Stuart J. Johnston

“It’s not over until it’s over,” is a classic aphorism that Yogi Berra is reputed to have coined. He couldn’t have been more right when it comes to Microsoft’s quest to transform its Office 2007 file formats into a broadly recognized international standard. With less than 24 hours to go before the cut off for […]

Despite continued turmoil over standardization efforts surrounding its latest Office file formats, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced this week it is pairing with Sourcesense, a European open source systems integrator, to work on projects that integrate open source software with the Office 2007 applications suite. That and a second announcement seem to be meant to telegraph […]

With Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) all but completely out the door, now rumors have begun flying as to when Windows XP SP3 will go final. As if it were an office pool, tech pundits have been predicting dates for XP SP3 ranging from this past Monday to the end of April, while Microsoft […]

Microsoft plans this summer to release the first service pack for phone systems that run its Response Point communications software for small businesses. Unlike many service packs that provide patches but no new features, Service Pack 1 for Response Point will add new capabilities to the system’s voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) functions, Microsoft (NASDAQ: […]

While it may not fulfill the old cliché of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Microsoft is doing the next best thing when it comes to the Eclipse Foundation – best known for its Java-based, open source integrated development environment (IDE) project – and helping it. This week, Microsoft committed to collaborating with the […]

UPDATED: Microsoft’s bid to upgrade Office Open XML’s (OOXML) status to that of an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard is starting to look like a good old fashioned cliffhanger. Microsoft confirmed Thursday that India’s delegation to the ISO process has voted not to change its vote from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’. That is, in the […]

When Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) released the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for download this week, many observers were expecting that like the earlier service packs for Windows XP, it would turn out to be a debacle for users. So far, however, that does not appear to be happening. Although some users […]

Microsoft released a near-final version of its virtualization engine for Windows Server 2008 on Wednesday, possibly putting its vaunted Hyper-V hypervisor technology ahead of its current schedule. The release candidate is feature complete, the company said in a statement. The technology, which has been in beta test since late last year, has now reached what […]

The multi-core revolution is in full swing, if still in its infancy. Dual- and quad-core systems are the standard today and it’s virtually impossible to buy a new single-core based computer. Chip designers are pushing the envelope by producing CPUs – even if they’re only research prototypes – with many more cores. Intel, for instance, […]

It must have been one of the worst-kept secrets in the history of Microsoft product rollouts. As expected, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced Tuesday that it has released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for download by consumers with Vista. Previously, SP1 had been made available only to MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) subscribers. “Today, you can now […]

In a surprise move, Microsoft plans to use a version of Adobe Systems’ Flash technology in its Windows Mobile OS — despite working on a competing format of its own. “They [Microsoft] plan to include it in Windows Mobile later this year,” Anup Murarka, Adobe’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) director of technical marketing for mobile and devices, […]

It looks as if a key Microsoft partner jumped the gun and announced the retail availability of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) a little early. What’s more, it may have let the cat out of the bag for online availability as well. Amazon.com announced on its Web site – inadvertently or not – that […]