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Mary Jo Foley at ZDNET has spotted a Microsoft forum posting announcing some big changes for Microsoft’s consumer financial software package, Money Plus.
Microsoft MVP Bob Peel posting at the behest of the Money team says that there will be no annual Money Plus update for 2009 with "future release dates TBD." The reason is that "the incremental updates to the software don’t merit a new product release every year."
Moreover, Microsoft is ending all retail box sales of Money Plus because of consumer disinterest in that channel and "is focusing distribution efforts for Microsoft Money Plus software online via download."
I don’t think either action will come as a surprise to most Microsoft Money users. In recent years I’ve mostly gotten my copies as a downloadable freebie with my annual purchase of tax software and frankly don’t often bother to download it since the annual changes are minimal. However, Peel takes great pains to assure his audience that Microsoft has not pulled the plug entirely on Money Plus or on retail box sales of other Microsoft consumer software if that distribution model still fits the product.
I wonder about the latter though – with high speed Internet connections, there is really no reason to have to go to the dwindling number of brick and mortar stores that carry a more than token collection of software to purchase a shrink wrapped box. However, not everyone has a high speed connection so there would seem to always be a place for mail order box sales at least. What Microsoft is proposing is a product by product determination of when that demographic gets too small to continue supporting.
I see that Microsoft’s Home and Entertainment software offerings don’t even merit a link on the Microsoft home page anymore, much more Microsoft’s software for education, but they’re both still alive and kicking as illustrated by today’s announcement of Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 as well as Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office 1.5 and New Microsoft SharePoint Kits for the Microsoft Learning Gateway which are for professional educators.
Sony just announced new Vaio PC models ([1], [2]) complete with “Vista capable” stickers. There will shortly be many more from all the OEMs.
Mary Jo Foley speculates on what the Vista delay will mean for the nominally biennial follow-ons Fiji and Vienna as well as the Windows server operating systems.
Microsoft posted and then a pulled a massive 313 page Windows Vista Product Guide.
New Microsoft hire, Niall Kennedy, recently of Technorati, discloses that “Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system.”
Microsoft’s UACBlog explains Vista Parental Controls.
Brandon LeBlanc explains the new Vista Windows PC Accelerators:
Windows SuperFetch™ is a memory management innovation in Windows Vista that helps make your PC consistently responsive by tracking what applications are used most on a given machine and intelligently preloading these applications into memory.
Windows ReadyBoost™ (formerly code-named “EMD”) makes PCs running genuine Windows Vista more responsive by using flash memory on a USB drive, SD Card, Compact Flash, or other memory form factor to boost system performance.
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Windows ReadyDrive™ (formerly code-named “Piton”) enables Windows Vista PCs equipped with a hybrid hard drive to boot up faster, resume from hibernate in less time, and preserve battery power. Hybrid hard drives are a new type of hard disk that integrates non-volatile flash memory with a traditional hard drive.
Microsoft is working on a Vista only product for amateur musicians called Monaco that competes with Apple’s GarageBand.
And last but not least, the Gartner Group has some Vista adoption news for Microsoft, but it’s hard to tell whether it is good (Gartner: Half of Current PCs Will Show All of Vista):
Microsoft’s Windows Vista will run on just about any PC available today, but it will only show its true colors on about half of them, according to a new report from Gartner.
or bad (Half of Corporate PCs Can’t Handle Vista):
A new research report from the Gartner Group finds that about half of all corporate PC’s don’t have what it takes to run all the features in Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Vista operating system when it becomes available, suggesting that companies will, to a great extent, have to roll out Vista as they acquire new computer systems, rather than installing the new operating system on existing PCs.
Frankly, Gartner seems obsessed with the unlikely idea of large numbers of folks upgrading existing hardware to Vista.
Microsoft Corp. has split its entertainment and devices division into four businesses, the latest reorganization at the world’s largest software maker, according to a company e-mail to employees seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
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The chief of the entertainment and device unit, Robbie Bach, responsible for launching Microsoft’s Xbox video game business, told employees in a Wednesday e-mail he would turn his focus to longer-term strategy and partner relationships.
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Bach said Bryan Lee would take over as head of a new entertainment business charged with overseeing the company’s growing digital efforts in music, television and video.Other changes include broadening the role of Peter Moore as head of the interactive entertainment business, which includes both the Xbox and Games for Windows business, Bach said.
Tom Gibbons will remain in charge of the consumer productivity experiences unit, which includes the computer mouse and keyboards business. Pieter Knook remains chief of the mobile and embedded business and the communications sector sales force, the memo said.
Richard Waters at the Financial Times has more:
Another senior Xbox executive, J Allard, has been handed responsibility for the platform technology across the digital entertainment group, making him key in Microsoft’s attempt to create a technological foundation for its broader digital home vision.
Mr Allard first grabbed attention inside Microsoft a decade ago, when he wrote a memo to Bill Gates warning of the threat to the software company posed by the rise of the internet – a memo that helped prompt Mr Gates to revise Microsoft’s strategy.
Business Week recently profiled Robbie Bach and there are standard Microsoft bios: Robbie Bach, Bryan Lee, Peter Moore, Tom Gibbons, Pieter Knook, J Allard.
