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After finding a few last-minute problems with Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 3, Microsoft delayed deployment on both of them. Now they're both back and ready for download, either manually or through Windows Update.

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Microsoft must be having a problem manufacturing Zunes, and needs to slow down sales. That's the only conclusion I can draw from the news that Microsoft has pledged to work with NBC to build a copyright cop into the Zune in return for selling NBC's popular TV shows through the Zune store.

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Somewhere on Israeli security researcher Aviv Raff's Web site is proof-of-concept code for a zero-day exploit that affects Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

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Perhaps it's inevitable that the most visible executive at Microsoft is the target of all kinds of vitriol and insult, regardless of whether it's deserved or not. As Bill Gates is winding down his involvement with the company, Steve Ballmer is taking his place as Chief Lightning Rod for Microsoft. And boy-oh-boy, this failed Yahoo deal has really brought out the Ballmer-busters.

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Yahoo leaders Roy Bostock and Jerry Yang said they're relieved that Microsoft has taken its merger proposal off the table. Will they still feel that way when the markets open Monday and investors' attorneys start calling?

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Microsoft recently announced its latest attempt to be a playa in the Internet, called Windows Live Mesh. As former Microsoftie Joel Spolsky opined, Live Mesh is not the first time Microsoft has tried a master plan for connecting everything via the Internet. It's not clear how this effort will end any better for Microsoft than the last one.

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One of our contacts in the PR world sent over some thoughts after reading our continuing discussion about why content management companies fail. His remarks might not be terribly surprising for those of you that live and breathe content management, but they warrant a re-visit.

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Microsoft's announcement of Linux extensions for Systems Center settles an old debate I once had with Bill Gates. Four years ago, I suggested Microsoft could do a better job at cross-platform management, but Microsoft's chairman wouldn't hear of it. Now, the company is doing just that.

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There's a worrisome article in the Seattle Times about an investigative toolkit that Microsoft is making available to law enforcement agencies. It's got 150 tools, including data collection and password crackers, conveniently packaged in a USB thumb drive. Police no longer need to seize a computer to peek into its contents.

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Last week, I heard an interesting Marketplace Radio segment about Mac users: "A new marketing study has found Mac owners tend to think they're more extraordinary than the average Joe. They're also more likely than PC users to whiten their teeth, drive hybrids, drink Starbucks coffee, and eat organic food."

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For a company whose cash cow is supposed to be collapsing, Microsoft seems pretty chipper. A pretty good third quarter shows that reports of Microsoft's demise are somewhat premature. Even the weak U.S. economy worked to Microsoft's advantage this past quarter.

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Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a consumer rip-off. The only right it protects is the right of the content creator to sell you the stuff you already bought, several times over. This is because DRM is overly restrictive, ignoring widely recognized rights such as fair use and time-or-place-shifting.

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If you listen to the conventional wisdom about Vista, one of the biggest complaints is that it's a lot more bloated and slow than XP. A lot of current Windows users would be very happy if the next version of Windows was slimmer and faster. But what kind of bloat could be cut out? One reader pointed out that "One person's bloat is another person's feature." Do some users really have to lose their favorite features in the name of performance?

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Responding to last week's blog entry about the Gartner "Windows is Collapsing" Affair, one reader took me to task in calling Vista "bloated." His point was that one person's bloat is another person's essential feature. That certainly can be true, but features that the user sees aren't the only thing that contribute to bloat. Microsoft needs to move aggressively to trim the fat out of Windows, regardless of its source.

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Microsoft senior VP Chris Capossela was spitting bullets yesterday when asked about the recently announced Salesforce For Google Apps. "Opportunistic," "uninteresting," and "publicity stunt" were just some of the terms he used to describe the competitive move.

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The rush to provide social computing tools to the corporate world continued this week as Dallas-based Telligent released Community Server 2008. Unlike other pure-play community software and social networkers, Telligent is banking on Microsoft to help it befriend corporate customers that have big plans for SharePoint. But SharePoint isn't the only draw in this fight. ROI is the other weapon it's using to spar with others in the competitive social computing space.

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As you might expect, the discussion over Gartner's Windows is Collapsing presentation reverberated across the Internet. No doubt, the era of desktop PC dominance is ending; users are interacting with more computers than ever, but as cell phones, DVRs, and airline check-in kiosks. Windows won't ever be the center of the computing universe like it once was. What can Microsoft do to prevent, or at least slow, the decline?

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Users are drumming up petitions, blog posts, and Web sites aimed at trying to convince Microsoft to continue support for Windows XP, which Microsoft plans to discontinue on new computers beginning June 30.

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Synchronization has become a major theme for Microsoft's online strategy, and the forthcoming launch of Live Mesh at next week's Web 2.0 Conference shows that the company is finally getting ready for more of its "software plus services" coming-out party.

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The User Account Control is one of the most hated features of Vista, constantly throwing up pop-ups asking if you really want to do what you just asked to do. In an intriguing defense, Microsoft says they know it's annoying -- they did it on purpose.

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There are several news reports from a Gartner conference in Las Vegas this week that included a session titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve." Gartner may not be stellar at identifying industry trends, but they sure know how to pick controversial session titles.

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Reports of Yahoo-AOL-Google tie-ups and Microsoft-News Corp. bids are signs we're in for more trench warfare in the struggle for Yahoo's future. And more hints that Yahoo doesn't want any part of Microsoft.

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Microsoft has been working to get its (OOXML) sanctified as an ISO standard, and the recent vote seems to indicate they've succeeded. But I wonder, what are the practical implications of OOXML being an ISO standard?

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As I sit here at the RSA Conference in San Francisco watching Microsoft's Craig Mundie talk about his company's new End to End Trust initiative in a fireside chat-style discussion, I'm struck by how poorly the homey, conversational interview format suits such a significant call to action.

Microsoft is basically saying computing and the Internet need to be reinvented because there's no way to trust people and information online. This is the stuff of drums and trumpets, not a technocratic tête-à-tête.

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Steve Ballmer finally got tough with Yahoo after several weeks of playing nice. (My summary of the letter: "You understimate the power of the Dark Side!") Yahoo fired back with a response that shows they're ready to rumble. It seems to me that the longer this goes on, the worse off Yahoo will be.

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Microsoft said Saturday that Yahoo must accept its buyout offer within three weeks or face a hostile proxy battle. The company also said it would lower its offer for the Internet giant if it's forced to go the proxy route.

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Several times in the past dozen years, I've had hard drives fail. There was a horrible run of data destruction caused by three IBM Deskstar 75GXP drives before I put them all out to pasture, but several other brands have bitten the dust as well. Usually the failure was gradual enough that I could recover any recent changes on the drive and replace it. But I can't thank Windows for raising the alarm about drive failures.

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Collaboration and community are two very big hills for vendors to climb these days. As the saying goes, many have tried and many have failed. Add Microsoft's SharePoint to the growing list of things you'll need to overcome and some might say you're spinning your wheels.

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Microsoft's newest update to Windows Mobile was officially launched at CTIA on Tuesday. In many ways, the launch of Windows Mobile 6.1 wasn't a big surprise -- Microsoft had made reference to the operating system when it announced System Center Mobile Device Manager at the last CTIA show in October and news that the company would officially launch at CTIA had been discussed in the press for several days before the show.

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As Microsoft continues its enthusiastic pursuit of Yahoo, one of the supposed prizes of that acquisition is the Yahoo advertising network. Steve Ballmer says that catching Google is his goal, so a strong competitor to Google's ad network is critical. I am not convinced that is what they are getting.

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Windows still nearly monopolized enterprise desktops in 2007, even though it lost some market share at the expense of Apple, according to a report by Forrester Research. Enterprise Windows market share dropped nearly 4%, but 95% of business users run Windows. And Apple market share tripled, but it's still just 4.2%, limited to enthusiasts and small workgroups.

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I used to have a wonderful printer. It was an HP Laserjet III, and it lasted me through about eight years and three Windows upgrades. Its black-and-white toner produced beautiful, sharp, smudge-free output. Eventually, though, it wore out and went to that great recycle bin in the sky; I had to face the loss and look for a replacement. That's where the trouble started.

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Microsoft wields incredible power in the computer industry. Still, when it comes to the image of its flagship operating systems, it is greatly at the mercy of third-party software developers. When users sit down to use Windows, the code written by Microsoft sometimes doesn't matter as much as the bugs left behind in poorly written applications and drivers. If a crash happens, the average user is more likely to blame "crummy Windows" than to figure out it's a bug with a device driver.

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It's bad enough that Microsoft with its big war chest might sue you for producing open source software. But what's really hard to take is the suggestion that you stooped to stealing Microsoft code for your project. At the Open Source Business Conference this week in San Francisco, one show organizer got his revenge.

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It's bad enough that Microsoft with its big war chest might sue you for producing open source software. But what's really hard to take is the suggestion that you stooped to stealing Microsoft code for your project. At the Open Source Business Conference this week in San Francisco, one show organizer got his revenge.

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Over the past week, Apple has been raked over the coals for its force-feeding of new applications through Apple Software Update. The "update" word there might lead you to believe that Apple would only use the utility to deliver updates to software you previously installed. Yet Apple also uses its "update" program to download software you never requested.

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It's an unfortunate fact that most Windows-based systems are filled with crapware when they're delivered. This unwanted software has a limited lifetime or crippled functionality. When its teaser trial is up, you either succumb to its incessant pleas for money or find a way to uninstall it. Last week, Sony put forth a solution. For a mere $50 more, it would deliver a system that is the way it should be -- free of crapware. After a harsh reception all over the Internet, Sony backed down and now says it will send you a system sans crapware for no extra charge.

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News came this week that the Supreme Court wouldn't block Novell's antitrust lawsuit alleging that Microsoft harmed Novell's office suite during the 1990s. Novell won $536 million in 2004 regarding Microsoft's actions against NetWare, and is still pressing its decade-old grudge against Microsoft for the decline and fall of WordPerfect. The difficulty I see in resolving this case is in deciding how much of the damage was done by Microsoft and how much was self-inflicted.

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Microsoft's IE8 effort has been kicking into gear lately with its first beta release and a bunch of information. One controversial change is that IE8 is aiming to be "standards compliant" more than "IE7 compliant". Both IE6 and IE7 lagged far behind HTML and CSS standards that were well-established before the browsers shipped. After eight years, Web developers have become reluctant experts about the hacks and patches needed to make IE work properly. Many Web pages break when existing IE6/7 hacks are applied to the new IE8 browser, and that could spell trouble when IE8 ships.

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Want an early glimpse of Internet Explorer 8? Then have a look at these screenshots. They're a good sneak peak at some of the new features in Microsoft's latest Web browser.

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Something's gotten into Microsoft lately. Its developers are singing like canaries about their plans for Internet Explorer 8. Earlier this month, Microsoft released IE8 Beta 1, which is intended mainly as an early look for Web developers. It's quite a change for a product that seemed to have gone dark in the days after Vista's release.

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On Monday, Microsoft's Windows Home Server team posted an update on their blog about the persistent data loss bug that has been hanging around since October 2007. At this point, the group says they have a handle on the problem, but they don't expect to have a complete fix until June.

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I don't know how this one slipped under everyone's radar. On Feb. 27, Microsoft released a new operating system that can replace Vista. It has all the patches and fixes that are in Vista SP1, and runs nearly all the same software, but runs it faster. Early reviews show that Windows Workstation 2008 is the speediest and most secure version of Windows to come along in a decade.

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It's becoming clear that synchronizing information across devices and services is set to become a critical part of Microsoft's Web strategy, and Ray Ozzie made that point even clearer last week.

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Hey, what is going on here? In Thursday's list of Amazon's best-selling portable computers, only seven out of the top 25 run Windows! As you might expect, Apple takes a lot of the spots, but it's not just MacBooks. The Linux-based Asus Eee PCs and Nokia tablets are grabbing high positions in the list. That's a lot of computers that aren't paying tribute to Microsoft.

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Some folks predict the volume of H-1B visas petitions employers file starting April 1 will be lighter than last year. But that's not because demand is waning for foreign tech talent. Rather, companies are being more selective in the kind of talent they're seeking, given the odds aren't good they'll have their visa applications approved.

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Last night I spent some time with Microsoft's Office Live Workspace (OLW) beta that was recently announced. Some articles have characterized OLW as a competitor to Google Apps, which is just plain wrong. Instead, it's just a way for Microsoft Office users to store and organize their files to access or share anywhere on the Internet.

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Last week, Microsoft announced that it was cutting retail prices for Vista. In one way, this is pretty historic. I've been watching Microsoft for two decades, and I can't remember a time when it's actually cut the price of Windows. It doesn't say much for the retail demand that should be fueled by upgraders, but that's to be expected given Vista's high hardware demands. In the end, though, you can't read much about Vista's ultimate success or failure from this move.

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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer got its hands on the Microsoft e-mails that are part of the lawsuit regarding Microsoft's ill-fated Vista Capable logo program. Earlier, I said Microsoft, OEMs, and retailers all deserved blame in the logo disaster, but these insider e-mails have changed my opinion on apportioning blame. Many OEMs and retailers tried to do the right thing, but were both ignored and double-crossed by Microsoft's final Vista logo program so that Intel would be happy and make more money.

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Although I still have a lot of doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo will ever consummate a marriage, Microsoft continues to pursue the deal with a lot of enthusiasm. I don't know how loudly I can say this, but Microsoft: It's a trap! There's a reason why some major Yahoo shareholders are suing to make this deal go through, pronto. They think you're crazy and they want to get the money before you sober up.

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