journal: win

NY Times: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo bid

By Nick, May 3, 2008

Well, there you go.

The New York Times reports that after months of wrangling, Microsoft has walked away from its attempt to purchase Yahoo.1 The reason? Microsoft and Yahoo couldn’t come to terms on a price, so instead of launching a long and difficult proxy fight, Microsoft decided to give up on its takeover bid. You can read the details here.

Personally I think this was a good idea on Microsoft’s part. For one, the Yahoo takeover was becoming a bit of a distraction at a time when Microsoft has larger fish to fry (like convincing the world that Windows Vista doesn’t suck). For another, I still have a hard time how a Microsoft-Yahoo merger makes sense. Sure, Yahoo’s more popular than MSN and Windows Live, but Yahoo is still far, far behind Google, and with some exceptions, hasn’t been particularly innovative in recent years. What Microsoft needs is innovation to keep up with Google. Yahoo wouldn’t have brought it. And then you have the messy issue of trying to blend the two companies. Will it blend? Probably not. My guess is that Yahoo would have survived as a Microsoft subsidiary.

Where do Yahoo and Microsoft go from here? In…
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EXCLUSIVE: Microsoft moves up Windows 7 release date

By Nick, April 1, 2008

Deep Thought has received word from an anonymous source that Microsoft is set to release Windows 7...next month. The reason? People just don’t like Vista. Our source sent us an excerpt from an internal memo:

TO: All Microsoft Employees
FROM: Steve Ballmer
RE: Windows 7

Dear team,
We have decided to move up the Windows 7 release date to sometime next month. The Windows development team has been working around the clock to get Windows 7—which will be branded as Windows the Magnificent --ready years ahead of schedule. In fact, we have had a secret team working on Windows 7 since before Vista’s development concluded. We were hoping to release it at a later date, but unfortunately Vista was such a commercial failure that we couldn’t wait any longer and had to move up Windows 7 by a little bit.

More information will be forthcoming in the coming days.

What does this mean for Microsoft? “They have learned how to listen to their customers, without a doubt,” noted analyst A.P. Rulfulse from the firm Lawson, Mayer, Aldridge, and Owens, LLC.  “It’s unfortunate for Microsoft that Vista was such a miserable failure, but I believe they learned their lesson. Moving up…
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Windows Vista SP1 Released

By Liam, March 18, 2008

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It’s coming...

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It’s here. Impressions if it works; ranting if it doesn’t.

Thoughts

I didn’t really pay attention to my PC while SP1 installed, but it couldn’t have taken more than half an hour to complete. It was installed like any other update, with downloading and preliminary installing occurring in a Windows Update window. Then it rebooted the PC and finished up before letting me log in. The only problem I’ve had so far occurred when I got to my PC after it was finished. The screen seemed compressed; it was the result of my display resolution on my primary monitor being changed from 1280x1024 to 1280x768. I haven’t noticed much of a responsiveness increase, though I never had an issue with the responsiveness of Vista.

Microsoft has published an article on TechCenter that is the be-all end-all of SP1 information pages. This page is long, but does contain some useful information. The most notable change to me is the removal of the Search item in the Start Menu’s right pane, which I used every once in a while (thanks Google :rolleyes: ) I don’t have the means to test it, but apparently network file transfer speeds have improved.

In…
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Microsoft Makes Standards Mode Default for IE8

By Liam, March 3, 2008

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Microsoft today announced that, contrary to earlier plans, Internet Explorer 8 would default to its most standards compliant rendering mode. Early reports from the company’s Internet Explorer team stated that IE8 would default to a rendering mode identical to the standards support of IE7, with support for a meta tag placed in the header of the web’s source that could switch standards mode on. Now, plans have been reversed, with the engine’s most standards complient mode on for all web pages, and legacy support available for those who wish to avoid having to troubleshoot bugs that may appear in standards mode.

This decision appears to have been made in accordance with recently published Interoperability Principles from the company, in a push to become more standards friendly (see section II.) According to Internet Explorer’s General Manager Dean Hachamovitch,

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal…
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Let’s Preview: Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

By Liam, March 3, 2008

There’s not much of an incentive to using single-network chat clients these days. Why restrict yourself to one service or run multiple clients in a cavalcade of memory-hogging when you can use a multi-network client like Pidgin or Trillian? Questions like these, while not necessarily the bane of a given service’s existence (the number people who will use AIM 6 on purpose is a staggering number to us geeks,) are questions that, if answered, could result in a considerable boost in use of that client. Of course, one of the most cost-effective methods of attracting new users is to add eye candy. This is precisely what Yahoo! has chosen to do in a version of Yahoo! Messenger exclusively for Windows Vista. Using Windows Presentation Foundation, they’ve loaded it up with all the fancy effects, from drop shadows to transparency. Though this is only a preview, it serves as a good preview of the interface and that’s what’s important (to me, Mr. Superficial.)

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The buddy list is actually somewhat barren; most of the features of the current client haven’t been replicated in the new one. The three buttons on beneath the avatar are, from left to right: add contact, contact detail…
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