Bill Gates fans and followers, disappointed by the boring prose in his previous book 'The Road Ahead', were expecting Gates' latest book to be filled with wisdom, insight and advice from the worlds's richest man. Unfortunately for them, 'Business @ the Speed of Thought' makes the Microsoft CEO's earlier work look almost biblical in comparison. The only relevations in this uninspired 420 page tome consist of statements like "convert every paper process to a digital process" and "the middleman must add value." Sound advice for corporations in 1994, but less than a year away from the 21st century the entire book comes across like a badly written highschool business textbook. Even the usually pro-Microsoft trade press panned the book, one reviewer stating that he would prefer to have his "brain ripped out by a plastic fork" than have to read the book again.
The only part of this $30 tome that makes it the least bit appealing is Gates' contradiction of a Microsoft witness in the ongoing antitrust trial. Several months ago, Microsoft economic witness Richard Schmalensee testified that The Behemoth keeps all of its sales records and profits on paper and records them by hand. But in 'Business @', Gates claims that all Microsoft's bookkeeping is done electronically for faster, easier analysis. Perhaps the Justice Department will name 'Business @ the Speed of Thought' as their surprise rebuttal witness when the trial resumes.

In a statement last week, Microsoft declared that customer downloads of Internet Explorer 5 have "more than tripled those of the previous record-setting Internet Explorer 4.0." A company executive later clarified that 1 million copies of the browser had been downloaded from Microsoft's web site in just five days, a new record. But back in October 1997 Microsoft was saying Internet Explorer 4 exceeded that number in only two days. So, another Microsoft executive was called out and he explained that the 1997 numbers were counting only the IE4 install program, Active Setup, instead of the browser itself. He admitted that only a small percentage of the people who downloaded Active Setup actually downloaded the entire 50MB-plus program. But for this year, in order to "be more rigorous," Microsoft decided to count complete downloads, which is why it took more than twice as long to reach the 1 million mark. But, knowing that they played with the numbers last time, can anyone honestly believe what they say this time?

At the Office 2000 Deployment Conference in New Orleans later this week, Microsoft officials are expected to announce that testing of the software upgrade is complete and that "gold code" will be available on CDs in April. Retail sources say that the boxed retail version of Office2k will then be shipped to stores in early June. The Behemoth reportedly plans to release five versions of the software suite, including Office 2000 Premium, Developer, Standard, Professional and Small Business Edition, which includes several tools not availalable in any previous versions of the suite.

TRUSTe, a nonprofit organization sponsored by various companies to regulate and police privacy issues online, was recently asked by JunkBusters to investigate Microsoft on its admitted use of Windows 98 serial numbers to collect customer information [see NewsSource, March 15]. After a preliminary look into whether that violates TRUSTe's privacy agreement with Microsoft, the organization merely complained that the software "compromise[d] consumer trust and privacy" and left it at that. David Banisar, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, commented that "this really undercuts the whole [presidential] administration's claim that self-regulation works." TRUSTe receives $100,000 annually from Microsoft and nine sponsors to regulate Internet privacy for some 500 companies, who pay TRUSTe for the right to add an approval logo to their Web sites, signifying that they pose no risk to visitor's privacy. Microsoft, for its part, has released two programs that remove the ID number feature from Windows 98 and Office.

MSN's Hotmail rolled out a new set of features last week, but most of the free e-mail service's customers haven't had an opportunity to use them because of a new round of server problems. The new features allow Hotmail users to choose from 17 style templates with various colors and graphics for their e-mail messages. But since then, some Hotmail users have encountered problems accessing their accounts. Several customers reported getting error messages telling them that Hotmail is in the middle of an upgrade, but a Microsoft spokesman said it's actually a hardware problem, not another upgrade.

Since the beginning of the antitrust trial, Microsoft has been letting its partners and software resellers get away with a lot more than they had been allowed to do before. But, lest they start to think Microsoft has gone soft (no pun intended), last week The Behemoth tossed a few rocks at Micron and Gateway to stop a planned promotion of a competing product. At Intel's launch of the Pentium III several weeks ago the two companies had planned to display the performance of PIII systems from Gateway and Micron running Oracle8 - on Red Hat Linux. But when Microsoft heard about it, they stepped in and demanded that the demonstration be cancelled unless Linux was replaced with Windows NT. You get two guesses which operating system won out.

According to sources inside the company, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer has sent out an official memo telling his employees to stop all Java development. According to the rumored document, Microsoft will abandon Visual J++, Java Virtual Machines and most other technologies not created inside the company. They would then replace Java throughout every product with proprietary COOL, COM+ and Windows DNA technologies.
Earlier this month Microsoft said it plans to take a $30 million stake in Rhythms NetConnections, a startup Digital Subscriber Line internet access company. Microsoft reportedly plans to use the company's high speed internet access for its MSN customers. In exchange, Rythms will get a MSN-created portal page for its existing customers. MSN's main competitor, America Online, already has DSL deals with SBC Communications and Bell Atlantic.
Last week Microsoft announced that it has purchased Numinous Technologies, a company that produces software for Internet graphics, digital video management and traditional printing applications. Numinous, which was founded in 1996 around software technology developed at the University of Washington, will be rolled into Microsoft's R&D department.

CORRECTION: Last week we reported that the US states could possibly fine Microsoft some 2 trillion, 280 billion dollars for violations of US antitrust laws. In detailing the math, we made the mistake of saying that the figure would be $2000 times 60 million to the 19th power. The actual numbers are $2000 times 60 million times 19, not to the 19th power. However, the total figure is accurate.

_{Campus Fallout Continues from Change in Licensing Rules
The Bill Gates Road Show
Don't Cry For Bill, Argentina
Microsoft Goes After Women
Are ads too late for Windows CE handhelds?}