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Package which called Student Innovation Suite consisted of Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 30, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office and Windows Live Mail desktop. The package is not sold in the free market but can be bought by developing country which had computer sale subsidy program for student or middle and elementary schools.

This big discount is part of Partners Indium Learning (PIL) program which go on during 5 year. Microsoft is allocated US $ 250 million for program with aim to assist the teachers and educator exploits information technology in the school activity.

Supply of cheap software and training to all teachers is only one of Microsoft strategy to promote technological using and computer overspreads in developing countries. "Unlimited Potential" strategy which targeted by Microsoft also done with work training program and computer supply.

In consequence, besides the cheap software, Microsoft plans to opens 90 new Innovation Center in 35 countries to the end of 2009. Now, Microsoft has built 110 Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) in over the world which providing training class and technology access for academician user and local software community developer. MIC is expected able to increase the ability of information technology practitioners, pushs creation of product, and new employment.

AP

According to Ballmer, this Google action is insane. "We are (Microsoft) walk from 24.000 becoming 75.000 employees in 27 year. That is a long year and very consistent. According to me, with them (Google) try to duplicate the number in one year, that's insane," comment of Ballmer from Softpedia, Sunday ( 18/3/2007).

Besides commenting about the growth of employees number, Ballmer also highlights the Google business which only focus at searching machine. " Google have build very good business. But they only have one main matter (that is search engine), the other only sweetener," said Ballmer.

Ballmer explicitly that his company, Microsoft, exactly reverse from the Google. There is experiencing multi business, start from desktop, server, online and entertainment.

Office 2007, improving efficiency and productivity of customer, for example by lessening click amount in the operation.

Exclusive Feature of Office 2007 is radical change at productivity application of Office 2007 compared to previous Office version. Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface that's conducive Office 2007 operated with less click. With its technology, consumer of Office 2007 can be easier swiftly reach for best job result. Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface fiture at tend to replace the traditional and toolbar menu that becoming the control feature of previous Office version.

Microsoft present Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface technology at Office 2007 after taken having exploiting study and extensive research into the consumer. When application of Office 2007 becoming progressively strong, user challenge is how to find and know the way of exploiting the immeasurable application type feature. Input from the customer then push the Microsoft to present the new user interface (UI) which enabling consumer to explore all the Office 2007 benefit.

Microsoft have four main design target in serve the Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface. There is facilitating exploiting of a number Office 2007 application, lessening complicated design and interupt of UI, facilitating the consumer to search and find the useful tool and feature, and also support the creation of quality, functional, and nice looking documents.

The PC maker said it received more than 100,000 customer requests for Linux in a "suggestion box" posted on Dell's Web site less than three weeks ago.

"We are listening to what customers are saying about Linux and taking it into consideration," said Dell spokesman David Lord. "We are going forward. Let's say, 'Certainly stay tuned."'

Linux is an open-source operating system that is generally available for free and can be used to run most computers, including Dell's PCs.

Dell does not break out how much it charges for Windows when it calculates the cost of a computer system, but a basic upgrade version of the software generally retails for $99.

The only operating system that Dell currently offers on its PCs is Windows, with one exception, Lord said. It sells high-end Linux desktops designed specifically for use in oil and gas exploration, he said.

Making Linux available on other Dell PCs has been the top request since the Web site was launched on February 16, according to data posted on the site, as of Tuesday evening.

The second most popular request was that Dell offer another popular free software title, OpenOffice, which competes with Microsoft Office programs including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

www.reuters.com

Microsoft says the patents involve converting audio into digital MP3 files on PCs. It plans to appeal.

The news came before markets closed. Shares of Microsoft closed 4 cents higher at $29.39 on Thursday. Alcatel-Lucent's U.S. shares were up 7 cents to $13.14.

"This verdict is completely unsupported by the law or facts," Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said in a phone interview.

In 2002 and 2003, Lucent, which was acquired by Alcatel last year, filed 15 patent claims against computer makers Gateway (GTW) and Dell (DELL). Microsoft sued Lucent over the claims and was countersued by Lucent. A judge has tossed out two of Lucent's claims and set six trials to consider the remaining patent disputes.

Microsoft says it properly licensed the MP3 technology from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a German research company, for $16 million, in 1997 and 2004.

"We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor," Burt said in an earlier statement.

"We made strong arguments supporting our view, and we are pleased with the court's decision," said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Joan Campion. She declined to discuss details of the decision.

The software giant, meanwhile, says damages were determined by multiplying Windows sales and average PC sales prices worldwide since May 2003.

The same federal court in San Diego will consider the next of the patent lawsuits, this time covering speech coding, in March and April, Microsoft said. Also at issue is video coding on both Microsoft's Xbox video game console and the Windows interface.

"This case could bode ill for the other five patent cases still in the pipeline," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

While the verdict is a public-relations blow to Microsoft, it isn't necessarily a financial one, patent attorneys and software analysts say.

Large jury verdicts on patent-infringement cases are typically appealed, and damages can be reduced significantly or reversed, says Jeff Berkowitz, a software-patent attorney.

"This thing is far from over," says analyst Matt Rosoff of Directions on Microsoft. He notes Microsoft successfully appealed a $521 million patent-infringement award in 2003 for Eolas Technologies, which developed a Web-browser patent. The case is still in court.

www.usatoday.com

until this year, when she started at a school where the students use tablet computers for almost everything.

"She became very avid and discovered a lot of computer games, including one that runs on the Xbox 360 called Viva Pinata, where you take care of your garden," he told a business audience in Ottawa.

"She could spend two or three hours a day on this Viva Pinata, because it's kind of engaging and fun."

Gates said he and his wife Melinda decided to set a limit of 45 minutes a day of total screen time for games and an hour a day on weekends, plus what time she needs for homework.

Microsoft's new Vista software enables parents to control the Web sites their kids go to but also includes an audit log that records sites they have visited and whom they've been Instant Messaging.

"Up to some age, to be determined, it's very appropriate for a parent to get a sense of what they're seeing out there and be able to have conversations about it," he said.

"My son said, 'Am I going to have limits like this my whole life?', and I said, 'No, when you move away you can set your own screen limits'," Gates recounted, to audience laughter.

www.reuters.com

late January release means that nearly the entire computer industry missed the 2006 holiday sales season.

But, Vista is finally here and it has some great new features. Vista changes the way you access your data and changes the way you find documents, music, videos, pictures and everything else you use a computer for. Be prepared to spend time learning how it works.

The operating system's new graphical look is called Windows Aero and brings Vista's look and feel into the 21st century. Think in terms of clean, clear and very user-friendly. There are lots of 3D effects and modern typefaces for the user. In its own way, it's Microsoft's answer to Apple's OS X. Vista's new interface is very, very slick.

A streamlined Start menu makes finding applications and documents easy. I wish, though, that they didn’t hide your computer's turn-the-machine-completely-off shut down button. It’s now buried in the right-hand scroll-out Start menu. Microsoft prefers that you put your computer into the new "Sleep" mode (that's "hibernate" in Windows XP) rather than shut down completely all the time. They say Sleep uses less power, helps protect your data and can wake up within 2-3 seconds. For short periods I agree. For long periods of non-use I prefer turning my computer off completely.

The new Instant Search feature is located in every Explorer window and can help users quickly find information anywhere on the computer. The Search Pane lets you organize information by author, date, or type of document.

Windows Sidebar is a set of user-configurable tools that puts frequently used information (particularly RSS feeds) and tasks right on the desktop. I tend to ignore it — except for when I need to glance at the large analog clock. This feature is similar to Apple's OS X full-screen tool bar called Dashboard — only it sits to one side.

The completely new Network Explorer puts all network connections — like printers, other computers, and devices — into one centralized location. This is somewhat different from the controls in Windows XP, where each peripheral has a separate place. Network Explorer is one feature that has a definite learning curve. Once you understand the differences (like one icon for all live network connections instead of many in XP’s taskbar) the new system begins makes a lot of sense. In the same vein, the new Vista Sync Center helps users manage all their devices from a one place.

Depending on the age and complexity of your hardware — and which version of the new operating system you're trying to install — getting Vista onto your hard drive should take you about an hour. Beta installations took me anywhere from 40 to 75 minutes to get up and running.

I’ve been able to play with the final version of Vista that had been pre-installed on three different machines: a Dell XPS M1210 Media Center laptop, a very pretty, white Toshiba Portege R400-S4931 tablet computer running Vista Ultimate. I also got to try Vista on a pre-production OQO model 02 handheld.

It would take seven pages or more to tell you everything new and different that I’ve discovered while using Vista but here are a few highlights:

* Tablet PC functionality: This is integrated into most versions of Windows Vista. This is for hardware that lets you use it as a tablet computer.
* Windows Media Center: This comes standard on Window's Vista Home Premium and Windows Ultimate. It provides a full entertainment experience, including live and recorded television, music, photos, and videos.
* Improved Windows Media Player: Sleek and cool, it worked well on my computers.
* Power management: New power management features for mobile computers enable users to optimize battery life performance. I didn’t see much difference here, but Vista computers seem to get a very usable amount of time from each battery. It was difficult, though, to make a direct comparison to similar XP laptops.
* Security: Windows Defender helps protect computers with regular scanning and the removal of spyware and other potentially unwanted software. I found Defender and the rest of Vista’s protection software very intrusive. Turning it off was no better — I would constantly get little pop-up warnings that I had turned off these programs and might be jeopardizing my computer’s security.
* Games. There are the classic Windows games, plus several new ones including Chess Titans, InkBall, Mahjong Titans and Purble Place.

Overall, I found Windows Vista was a good operating system. In my tests, Vista runs faster on the new computers I’ve been using — definitely faster than the latest version (with constant upgrading) of Windows XP running on a year-old ThinkPad Z60t. I realize that’s like comparing apples and oranges — but Vista really does seem to zoom along at times.

The test OQO handheld computer was loaded with both XP and Vista. Although I couldn’t run both operating systems at the same time, Vista seemed to open a few test Office documents a touch quicker than when I tried it with XP Pro.

Vista is a lot more graphic-intensive than XP and overall a bit closer to OS X than to previous version of Windows. Both are very competent operating systems and both will have their rabid supporters and foes. I'm not interested in getting involved in that endless discussion.

If you’re currently using Windows XP, you can’t go wrong with upgrading to Vista — but be forewarned: to appreciate all of the new features, you'll need a high level of hardware horsepower — lots of memory (think 2GB, 1GB minimum) and a fast, modern processor. Otherwise, Vista will just be forced to disable some of the cool, new features that your computer can't handle.

Windows Vista is the latest, most up-to-date and most improved version of the Windows operating system. It will help you get the most from your current computer — and your next computer. But if you decide to stick with XP, have no fear — your next computer will have Vista installed on the hard drive. Soon it will be nearly impossible to avoid.

After using Vista extensively for the past two months, I found the new operating system to be stable and easy to use. Make no mistake, with all the new features there will be a learning curve when you first sit down and play. But that’s because there’s so much there.

Gary Krakow
www.msnbs.msn.com

Default Search Settings Changed, New APIs

Windows Security Center, which looks like a dashboard, gives the user an overview of what security software is running on the system and the status of checks and upgrades of firewalls and antispyware protection.

Rival security software firms and the European Commission suspected this could give WSC an unfair advantage. Microsoft said it agreed to develop a new set of application programming interfaces for release in the first service pack, scheduled for later this year, which can be invoked by third-party security programs to turn off the alerts presented by WSC.

Similarly, PatchGuard--software that protects against the modification of the operating system kernel--has been added to Vista. Some security vendors have in the past made modifications to the kernel as part of the implementation of their security software.

PatchGuard prevents such modifications in the 64-bit version. Microsoft is now working with vendors to develop new kernel-level APIs that will provide access to the kernel to address this issue, Microsoft said.

The APIs will be available in Windows Vista 64 with the first service pack, scheduled for later this year.

Regarding search, Microsoft has changed the way default settings are made for Internet search within both Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.

"These changes now ensure for users that they are able--through a series of windows and options--to make a clear, conscious, and open decision on their default search provider. Furthermore, users will retain at all times the ability to change this and all further defaults in the operating system at will," Microsoft said.

Changes Made to XPS Licensing

Microsoft's own fixed document format software is known as XPS. "In response to the Commission's concerns, the company has made fundamental changes to the licensing structure of the XPS fixed-format technology and has committed to submit the technology to an international standards body for adoption as an open industry standard," Microsoft said.

The XPS standard will be made available under licensing terms that do not exclude any industry or licensing model including the General Public License, it said.

"In response to Commissioner Kroes' letter of March 2006, Microsoft created a single application programming interface so that independent software developers can create applications to allow users to save documents in XPS or other formats, such as Adobe's PDF," Microsoft said.

Microsoft said it has also disclosed through a licensing program the relevant information to enable the implementation of XPS technology on competing client and server operating systems.

Microsoft has also responded to a further European Commission demand to submit XPS (as well as future extensions) to a standards setting body. Microsoft will submit XPS to the Ecma International.

Microsoft said it will also enable the implementation of XPS under an open-source business model (GPL) through use of a covenant not to sue--a model that Microsoft has applied to Web services and open XML document formats and that has, it said, "been welcomed by the Open Source community."

EU Gets Vista Sans Media Player

European customers and original equipment manufacturers will be able to buy a version of Vista that has Microsoft's Media Player stripped out. This unbundled version of the operating system complies with the 2004 European antitrust ruling, which ordered the company to offer two separate versions of both the home and professional versions of the operating system.

"In compliance with the European Commission's decision of March 2004, home and professional editions of Windows Vista without Media Player functionality will be released in Europe on the same schedule as the Windows Vista general availability launch," Microsoft said.

These are called the N versions--denoting "no media player," the company said.

Paul Meller, IDG News Service
www.pcworld.com

Gates also launched the new Vista operating system, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 in Romania, saying that many Romanian specialists, including those working for a local company acquired by Microsoft, had worked to develop them. Microsoft bought GeCAD, which makes antivirus and mail server software, in 2003 for an undisclosed amount.

The support center in Bucharest is expected to employ up to 600 local specialists and is to provide assistance to customers in Europe, particularly in France and Germany.

President Traian Basescu said that while the country has changed its laws in recent years to fight computer piracy, many Romanians were introduced to Microsoft and computers in the early 1990s by using pirated software as they had no access to the original software.

"A bad thing, piracy, became in the end an investment in friendship toward Microsoft and Bill Gates, an investment in educating the young generation in Romania which created the Romanians' friendship with the computer," said Basescu.

He praised Gates for his support of charities worldwide, saying he hoped Romanian companies would follow his example and become more socially responsible.

"We see charitable acts here, too, but they are mostly based on mercy" and not on the idea of returning part of the wealth to help society, Basescu said.

Premier Calin Popescu Tariceanu praised the opening of the Microsoft support center, saying it would boost the local IT sector and help Romania move faster into the computer age.

Tariceanu said that half of the business IT figure of about euro1 billion (US$1.2 billion) in Romania represents exports.

"I think this is the future for Romania's economy and less the classical industrial activities," he said.

www.ap.org