Microsoft finally rolled out Beta 2 of Windows NT 5.0 at a technical workshop last Tuesday, with executives promising to deliver the next-generation server-desktop operating system with an eye toward quality, not timeliness. "We won't ship until customers tell us that it's really ready," Senior Vice President Jim Allchin told about 180 attendees of the NT 5.0 Technical Workshop in Seattle. Beta 2, which was sent to manufacturers shortly before being unveiled at the workshop, adds more features like Internet Explorer 5, IntelliMirror, Com+ and Active Directory technology, but is far from the "feature-complete" version the company had promised.
In addition to that, the ship date for NT 5 is still extremely cloudy, especially considering the third beta Microsoft recently added to the product's development schedule. That beta, which will be available to the public, is rumored to be some 5 to 7 months away. The company is also behind on releasing a fourth Service Pack for NT 4, explaining that all NT developers and most of the programmers who worked on Windows 98 have now been assigned to NT 5. Ms executives promised to start a dedicated NT 4 team, saying that they all "feel really bad about that."

Since the field of physics has existed, scientists have wondered what would happen if an irresistable force met an unmovable object. Going by recent developments in the lawsuit AT&T filed against Microsoft, the force and the object would agree to settle and then not tell scientists which had won. AT&T filed suit against Microsoft last October, claiming that the company had breached a 1991 contract when it did not provide AT&T with source code for Windows NT. The telecommunications giant contended that it needed NT code to upgrade its Advanced Server for Unix, software allowing users to run Windows and Unix applications on one platform. The preliminary agreement, technically called a "settlement in principle," will not be finalized until Microsoft and AT&T nail down remaining details in the case, most of which will remain confidential.

In a similar story, Bristol Technology filed suit against Microsoft last Wednesday, accusing The behemoth of anti-competitive behavior. (now THERE'S a new one) Bristol says that its business was injured because Microsoft was seeking unreasonable terms for access to the Windows NT source code, which the company needs to continue developing its cross-platform development tools. Bristol chairman Keith Blackwell says that Microsoft is attempting to burn bridges his company has made between Unix and NT.
Microsoft licensed NT code to Bristol, AT&T, Citrix and other developers back in 1994 to build support for the fledgling operating system. But Microsoft is demanding a 400% increase in royalties now that NT has a grabbed a large share of the workstation and server markets.

Last week Microsoft released an update for Windows 98, not quite two months after its initial release. Despite the presence of a few patches in the update, Microsoft says that it's just a multimedia enhancement, not a service pack. The update includes a new version of DirectX, the new MediaPlayer that corrupts RealNetwork's RealPlayer, new fonts and an updated version of Microsoft Chat.
According to the Electronic Mail & Messaging Systems newsletter, Microsoft Exchange outsold Lotus Notes for the second consecutive business quarter. Last quarter Microsoft sold 3.05 million Exchange seats while Lotus sold only 2.7 million seats of Notes. This quarter the companies sold 3.55 and 3.1 million seats, respectively. However there are still nearly 9 million more seats for Notes installed than for Exchange.
After buying the company last year for $425 million, Microsoft left WebTV's marketing and advertising alone. They did until now that is. Users of WebTV's original terminal who download a new personalization program being offered will see a logo reading "Microsoft WebTV" when they log on. This will (hopefully) be bad for WebTV when customers start associating it the negative publicity Microsoft has gotten lately.

_{Linux legitimacy rallies NT skeptics
Buffer-overflow bug in IE
Microsoft claims large frames boost NT performance}