Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc reports that Microsoft has released Windows Search 4.0 which replaces Windows Desktop Search in Windows XP and Instant Search in Windows Vista as well as the relevant applications in Windows Server 2003, 2008, and Windows Home Server. Downloads of Windows Search 4.0 are now available and if you can wait a bit, it will show up on Windows Update.

Some notable enhancements in the new version include cross system searches (as long as they all run Windows Search 4.0) and improved Group Policy management for large organizations, but I expect that the greatest initial interest will be in ordinary desktop search. XP’s Windows Desktop Search was a resource hog that produced such mediocre results that disabling it figured prominently on most lists of XP performance improvement tips and had me pining for my old copy of Lotus Magellan. Vista’s Instant Search is certainly improved in both form and function so it will be interesting to kick the tires. Early reviews of Windows Search 4.0 indicate that there are still some rough edges and while it beats Google Desktop search in function, it still lags in speed.

I guess snowballs are now safe in Hell. Yesterday, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems announced that Sun is now a Windows Server OEM for their x64 systems with Windows Server 2003 R2 to be available preinstalled within 90 days. It’s no surprise that Wintel commoditization is hitting the server market and squeezing the proprietary vendors - the real question is why Sun chose this point in time to embrace Wintel. Peter Burrows at Business Week offers some theories, but the only one that strikes a chord with me is that Sun views it as an opportunity to spread their hardware fixed costs over bigger volume with perhaps a bit of comfort for customers that buying from Sun doesn’t lock them into an evolutionary dead end.

Anyhow, according to the PR, it is all an expansion of the Microsoft-Sun settlement/alliance announced in April 2004 and included these other talking points:

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Announced back in January, Windows Home Server (the custom version of Windows Server 2003 R2 for home use) has now reached the Release Candidate stage. Microsoft’s Windows Home Server Blog has the news:

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The Windows Server Division Weblog has the news:

Today Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which as many know by now is a cumulative service pack that provides the latest updates, security and stability enhancements, and newest features for the Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 operating systems.

In particular, it covers Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 in all the various editions for the x86, x64 and IA64 platforms.

Windows Server 2003 SP2 is also the foundation operating system for the upcoming service pack of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which will be available for download and CD orders within the next 30 days.

Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 page has links to all the various downloads and tools and the SP2 Technical Overview explains the installation paths for the various versions as well as explaining what’s new and improved besides the roll-up of fixes. Although SP2 was expected in 1Q and there isn’t much of that left, it arrived without warning and that has some system administrators a little grumpy.

CNET UK’s Crave blog sums up Bill Gate’s keynote at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show quite nicely:

The Gates soft-shoe shuffle at CES kicks off the gadget show each year with the same forlorn regularity as a Windows blue screen of death. It’s comforting to watch Bill climb up to the stage, but prepare yourselves, people: this can’t go on for ever. Gates began his remarks by saying that next year’s keynote may well be his last.

This year’s keynote didn’t hold many too many surprises. There was the usual self-satisfied purring about what a long way we’ve all come, baby, in what Gates is now calling “the digital decade”. There was also some quite staggeringly unhip video showing what were supposed to be hip and cool consumers using Microsoft products to have connected experiences.

I always get a laugh out of the “digital future” concept demos they put poor Mr Gates through.  This year even he was laughing at the schtick where he, the world’s richest man, was reading interactive ads at a bus stop and checking out recipes projected on a kitchen counter after setting a forlorn bag of RFID tagged flour on it.

Also, someone please get Robbie Bach a public speaking coach - he seemed like a deer in the headlights. Of course, it is a trifle embarrassing to warmly endorse parental controls for gaming on Vista and then run a montage of games that mostly involved shooting other people.

The main event was news of a new home server as well as some cutesy Media Center PCs in quirky form factors (round and white anyone?). There was also the intriguing news that Microsoft will allow its Xbox 360 games console to act as a link to its Internet Television service, or IPTV.

And that’s about it in a nutshell. Some more details from the general press release and elsewhere:

• New Vista PC form factors - see the press release. These are presumably the result of Microsoft “helping out” the PC manufacturers on design. Also a couple of Vista Ultimate Extras (goodies you get for buying the pricey Ultimate version) were revealed.
• Exactly as leaked, the Xbox 360 made its 10 million ship target and will in future provide Microsoft TV IPTV set top box functionality. This feature plus the video download service announced in November (Lionsgate was announced as a new content provider) seem to me to be more selling points for the Xbox 360 than any real encroachment on the consumer electronics market. Also, the first fruits of Live Anywhere were demonstrated where Vista PC users can play online versus Xbox 360 users.
• The deal for Ford to offer Windows Automotive based car entertainment systems under the Sync brand came off as rumored.
• Finally, the rumored Windows Home Server (formerly codenamed Quattro) came to pass with Hewlett-Packard scheduled to be the first out of the gate to deliver one (HP MediaSmart Sever) in 2H2007. The details are rather sparse other than it sits on the customer’s home network and serves media files to Windows Media Connect supported devices as well as providing automated storage backup for the customer’s other client PCs. One novel note is that Microsoft will provide a free “personalized Internet address from Windows Live” so the data on the server can be accessed from anywhere, hopefully only by the owner. All this functionality can be purchased today from other vendors, so it will be interesting to see the price points for the Home Servers when they reach the market.

Update: Paul Thurrott has more details on the Windows Home Server including that it is based on Windows Server 2003 R2 and that the operating system can be purchased without hardware.

Update: A press release and Q&A for Windows Home Server have belatedly arrived. See also this post on the weblog of Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel, a member of the Home Server development team.

Clarification: Ken Fisher at Ars Technica:

One challenge facing Windows Home Server (WHS for short) is that it is an OEM-only product, meaning that you won’t be able to head out and buy WHS at your local retail joint. And much like Media Center in the early days, we don’t expect specialty shops to carry an OEM version of the software anytime soon. This is disappointing news, because the early-adopter segment isn’t particularly interested in paying top dollar for OEM creations when do-it-yourself delivers a better experience. That said, I discussed this briefly with a Microsoft representative who said that Microsoft is aware that there’s a big enthusiast crowd out there, and a retail release of the OS isn’t out of the question.