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MS To Launch Internet Versions of Office And Windows
daria42 writes "In a press conference this morning, Bill Gates said Microsoft plans to launch Internet-based complements to its core products, dubbed 'Windows Live' and 'Office Live'. Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment MS' Office suite. The programs won't replace the paid software but instead seem aimed at diminishing Google's ad revenue. Windows Live already appears to have 'gone live' in a preview format on the web."
Firefox Users :-)
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient
. Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?
Hmm. Cool.
I hope they don't plan on using ajax or java script to do it. The IE java script interpreter is so damn slow it is like watching paint dry. I just tried to build a large scale app using a java script interface kit and failed. It failed not because the program was bad, as a matter of fact it was damn snappy in firefox. Then I did the unthinkable and loaded it up in IE, slow as mud to the point of being totally unusable. The next person that tells me how great IE is, I am going to punch in the teeth.
Got Code?
I really wonder how much they had to pay for live.com. According to whois the domain was just updated on Oct 31.
Also, is it just me, or does firefox do the same thing IE does there? Tried both, and it looks the same, with just the little Firefox users... banner at the top.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
This seems like it could be the beginning of everything moving to a more web-oriented computer experience. Who needs Windows when you can use Office, MSN, etc. FROM FIREFOX (under Linux). Windows could be left for professionals who need a robust platform to run "real" applications for things like video/image editing, CAD design, etc. Everyday users could do the most basic computer tasks in the same way under Linux as under Windows... I guess even if this kills Windows, Microsoft has a stake in it either way now...
Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage [google.com].
I hope you're kidding. It seems, more and more, that there are the deluded who believe that Google, along with Apple, are responsible for everything.
This is nothing more than a rehash of portals, such that we saw in the late 90s. Excite was one of the biggest and most configurable portals, and of course many of us configured it, setting up our stocks and our weather, and then never used it again.
Developers are leaving Microsoft and going to Google in hopes to make millions like early Microsoft employees did.
It's a bit late for that at Google now: It's too big of a company for that get-rich-quick type nonsense. However it is true that a lot of ex-Microsofters have left to join small startups, or to create one themselves. This is especially true too now that Microsoft is becoming just like every other traditional "where careers go to die" organization.
Also Microsoft is stuck using their own software as a development platform
Nonsense. Microsoft's development platform is extraordinarily powerful, and it certainly isn't a detriment that they use it.
The problem that Microsoft's internet ventures have, and it's always been this way, is that they do the absolute minimum amount possible to ensure that they aren't eviscerated, but no more. If you remember, the IE team smoked Netscape, and then they were promptly disbanded. Why? Because that team and group represented a threat to the Microsoft cash cows - Office and Windows. These "web versions" of Office and Windows are almost laughable - if anything they'll complement, and most certainly they won't replace until Microsoft is on its deathbed and the revenue has completely dried up.
live.com wow, wish i was the one who owned that name. Imagine how much money they payed for it.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
the "market" just doesnt realise they like it.
HTML & server side scripting are another form of "dumb terminal",
Hands up if you use a remote X session to a server for something, ditto VNC or NX
AND suns sunray thin client workstations are works of F***ing art damn it, they can pull more central server based tricks with those than any company buying them could ever want id. there are people that want these kinds of machines because it IS cheaper for them. If you are working on a number of platforms simultaneously with a number of groups/projects, its simpler to deal with one central server (real or virtual) for each reasonably sized team and platform they need and give them all their necessary enviroments. When the projects over theres only one machine to wipe and reinstall, not 10 or 20. They arent for everyone but they arent the rejected has beens you make them out to be.
Above all. the remote software pardigim is becoming more useful to the end users only now, while there has always been a set of proffessionals and technical types making use of it in various forms. Its only now with the explosion of the (god i hate using this term like this) Web 2.0 revoloution, that they have become aware that they dont have to be stuck on their computer all the time. They dont want to be. they want to be able to show someoen their stuff when theyre vistiting a freinds place, they want to be able to do stuff at work, or on vacation they did at home without the hassle. They want "their stuff" to be more available to them than ever. MS is tapping this in a big way now.
I just hope it kicks google to counter it, and revamp their now becoming stale personalised google.com/ig page design.
Minimalism like google is only one way to get a great UI,
and MS seem to have gotten a good one to counter it subtly.
overall, im pissed im hearing this from MS, come on google & sun, i cant stand this.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
I'm going to bank that they don't hurt Google in the least bit. Google has a customizable portal that I tried using for a while as well. And honestly I ended up back at the original Google page (well truthfully I'm using the suggest version... I love that page).
.02 copper though.
When it comes to searching the web... I don't want a portal and I'm going to assume that most people don't care. Portal services I use Yahoo, but I never use Yahoo for searching I use Google. It's simple and clean which is what i want in a search engine.
Microsoft is likely to hurt Yahoo in the portal arena for me if they can match and surpass what Yahoo currently offers though.
just my
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I think its real but it is in desperation..
MS Office makes up a large amount of MS's income with the recent resignation of Offices key executive and just a day after google goes public about contributing actual paid employees into open office it does make you wonder...
This whole www.live.com thing looks nice but two things i dont get is a) the slashdot feed is there (linux users haven) and i saw the netscape logo there too b) its all beta beta beta, MS has a reputation of releasing stuff with a little more substance.
Back in the day when Microsoft were too stubborn/clueless/scared-shitless of thin-client computing, they did everything they could to kill the whole idea of network computing. They would hear nothing about how software would be delivered to lightweight machines over the network.
When Sun was saying "The Network Is The Computer", Micosoft was busily saying "Network? What Network? There's no network -- Hey, look, Clippy!".
And, now that they're trotting out what is, oh, what, a 10 or 15 year old idea, they're going to spin this and say they've innovated, and look at what they came up with.
The simple fact (IMO) is that Microsoft couldn't innovate the shit into a diaper. They rehash ideas other people have done, make incompatible implementations, and bray really loudly about how they're giving the consumer what they want.
It's only because Google is lining up to completely eat Microsoft's lunch in the area of web-delievered technologies that they're even beginning to look at this market segment. The difference being, Google implements it, releases it (and free SDKs for it), and then moves on to making other stuff. [ Witness an earlier story about a Carmen San Diego-esque game based on Google maps, Google pedometers, and god knows what else I've missed ]
As has been pointed out by smarter people than I, Google is leaving the actual technology in their wake. Microsoft is leaving press-releases and open-ended promises about what they might deliver in the future.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sorry to bust your balloon but microsoft is fundamentally dedicated to a world where everyone pays a monthly subscription for microsoft products and there are no competitors and any potential competitors are locked out before they can even get started.
Fooled me once, shame on me- fooled me at least 15 to 20 times- well I guess I should assume you are trying to fool me on any future attempts. (convicted of stealing competitors products, well known tendency of breaking competitors products by tweaking the operating system, well known tendency to slow competitors products by tweaking the operating system or using illegal API's and still certifying product, bundling, giving away products for free until the competition is dead then never innovating, "embracing and extending" java, j++, the halloween memoes, "collaborating" on products with a competitor and then bringing out their own version using knowledge they picked up during the collaboration, etc. etc. etc.).
They are not just another large capitalist company. They are something unique and they want to lock that in forever. They bought or drove out of business every legitimate business that competed with them either legally or illegally (Stak/doublespace comes to mind- there are others).
Trust me, you don't know it but you really do want 4 to 5 solid OS's competing with many different products so that they keep each other honest.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"It's easy. It's live, and it has 'me' at the center of the universe," said Blake Irving, a Microsoft vice president who was on stage to demonstrate Windows Live.
Microsoft has the most obnoxious PR-speak of any corporation on earth. On the other hand, Google or Apple would just tell you what their product does and why you need it, usually in one sentence.