Hi there,
Wow 2 Blog posts within a week…whats up with that?
Regardless of this miracle Microsoft just let the guys on the SP2 Beta that its RTM’ed and available for download-Here’s an excerpt of what they said to us:
Hello SP2 Beta testers…The following message was released…
Today we are proud to announce the launch of Service [...]
Written by Patrick S on April 30th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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Microsoft has released its second Service Pack for Office 2007 today.
Service Pack 2 includes some significant changes, including built-in ability to save as ODF & PDF formats, improvements to Outlook’s performance and calendar reliability and significant bug fixes for charts in core Office applications. It is also a rollup of all fixes that have previously been released for Office 2007 products.
The company has published a support article detailing the various fixes and improvements contained in the SP2 update. According to the document there are improvements in the following areas, to name but a few:
- Outlook responsiveness
- More reliable Outlook calendar updates
- Search reliability
- RSS improvements in Outlook
- Better .pdf/.xps output fidelity
- Improves the charting mechanism in Excel 2007
- Provides faster file resaves in PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft has also published a full changes list which details all the updates and fixes for SP2.
The download is available here.
Written by computerboom on April 28th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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RTM means Release To Manufacturing or in other words its the final release….
Microsoft has finally finished and compiled the RTM version of Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008. The full version string being 6.0.6006.18005, which company officials have confirmed is the final RTM version of SP2.
Currently circulating around popular BitTorrent websites, the final version is available in 32 and 64 bit versions. Microsoft is expected to announce public availability later this week. Screenshots of the file properties:
Written by computerboom on April 28th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that declining PC sales hurt revenue, as the software giant reported quarterly sales that fell for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company said sales fell 6% from a year earlier to $13.7 billion, missing analysts’ expectations of $14.1 billion.
Meanwhile, the company’s net income fell 32% to $2.98 billion, or 33 cents per share, in its third quarter ended March 31.
Results included charges totaling 6 cents per share for job cuts and investments that took place in the quarter. Without the charges, Microsoft earned 39 per share, in line with forecasts by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, which typically exclude one-time items.
Microsoft said weakness in the global PC market negatively impacted its results.
Still, shares of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) rose 4% after hours, as the company performed roughly in-line with expectations. In the previous quarter, results came in well below forecasts, and Microsoft rescinded its prior outlook for 2009.
"Expectations were much more tempered now," said Katherine Egbert, analyst with Jefferies & Co. "People now understand that near-term business won’t be so good."
On a conference call with analysts, Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said the current recession has been "the most difficult economic environment we’ve faced in our history." He noted that he expects the recovery to be slow and gradual, but again he declined to give a specific outlook for the next three-month period.
Still, Liddell said he was encouraged by the company’s ability to cut costs.
"While I can’t be happy in any quarter in which our revenue and earnings per share decrease, I’m pleased with our relative performance," he added.
Demand quagmire: The company has had a difficult time combating slumping demand for its Windows operating system, as the economic slowdown has dragged PC sales down 7% to 9%, according to Microsoft’s estimates.
The recession has also prompted many consumers to opt for cheaper, scaled-down "netbooks" that perform only basic tasks such as e-mail and accessing the Internet. They typically run a lower-cost version of Windows or an open-source operating system such as Linux.
"The trouble for Microsoft is that its cash cow is shifting," said Carl Howe, analyst with Yankee Group. "PC sales are troubled, and they’re getting hurt by the move to cheaper notebooks."
In January, Microsoft announced its first mass job cuts in its 34-year history in an effort to bolster its bottom line The company slashed 1,400 position during the quarter with another 3,600 expected to be cut by mid-2010. At that time, the company said it was also adding a few thousand positions, mainly in its online advertising division.
"While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organization’s ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives," said Liddell. "We expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter."
Sales and profit fell in all of Microsoft’s businesses, except its server business, which managed to squeeze out a 7% rise in revenue and a 24% jump in earnings. The entertainment and devices division, which includes the Xbox 360, suffered a 2% revenue decline and an operating loss of $31 million from a year earlier. The company’s business division sales dropped 5%.
Windows: The company is banking on a new operating system to break out of its slump.
Microsoft’s Vista operating system, which was released in early 2007, never took off like the company had hoped. Sales in the division that produces Vista fell 16% in the previous quarter. User satisfaction has been underwhelming, and IT departments have largely opted to stick with Vista’s predecessor, Windows XP.
"Microsoft can’t point to anything in their mix of products that excites people right now," said Allen Weiner, analyst with tech consultancy firm Gartner Research.
Early reviews of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 system have been largely positive, but the stated release date isn’t until late early 2010. Analysts think that Microsoft will push up the release date to later this year to help spur PC sales around the holiday season. The company expects the unveiling of its new operating system will help increase sales even if economic conditions remain challenging.
Online advertising funk: Microsoft has also continued to struggle to compete with rivals Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) in the online advertising business. Microsoft’s Online Services division, which includes the online portal MSN and its Internet advertising sales, lost $575 million in the quarter, and sales in the division were down 14% from the same quarter a year earlier.
Microsoft said the loss in its ad sales division was due to the significant decline of average rates in display advertising. 
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/23/technology/microsoft_earnings/index.htm
Written by computerboom on April 28th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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General Electric says its researchers have achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
It’s merely a lab success at this stage, but the new technology is intended to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices, the company says.
The New York Times reports:
But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.
“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
Can it really?
First, the facts: the G.E. researchers’ work is in the field of holographic storage, an optical process that stores 3D images and digital data together, encoding it all and placing it on light-sensitive material such as a DVD. The theory is that holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, such as what is used in conventional DVD and Blu-ray.
Holographic discs could hold 500 gigabytes of data. (In comparison, Blu-ray comes in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5up to about 8 gigabytes.)
Now, the question. If this breakthrough can be distrubuted on cheap media, it will drop the price-per-gigabyte ratio dramatically. But is this technology coming too late, at least in the consumer market?
The latest trend in the consumer HDTVs is to connect your set top and media player (DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) to the Internet. That connectivity means content will flow directly to your viewing area — no media needed and limited only by the cable and ISP it’s flowing through. So when I see breakthroughs like this, I wonder: aren’t we already heading toward a medialess world?
And if not, hasn’t flash media proved itself a more worthy and useful format?
SOURCE: http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=3660
Written by computerboom on April 27th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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