<IT WORLD>
Microsoft's pants down
By Martin J Young

HUA HIN, Thailand - A number of leaked internal emails last week left Microsoft in a sticky situation by revealing the Redmond software giant's dependence on Intel when launching Windows Vista.

A 158-page PDF document was released as part of a court's decision in a class action suit against Microsoft's "Designed for Windows XP"/"Vista Capable"/"Vista Ready" marketing campaign. The company email exchanges by a number of Microsoft executives throughout 2007 highlighted the failings in the "Vista Capable" designation of hardware.

Microsoft corporate vice president, Windows Product management, Mike Nash, said in an email, "I personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue on a laptop ... I now have a US$2,100 email machine" - referring to the Intel graphics technology that doesn't work with Vista's advanced Aero graphics system.

Board member and former Microsoft president/chief operating officer Jon Shirley also emailed about Vista misery: "I upgraded one of the two machines I use a lot to Vista. The most persistent and so far hardest to fix issues are both MSN products, Portfolio in MSN Money and Music (downloads I had bought in the past)." He went on to add " ... there are no drivers yet for my Epson printer (top of the line and in production today but no driver yet), Epson scanner (older but also top of the line and they say they do not do a driver for) and a Nikon film scanner that will get a driver one day ... I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers."

The problems (and lawsuit) arose from the foundation that Microsoft had designated certain PCs and hardware configurations as capable of running Windows Vista but omitted to disclose the fact that they would only function on the most basic version of the operating system that does not include many of the advanced features and fancy graphics.

The corporate conundrums arose when Microsoft lowered the hardware requirements for Vista, citing its partner Intel as the cause. "In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," stated Microsoft executive John Kalkman.

Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans responded in a statement last week: "Throughout this process, Microsoft employees raised concerns and addressed issues with the intent to make this program better for our business partners and valuable for consumers. That's the sort of exchange we want to encourage. And in the end, we believe we succeeded in achieving both objectives."

The result is the software company being caught with its pants down. If its own executives were having issues with Vista and hardware designation, what did they think would happen to thousands of consumers?

CeBIT 2008
Europe's largest information technology fair kicked off this week in Hanover, Germany, yet so far it has been a little disappointing to many due to a slimmed-down schedule and lower than expected attendance figures.

The emphasis by organizers this year was to create a business type forum and arena as opposed to the sprawling collection of exhibits and publicity stunts by vendors and manufacturers unveiling their latest gadgets. The result has been a chaos-free venue but one with less enthusiasm and buzz than previous years.

The lineup and weekly highlights consisted of office communications and business seminars, with the prominence being on practical and innovative hardware and concepts to get the job done. Exhibitor attendance was down 5% to 5,845, though some of the big names included Panasonic, Cisco, Nokia, IBM and Microsoft.

There was an environmentally friendly theme to this year's fair, with organizers creating a "green village" to house companies promoting products boosting corporate energy efficiency and those aimed at reducing toxic waste. Major speakers such as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer touted plans for more energy-efficient solutions and greener computing. More information on CeBIT 2008, which runs to March 9, can be found at CeBIT - About CeBIT.

Hardware
The world's largest semiconductor company has arrived at a new name for its latest microprocessor. The Intel Atom CPU will be a new family of low-cost and low-power chips aimed at mobile Internet devices and small notebook and desktop computers. The latest rage of new mobile devices will be handheld and pocket fitting, ideal recipients for Intel's new baby.

The previously named Silverthorne and Diamondville processors will be the most significant product since the introduction of the Pentium processor, according to Intel. The new chip is less than 25 square millimeters, is based on Intel's 45 nanometer manufacturing technology, will support multicores and reach clock speeds of up to 1.8GHz. Atom will join the ranks of Core, Core2, Celeron and Xeon, Intel's other brand-named processors, around the middle of this year.

Software
Unlike the majority of previous iterations of Microsoft's dominant web browser the next one will actually support standards from the start. Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) will include a planned standards compatibility mode as its default rendering engine, which will make it friendlier to web standards.

For years, web developers have battled with cross-browser standards and with designing something that looks and functions the same in all popular browsers. Many simply give up the fight and code websites for Internet Explorer (IE)only because it still has the greater part of the market share. Many others battle on to find that their site appears and functions fine in Firefox, Safari and the like but won't play in IE as it has a different standards mode.

"We've decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can," IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch stated on the Internet Explorer blog. "This decision is a change from what we've posted previously. We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8's default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action."

This is good news for web developers, who will be able to concentrate more on the content of their products as opposed to the headache of cross-browser incompatibility issues.

Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.