready with new Vista computers after years of delays. But the immediate impact on the PC market could be muted.
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Microsoft will announce availability of business versions of its long-awaited Vista operating system on Thursday, according to analysts invited to a release event in New York City.
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Microsoft Corp. chief executive officer Steve Ballmer believes that sales forecasts for its new Vista operating system may be "overly aggressive."
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ could pull the trigger on putting out a beta of the first service pack for Windows Vista any day with a final release by November, sources close to the company said. Microsoft has been mum about exactly what will be included in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, a rollup of updates for the OS, many of which are pushed out automatically through its Web-based update services. The company also has not said when the software will be in final release --Â the latest from the company revealed only that a beta will be out sometime before the end of the year. The WinBeta.org blog reported Tuesday in a post that Microsoft 's WDK (Windows Driver Kit) team sent out an e-mail to beta testers that a new build of the WDK was being released to them to coincide "with the recent OS beta release for Vista SP1 Preview," hinting that SP1 beta is soon to be sent to testers. Others speculate Microsoft might release the SP1 beta Thursday, the day it will report the company's fiscal 2007 fourth quarter and year-end financial results. In an interview Wednesday, one source close to the company said he had been told by insiders that a beta of SP1 would be out by now, so an imminent release is highly likely. And another source said that beta testers report SP1 will definitely be out this week with a final release coming in November or December. At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver two weeks ago, Mike Sievert, corporate vice president of the Windows business group at Microsoft, toed the party line on Vista SP1 and said little about when it would be released or what would be in it and hinted that Microsoft's own plans for the service pack are still in flux. Sievert also downplayed the software's role in when some Windows users will upgrade to Vista, though it's widely known many users -- especially business and enterprise customers -- are waiting for SP1 before replacing Windows XP with Vista. "Most companies are still in the evaluation phase," he said in an interview. "Service pack or no service pack, they're still looking at what they will deploy."
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The European Union (E.U.) judge ruling on whether to suspend sanctions against Microsoft could deliver his verdict as early as mid-November, sources familiar with the process said Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission warned Microsoft again Tuesday that planned security features in the upcoming Windows Vista operating system could run afoul of EU antitrust laws, prompting Microsoft to say that an adverse ruling from European regulators could further delay Vista's ship date. In a statement Tuesday, EU Commission spokesman on competition Jonathan Todd said that the Commission believes that diversity and innovation in the security software market could be threatened if Microsoft doesn't allow reputable third-party security vendors to compete on an equal footing for customers. The statements came in response to questions from journalists who had been briefed by Microsoft, Todd told InfoWorld. Microsoft is reaching out to members of the press to express concern about the EC's stance on Vista security and to explain the reasoning that went into the company's decisions to integrate some security functions in the Vista operating system, according to Stephen Toulouse, of Microsoft's Security Technology Unit. "We're doing what everyone asked us to do and making Vista secure," Toulouse told InfoWorld on Tuesday. "We believe we've set the security foundation higher in Vista than in other operating systems and we don't want to lower that," he said. Microsoft is committed to delivering an EC-compliant operating system, and would abide by requests from the European Commission to remove security features if necessary, Toulouse said. Unraveling security features such as the BitLocker drive encryption, Windows Defender and Windows Security Center from Vista at this late date would be a monumental task, however. "I can't even speculate on how we'd deal with a request like that," Toulouse said, although he didn't rule out delays in the global release of Vista. Todd rejected the idea that the EC would give a "green light" to any particular version of Vista, but said that Microsoft would have to produce a product that complies with EU competition rules, or risk an antitrust ruling from the Commission. "We've made it clear to (Microsoft) for some time that it's up to Microsoft to make products that are fully compliant with EU competition rules, particularly in light of the March 2004 ruling on its abuse of its dominant market position," Todd said. NeelieKroes, the European Commission's competition commissioner, wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in March to express concerns about the security features and requesting more information on them, but the company delayed responding to the letter until the end of August, Todd said.Â  Microsoft did a full court press on Tuesday to try to counter the EC's statements about antitrust concerns with Vista's security features, emphasizing the company's work with independent software vendors. Speaking with InfoWorld, Toulouse, until recently program manager for Microsoft's Security Response Center (MSRC), explained the company's reasoning in adopting security features such as Patchguard, a feature on 64-bit versions of Vista that prevents applications from "patching," or modifying the Vista core processing center, or "kernel." Patchguard was necessary to stop unauthorized applications and malicious programs from modifying the Vista kernel to take control of the operating system. Legitimate third party products, however, such as behavioral detection products, also need access to the kernel. Symantec Corp. executives have complained that Microsoft is using its dominance of the operating system market and hard line stance on kernel patching to stifle competition, but Microsoft allows third parties to extend the Vista kernel using signed, kernel-mode drivers, Toulouse said. Microsoft's security products, such as Windows Live OneCare and Forefront, don't get an inside track to Vista features, Toulouse said. "We play by the same rules with our own products," Toulouse said. "Nobody patches the kernel." Toulouse also downplayed the impact of Patchguard, saying that adoption of 64 bit Vista would be slow, given that fewer applications have been written to run on it, and the 32-bit version of Vista runs on new, 64-bit platforms. On other security features, such as the Windows Security Center user interface, Microsoft allows ISVs to use the features or ignore them. The company has also made it easy for competitors to turn off default security features like the Windows Defender anti-spyware product and Vista desktop firewall silently during installation, Toulouse said.Â  Microsoft has made great efforts to give third party vendors such as Symantec access to Vista, such as giving Symantec employees office space at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters and access to Vista source code and builds, Toulouse said. The EC isn't opposed to Microsoft improving the security of Vista, but believes that there needs to be diversity in the security market to stimulate innovation, Todd said. The EC is still evaluating the information Microsoft sent in August on the Vista security features and hasn't decided what additional guidance it will give Microsoft. There were similarities between the EC's position on Vista's integrated security features and the Commission's ruling on Microsoft's bundling of the Windows Media Player, Todd said. That dispute resulted in a â¬497 million fine against Microsoft in March 2004 for anti-competitive practices. Todd acknowledged, however, that security features also had a unique status. "There's an extra dimension with security products. If I have a computer without a media player, it's not the end of the world. But a computer without security countermeasures is in deep trouble," Todd said. "Clearly we don't expect Microsoft to sell software that would be vulnerable to security problems," Todd said.
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Microsoft may delay the introduction of its Windows Vista operating system because of unclear antitrust guidance from the European Commission.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has finally broken its silence on the timing of the release of the&#160;highly anticipated Windows Vista Service Pack 1, saying the software updates should be in final release in the first quarter of next year with the company shipping off a beta next month to 10,000 to 15,000 testers.
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Some good news this week for Microsoft calendar-watchers, some bad: Even as Redmond nailed down the release dates for Vista SP1 and XP SP3, it quietly admitted that Windows Server 2008 would be released to manufacturing later than previously claimed.