Microsoft recently announced that they plan to cut the price on several retail versions of their newest operating system, Windows Vista. As you can imagine, this is a move that comes to a shock to many. In fact, this move is one that nobody saw coming; even though Vista has been struggling to keep up, and it has taken a lot of flack from first time users.

In the United States, Microsoft has decided to greatly reduce the price of the high end version known as Vista Ultimate. The price of Vista Ultimate has fallen to $219 from a previous retail price of $299. Additionally, prices for the popular Home Premium addition are also being reduced from $159 to $129. As you can see, these are no small price reductions.

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Microsoft has been fined $1.35 billion by the European Union for failing to comply with sanctions. Believe it or not, this is a record fine, and one that the European Union and Microsoft are taking seriously. After all, anytime that a company is fined in excess of one billion dollars it is sure to be big news.

Although this news is moving into the public eye once again, it stems from a 2004 ruling. Generally speaking, Microsoft is being fined because they neglected to share information with its competition on how to interoperate with its many software applications.

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As of late, the biggest news in the tech and internet industries is the possible takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft. While it is obvious that Microsoft is all for this deal, it is safe to say that Yahoo is trying to avoid it at all costs. Not only did they turn down Microsoft’s first offer, but company officials have not led on that they are thinking of changing their mind.

While both companies are sure to be effected if this deal goes down, there are two other groups that are sure to see some changes as well. They include those who own stock in either company, as well as those who use Yahoo and/or Microsoft web based services. With that being said, are you for or against a Microsoft takeover?

It seems that there is a split decision on this matter. If you own Yahoo stock, you are well aware that it has been under performing as of late. Many feel that a takeover by Microsoft will help to steady the ship, and in turn increase the overall performance of the stock. Is this a guarantee? Of course not. But it is definitely something that could happen if a deal takes place.

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Although Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s first bid, this battle is far from being over. Believe it or not, Microsoft is going to continue to push for a deal within the next few days. At this time, it appears that Microsoft is taking all of the appropriate steps to start a proxy battle with Yahoo.

Many people are not aware of what it means to wage a proxy battle. Simplifying this process is no easy task, but there are some details that can be seen on the surface. It is Microsoft’s hopes that after putting together a list of directors to take over Yahoo’s board, that the majority of stockholders would support this effort. If this happens, Microsoft will be able to more or less bully Yahoo into making the transaction.

If Microsoft moves forward with its proxy battle, it is sure to spend a lot of money during the process. Industry experts are predicting that Microsoft would have to spend approximately $20 to $30 million to complete the process. As you can imagine, they would much rather have Yahoo agree to a friendlier takeover. Not only would this save them money, but it would save them a lot of time as well.

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The New Operating System is in ‘Escrow’, a Final Stage Before its Release
Microsoft is going to release its “Windows Server 2008” in the month of February. An official announcement was made on January 18 ending all speculations.

Microsoft was a little hesitating with declaring the exact timing for this release of its new operating system until now and it was only said that this new release will hit the market sometime during the first quarter of this year.

While giving a precise time, Microsoft said that the new release will be introduced on or before the February 27. Microsoft would be launching this product in Los Angeles where it be hosting a celebration for” nearly concurrent releases of “Visual Studio 2008”, that it brought out in the month of November last year. The event will also highlight the launch of “SQL Server 2008”, which the company intends to launch sometime during the second quarter of this year. Microsoft has begun using the tagline “heroes happen here” for the launch.

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Almost an year after of the release of ‘Office2007’, Microsoft released its ‘Office 2008’ for Mac PC on January 15,2008. The process of development took nearly four years. This latest product from Microsoft would share ‘Open XML’ file format on the lines of ‘Office 2007’ system family of products.

“What we tried to achieve with Office 2008 for the Mac is to help users get their work done more simply, and compatibility was a big driver here” said Amanda Lefebvre, the Marketing Manager for Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit.

Compatibility is the big issue that everyone is looking for eagerly. Users quite often share documents across platforms. With this focus, the ‘Office2008’ has been designed to work natively on both Power PCs and Intel-based Macs. Microsoft has also worked out the speed with many improvements across-the-board.

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IBM recently introduced a test version of a semantic search engine exclusively for companies that are interested to extend their employees more advanced tools for searching their e-mails stored in ‘Microsoft Outlook’’ or ‘IBM’s Lotus Notes’.

This “OmniFind Personal Email Search”, has been designed by researchers at IBM facilities in California, Israel, and India. This new innovative concept of email search takes search beyond keywords by being able to make associations between the underlying concepts of words often used in ‘corporate e-mails’. IBM also intends to offer customers technology that can help them retrieve useful information hidden in e-mail databases.

The facility works with simplicity in search. For instance, if a person is looking for a colleague’s phone number, then typing “Smith phone” in the query box. The search would then Smith’s phone number. It becomes possible because the system is smart enough to make the association that the person is looking for Smith’s number, and not just any phone number in an e-mail with the word Smith in it.

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