Mary Jo

Microsoft has opened the Windows Vista floodgates a bit further. Now, anyone who was part of the Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) Beta 2 trial is free to download the Release Candidate (RC) 1 bits. Microsoft’s ultimate goal, company officials have said, is to make RC1 available to more than five million testers. Microsoft is […]

class=”ArticleBody”> How to Sell a Vista Upgrade to Your Boss: We asked how companies are planning to cost-justify an upgrade to Vista. Microsoft Watch readers answered. The Contrary View: Why You Shouldn’t Advocate a Vista Upgrade: Not surprisingly, not everyone is jumping joyfully over Vista’s imminent arrival. Readers share some of their Vista qualms and […]

Microsoft has put the finishing touches on the 1.0 release of the IronPython dynamic programming language. Microsoft made the final IronPython implementation available on its CodePlex code repository. The IronPython code can be downloaded here.

Microsoft and Cisco rolled out on September 6 a joint architecture providing interop between Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP) and Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC). NAP, which is built into Windows Vista and Windows Server “Longhorn,” provides quarantining for security purposes. Cisco’s NAC is a set of solutions and technologies built into Cisco’s networking infrastructure.

How much will Vista cost? If you saw the Vista price list leaked last week by Amazon.com, you already know. The official Vista prices, which Microsoft made public on September 5, are the same as what ran on Amazon’s site. So what about the January 30, 2007, availability dates, also leaked by Amazon? Microsoft won’t […]

Microsoft’s Expression Web Designer – now known simply as Expression Web (UGH! Why not just Expression Sparkle?) – has moved from Community Technology Preview (CTP) to full-fledged beta status. Microsoft is planning to release the final version of Expression Web within 90 days of Vista, company officials said earlier this summer. That would mean, to […]

On August 1, Microsoft officials said that Brian Valentine, long-time senior vice president in charge of Microsoft’s Core Operating System Division, was planning to move to another part of the company after Windows Vista went to manufacturing. Instead, Valentine has decided to leave the company and join Amazon.com. On September 5, Microsoft announced that 19-year […]

Windows Vista beta testers didn’t let Labor Day weekend in the U.S. stop them from laboring over their reviews of Windows Vista Release Candidate (RC) 1, which Microsoft dropped on September 1. Installation time for the latest Vista build is much better, according to tester Brandon LeBlanc. eWEEK’s Jason Brooks had some XP migration problems […]

We almost missed this one, from “Inside Higher Ed” last week, which reported on a last-minute wording change in a Higher-Ed Commission report, at the request of Microsoft Corporate VP Gerri Elliott. Elliott, in addition to overseeing Microsoft’s public sector business, also sits on the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. […]

Microsoft Research has put the finishing touches on “BrowserShield,” a program designed to zap malicious code before it can attack Internet Explorer users. (The filtering is done at run-time.) BrowserShield is an outgrowth of “Microsoft Research’s larger “Shield” malware-defense effort.