Microsoft News Tracker

Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting and Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition (SBME) (code-named “Magellan”) are due to be launched on September 7.

From CNET, Microsoft rejects Visual Studio delay request:

Microsoft has rejected a request from developers to push back delivery of its oft-delayed Visual Studio 2005 in order to fix bugs.

In addition, the software giant said it will include a significant new feature that will be introduced in an interim release of Visual Studio 2005 in the next week.

Through a feedback form on the Microsoft Developer Network Web site, developer customers asked Microsoft to release a third beta of Visual Studio 2005, which is due for completion on Nov. 7.

In the original suggestion, a customer said that Visual Studio 2005, which had a second beta program in April, has too many bugs and performance problems. “I’d rather have a good product six months from now than a mediocre one in three months,” wrote Clint Stotesbery on Thursday.

The majority of developers who wrote into the suggestion forum agreed, saying that the quality of the product was more important than meeting the Nov. 7 deadline. Visual Studio 2005, formerly code-named Whidbey, will arrive at least one year later than originally planned.

Hopefully, this is good news.

The “significant new feature” is a new implementation for the System.Nullable data type which is described by S. “Soma” Somasegar, vice president of Microsoft’s developer division, in a post on his blog. He also mentions that the August CTP for Visual Studio 2005 should be out in the next week or so.

Windows Vista (nee Longhorn) was always supposed to be compatible with Win32 applications, but folks have a natural tendency to worry. Microsoft’s Nick Kramer sets their minds at ease:

Dan asks:

Can you please explain the relationship between Win32 subsystem and WinFX. In PDC it was told that WinFx replaces Win32. Now it looks like USER and Win32K are still in use

Good question. WinFX is where all the innovation is, both in the Longhorn/Avalon V1 timeframe, and in releases beyond that. But at the same time, we can’t break existing Win32 applications. So in the Longhorn timeframe, the best way to achieve that was to build Avalon on top of (a subset of) Win32k.sys.

At the end of the day, our goal is not about creating Avalon or replacing Win32k.sys, it’s about getting innovation into the Windows platform. If we could do that by adding features to Win32k.sys, we would. But the compatibility burden for Win32k.sys is incredibly high, so there’s no way we can innovate there in anything like the way we can with Avalon. And in Longhorn, we found we could bring plenty of innovation without completely replacing Win32k.sys.

Practically, Win32 compatibility was never in doubt for obvious reasons. That doesn’t mean that some Vista tweaks won’t be required, just like for any new OS version.

Filing an older item:

Microsoft to buy email security provider FrontBridge:

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, said on Wednesday (July 20 - ed.) that it would buy FrontBridge Technologies Inc., its second acquisition this year of an e-mail anti-virus protection provider.

FrontBridge provides an outsourcing service that allows companies to have their e-mail and instant messaging scanned before it reaches internal corporate networks. FrontBridge’s subscription service also allows companies to back up their messages and comply with regulations.

In February, Microsoft said it would acquire Sybari Software Inc., which develops software that protects e-mail systems from worms and viruses, as well as spam, or unsolicited e-mail.

That’s how Reuters titles their report:

Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday that it had settled a lawsuit against Scott Richter, whom it identified as a former “spam king.”

Microsoft said that as part of the settlement Richter and his company agreed to pay $7 million to Microsoft.

Richter and his company will file a motion on Tuesday to dismiss bankruptcy proceedings they filed in March in the U.S. bankruptcy court in Denver, according to a joint statement by Microsoft and Richter.

The settlement is conditioned on dismissal of the bankruptcy cases.

A separate statement from Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith said the company will reinvest all of the money including $5 million which will go to increase Internet enforcement efforts and expand technical and investigative support to help law enforcers to address computer-related crimes.

Brad Smith’s open letter has more.