Microsoft News Tracker

After a somewhat contentious history with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that offers low cost PCs for developing nations, Microsoft has signed up to provide a variant of the Windows operating system for the gadgets:

Today, Microsoft Corp. and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) announced an agreement that will make the Microsoft Windows operating system available on OLPC’s low-cost XO laptops for the world’s poorest children. Through this agreement, trials of the XO running Windows are planned to begin as soon as June in key emerging markets. Recognizing that the challenge of providing high-quality education for children in the developing world is too large to be solved by any single organization, Microsoft and OLPC are committed to working with governments and nongovernmental organizations to ensure the success of these pilot programs.

The availability of Windows, in addition to Linux, on the XO laptop will allow customers to have an expanded choice of operating environments that best fit their requirements. The intention is to create a version of the XO laptop that provides the ability to host both Windows and Linux operating systems, giving users the ability to run either on the XO laptop.

This has caused some turmoil amongst the OLPC staff who had been fervent Linux supporters:

But the alliance with Microsoft has created some turmoil within the project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development, resigned last month. His departure, Mr. Negroponte said, was “a huge loss to O.L.P.C.”

Inside the project, there have been people who, Mr. Negroponte said, came to regard the use of open-source software as one of the project’s ends instead of its means.

“I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about open source,” Mr. Negroponte said.

As I have observed previously, the OLPC initiative (like most "computers in education" projects) reminds me of the old saw about "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," but regardless of any actual utility of the project, Microsoft has bought themselves some good PR for some unspecified development expense.

Microsoft has released betas of the first service packs for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5:

Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases.  These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November.  They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).

We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates.  You can download and install the beta here.

At the first link there’s quite a list of enhancements including SQL Server 2008 support, ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria"), and the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ASP.NET 3.5 extensions previewed in December.

Today, Research in Motion (RIM) and Microsoft announced an agreement to provide Windows Live Messenger and enhanced support for Windows Live Hotmail on RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones:

Microsoft Corp. and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced an agreement to provide Microsoft Windows Live services on BlackBerry smartphones. As a result of this collaboration, BlackBerry smartphone customers will enjoy easy mobile access to Windows Live Messenger and an enhanced level of integration between Windows Live Hotmail and the BlackBerry platform.

The integration of Windows Live services into the BlackBerry platform will allow customers who use Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger on their BlackBerry smartphone to benefit from the BlackBerry platform architecture with the ability to communicate in real time using push technology, and an exceptional mobile communications experience. Customers will also be able to seamlessly access their Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger account from their BlackBerry smartphone by simply entering their Windows Live e-mail address and password once.

There are more details on the features by following the link. Microsoft did a similar (but larger) deal with Nokia back in August, 2007. One wonders whether any money is changing hands in these deals or at least how the porting and support expenses are allocated, but no information has been provided.

Overshadowed by the Microsoft Yahoo takeover soap opera last week, Microsoft released version 2 of its Expression Studio collection of Web tools:

• Expression Web 2 for Web design
• Expression Blend 2 for multimedia and 3-D design
• Expression Design 2 for graphic design
• Expression Media 2 for managing multimedia assets
• Expression Encoder 2 for video encoding

Expression Encoder is new in version 2 of the Studio and among other new features, Silverlight support was added to all of the tools, and PHP and ASP.NET 3.5 support was added to Expression Web. The PHP support reflects broader aspirations than just covering the needs of captive Microsoft technology developers but it will be difficult to break the grip that Adobe Dreamweaver has on that market.

Less desirable is the perpetuation of the wacky dichotomy between Microsoft developer tools (Visual Studio) and design tools (Expression). Developers who subscribe to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) have been promised only a subset of the Expression tools and they will have to either ante up for a standalone copy or buy an Express Professional Subscription (which partially overlaps the MSDN subscription) to get the full set.

Back in February when the EU gave Microsoft the 899M euro bill for continued noncompliance beyond the original 2004 antitrust judgement, Microsoft gave no indication that they would do anything but grin and bear it. It turns out that wasn’t the case:

"Microsoft today filed to the (EU) Court of First Instance an application to annul the European Commission decision of February 27," Microsoft said in a statement.

"We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court," it said.

Presumably they have some expectation of success, but given the poor outcome of their last venture before the Court of First Instance, it is hard to see why.