Microsoft News Tracker

Scott M. Fulton, III explains at TGDaily (Tom’s Hardware Guide):

In an interview earlier this week with ATI’s director of technical marketing, Alexis Mather, TG Daily learned that manufacturers such as ATI that are engineering their equipment for emerging Windows Vista performance specifications, are anticipating Microsoft to elevate the importance of the new OS’ System Performance Rating (WSPR), to a very high level of prominence. Soon after Vista’s formal introduction later this year, Mather believes, Microsoft, OEMs, retailers and other dealers, and even professional evaluators including the engineers at Tom’s Hardware Guide, will be utilizing Vista’s rating scale of 1 through 5, to distinguish the relative performance of all PCs available in the marketplace.

“[WSPR] effectively assigns a numerical rating between 1 and 5 to a PC, based on components such as the CPU, system memory speeds, disk speed, and two measurements in graphics,” Mather told TG Daily. He was prevented from going into detail about the formula used to derive the rating, which is apparently still under development.

There’s much more in the article including some Microsoft documentation mentioning the Windows System Performance Rating, but inevitably the punchline is:

“Ultimately, the PCs at the higher end of the scale will end up being somewhat more expensive,” he predicted.

Since there’s money involved, expect the WSPR to be the source of all sorts of angst and recriminations.

That’s the story from Tony Glover at the UK’s The Business online:

Microsoft has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.

The service is included in a mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator due to be released this year. It will take the form of a voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) application that allows Office users to make free voice calls over wi-fi enabled phones running Windows Mobile software. It uses the internet as a virtual phone network as well as accessing e-mail, PowerPoint and other Office applications.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer dropped his bombshell at the mobile operators’ annual 3GSM show in Barcelona last week. The significance of his remarks was missed because of his effusive and eccentric delivery.

Ouch! Ballmer demonstrated a VoIP call during the keynote and VoIP was also mentioned briefly in the press releases, but I guess it took a while for the implications to sink in.

Cyrus Mewawalla, an analyst at Westhall Capital, believes VoIP, when backed by Microsoft, will have a more devastating effect on mobile operators than it did on the fixed-line operators, which saw their voice revenues slashed after the introduction of VoIP services such as Skype.

“Internet voice does not even have to take market share to force traditional operators to cut their prices. The mere thought of free voice is enough to make customers push for price cuts,” said Mewawalla, predicting a bloodbath for mobile operator stocks.

More by following the link, but the initial effect may be limited by Office Communicator’s target business audience.

Update 2/20: Mark Odell and Kate Mackenzie from the Financial Times have more in Internet telephony set to go mobile:

“Internet voice is going mobile,” said Jorma Ollila, Nokia chief executive, on Monday as the world’s biggest maker of mobile handsets unveiled its first mass- market model capable of supporting voice-over-internet protocol. VoIP is the emerging technology that offers cheap calls to users by routing them over the internet, instead of traditional phone networks.
…
About a dozen large mobile operators are “actively” looking at offering VoIP-based services, according to one senior industry figure.
…
Microsoft is increasingly moving into mobile software and its Windows Mobile operating system already supports VoIP.

The latest version of software developed by Symbian, 48 per cent owned by Nokia and currently the biggest supplier of operating systems to high-end mobiles, will do the same.

As a stand-alone mobile operator, Vodafone is seen as being more exposed to the inevitable pricing pressure than some rivals.

However, the UK-based operator accepts it is inevitable. “We have to morph from where we are now,” said Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone. “That [VoIP] is clearly a world around the corner . . . it is two to three years away.”

Steve Ballmer may have famously told Microsoft shareholders last year that “the software behemoth measures its success by its products, not its share price,” but some are motivated by more mundane concerns. Daisuke Wakabayashi surveys the situation for Reuters in “Lacking identity, Microsoft stock crawls along:”

On the surface, Microsoft Corp. seems like an investor’s dream: It repurchased $7.7 billion of its own shares in the past quarter, issued the largest one-time dividend in corporate history, and generates stacks of cash.

Yet Microsoft shares have underperformed every major equity index since the start of 2002, a slump that could continue until the world’s largest software maker finds a clear investment identity as a growth stock or value play, fund managers and analysts said.
…
The stock is down 19 percent since the start of 2002, while the Nasdaq, the Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 index all recorded a rise of more than 10 percent during that period.

The problem is that Microsoft is too big to be considered a growth stock and too high priced to be considered a value stock. As a result it languishes, although it is still popular with the analysts:

Wall Street analysts are very bullish on the company’s prospects. Of 33 analysts that track the stock, 28 rate Microsoft as a “buy” or “outperform” with an average price target of $31.68, according to Reuters Estimates.

It closed at $26.70 on Friday so it has a way to go. More on the analysts’ hopes for either a growth or value play by following the link.

(Via Bink.nu) Flexbeta has the story:

Microsoft recently made a change to the licence agreement saying that a new motherboard is equal to a new computer, hence you need to purchase a new Windows licence.

Here is what Microsoft has to say:

“An upgrade of the motherboard is considered to result in a “new personal computer” to which Microsoft® OEM operating system software cannot be transferred from another computer. If the motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required.”
…
Microsoft sent a memo to its OEM (i.e. PC vendor) partners asking them to enforce this new policy, every time they upgrade a computer for a client.

More by following the link which references the Education Operating System Licensing Q&A. This would seem to be very bad news for PC “customizers” who invest a lot of effort in upgrading their hardware via piece parts, but there’s an hopeful note in the Q&A:

Can I transfer my operating system license from an old PC to a new one?

ANSWER. Not unless it was purchased as a Full-Packaged Product from a retail store (i.e., Windows in a box). Current OEM licenses for all Microsoft operating system products are not transferable from one machine to another.

So customizers are OK as long as they don’t start with an OEM machine.

The point of all this seems to be that Microsoft is specifically targeting OEM license fraud which isn’t surprising considering recent news. I haven’t upgraded a motherboard in quite a few years, but my assumption is that changing the motherboard changes the hardware “signature” that is created for product activation so that it is readily detectable through the Genuine Microsoft Software (aka Genuine Advantage) program.

Todd Bishop at the Seattle P-I:

Microsoft Corp. is looking for a new leader for its MSN division, the group at the center of the company’s online efforts.

David Cole, the senior vice president in charge of the division, told employees in an e-mail message Friday that he plans to take a one-year leave of absence from the company at the end of April, leaving it unclear if he will return to Microsoft.

In the message, obtained by the Seattle P-I, Cole described the decision as personal, made on his own. He said he wasn’t asked to leave by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer or by Kevin Johnson, co-president of the company’s Platforms, Products & Services Division, under which MSN was placed during a company-wide restructuring last year.

Bishop has the full text of the email on his blog.

A former money-loser, MSN has become consistently profitable, posting $405 million in operating profit in the company’s last fiscal year. It’s also the key player in Microsoft’s Windows Live initiative, through which the company is trying to make more money through online advertising and by offering software through subscriptions.

But MSN Search isn’t getting traction and adCenter is slow off the mark, yadda, yadda. All of which leads to tongues wagging that Cole was pushed out. Gossip aside, the key question is: if Windows Live is so important to Microsoft, who’s in charge? So far, no one. This is likely another step in the organizational rationalization of Windows Live and the current odd status of its progenitor, MSN.