Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare PC security package has been getting some bad press lately and it didn’t improve today - Windows Live OneCare eats Outlook mail for lunch:

A recent update to the Microsoft antivirus engine for Windows Live OneCare will quarantine the PST file used to store e-mail messages for Microsoft Outlook, preventing access to messages, appointments, tasks and journal entries. It affects versions of Outlook, including Outlook 97 and 2000, and Outlook Express running on Windows XP when the .pst file contains an infected attachment. Microsoft will issue an update on Patch Tuesday, March 13, 2007.

Follow the link for some terse directions on how to solve the problem in the meantime or head over to AppScout for more details including this observation:

OneCare is aimed at the home and non-technical user - maybe not for you, but for your Granny. So, how well do you think Granny could follow the instructions above to keep OneCare from cannibalizing her email?

Good question, but Microsoft is undaunted and is getting ready for OneCare 2.0:

According to Microsoft, OneCare Live 2.0 will include all the security features of OneCare Live 1.5 and will be able to be licensed for as many as three PCs per household. OneCare Live 2.0 will also include wireless connection setup and security features, a boot-time optimizer, automated monthly computer usage and security reports, online photo backup functionality (for an additional charge), unified monitoring and maintenance of networked PCs, printer sharing, and automated PC tune-ups.
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The OneCare Live 2.0 beta will begin in late April, and Microsoft plans to ship the final version of OneCare Live 2.0 in third quarter 2007. You can sign up for the beta at Microsoft’s Web site.

You can sign up for the beta here. Neil Rubenking also has more details on the new features in OneCare version 2.0.

The Patch Tuesday good news is that Microsoft won’t be distributing any security patches next Tuesday:

Microsoft is not planning to release any security updates on Tuesday, one of only a handful of times the company won’t have security patches available since its monthly security updates began in 2003, Microsoft said Thursday.

The bad news is that there are a number of exploits for which patches just aren’t ready:

Microsoft is currently working on patches for known vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007’s Publisher 2007, and the Windows Vista OS, but they are not ready for release at the moment, said a spokesman from Microsoft’s public relations firm Thursday.

According to eEye Security there are “five known zero-day holes in Microsoft products” that will remain unpatched until at least next month. There’s no need to feel abandoned though as there will be some updates distributed come Tuesday - just no security updates.

Bill Snyder at TheStreet.com has the blow-by-blow account:

Score one for Microsoft in its long-running legal feud with Alcatel-Lucent.

A U.S. court has ruled that neither Dell, Gateway nor Microsoft had infringed on two patents held by Alcatel-Lucent during the development of Dell’s Axim handheld computer.

But the round is not over and neither is the bout.

Two other patents in the same case are still at issue.

The judgment is just one part of a very complex patent infringement case brought by Alcatel-Lucent against PC makers who use Microsoft’s software in a variety of devices. Although it was not a direct target of the suit, Microsoft joined the hardware makers because its software is central to the case and would likely have been sued at a later day, in any case.

Fifteen patents were initially at issue, and because the case is so complex, the judge divided it into six separate trials.

If you’re keeping score, Microsoft lost big in the first round, but came back strong to win the second.

Tomorrow’s Friday and Michael Arrington gets everyone’s juices flowing for the weekend with Confirmed: Microsoft Building Google Apps/Zoho Competitor:

Most of the good forward looking product information we get out of Microsoft is from the many blogs written by its employees. And when a post is deleted by one of those bloggers, it’s a big alarm bell to seek out and find what they originally wrote.
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Today the deleted blog post strikes again (although in this case it’s an altered blog post).

Microsoft developer Tod Hilton wrote a blog post that says it’s his last day with Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. He’s now moved to the Excel Services team, he says.

Hilton originally posted information on where the product is headed, then quickly removed it. The original text said, ”The product has tons of potential and will probably be competing with the likes of Google Spreadsheets, DabbleDB, Zoho and JotSpot Tracker. It’s a really exciting time to be working on this product!”

I’m sure, but not the time to be posting about it. Hit the link for more including the revised text. I was lamenting yesterday that Microsoft didn’t get Webware, but maybe I spoke too soon.

The controversy surrounding Microsoft licensing fees for interoperability protocols in Europe took a new turn today when Microsoft announced that they had found the first licensee for the protocols offered as a result of the European Commission antitrust decision:

Quest Software, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today jointly announced that Quest has become the first licensee in the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) established following the European Commission’s March 2004 decision.
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Quest plans to develop innovative software solutions, incorporating Microsoft protocols, which will provide customers with expanded capability to integrate Unix, Linux and Java authentication systems with Active Directory beyond what is available from Quest today.
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Microsoft developed the protocol licensing program to meet its obligations under the European Commission’s March 2004 decision, which required Microsoft to expand upon the protocol licensing it already offered under a U.S.-based licensing program. While 27 companies have licensed Microsoft protocol technology through the U.S. program, Quest is the first company to license protocols in the European program.

The point here is that Microsoft can now refute the European Commission contention that their protocols are overpriced with this empirical evidence of one. Not surprisingly, there were some scoffers:

Rivals, however, say the licenses do nothing in the work group server market as far as making software work smoothly with Windows desktops, as the EU wants.

The licenses are useful to companies that make products complementary to Microsoft, said Thomas Vinje, spokesman for a group of Microsoft’s rivals — the European Committee for Interoperable Systems.

“It’s window-dressing arranged by Microsoft to cover up its refusal to comply with the Commission decision,” Vinje said. “Quest is not a competitor of Microsoft. It is a partner of Microsoft’s.”

Vinje said the license program charged “utterly unreasonable” fees designed to be economically unfeasible. He said Microsoft’s terms shut out the only real rival left in the work group server market — vendors such as RedHat — that base their products on the open source Linux software.

Joe Wilcox casts a similarly skeptical eye on the announcement and observes that the key EC complaint was about lack of innovation to warrant the prices charged and that the Quest deal does nothing to change that.