One Day Until Windows Vista Launch

By NewsFactor Network | November 29, 2006

T-minus one day and counting. On Thursday, at an invitation-only event in New York, Microsoft will unveil new versions of Windows, Office, and Exchange — products that make up the bulk of the company’s bottom line.

No less than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will headline the show tomorrow, presiding over a Nasdaq event billed as “A New Day for Business,” in which most of the major computer makers, including Dell, HP, and Lenovo, will also appear to display Microsoft’s software on their machines.

First up? Windows Vista, some five years in the making and two years past due. Vista is the successor to the widely used Windows XP for both consumer and business computers, boasting no small number of enhancements.

Among the updates are Aero, a sleek interface that needs high-end hardware to run, and a wave of security improvements to protect users against phishing, hacking, and the cocktail of threats that confront anyone who surfs the Web.

Office Expansion

Microsoft has a new version of Office, too, now called the Office System, with a whopping 13 components from nuts-and-bolts basics like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, to lesser-known tools such as Groove, which lets team members share calendars, documents, and other data.

Other Office System titles include OneNote, which helps students organize digital notes with an interface that resembles a notepad, and Publisher, for signs, brochures, flyers, sell sheets, and even basic Web sites.

Microsoft’s new version of Exchange — Exchange 2007 — combines e-mail, voicemail, and faxing into one corporate platform, helping knowledge workers keep track of the dozens of times per day that people write, call, fax, or otherwise try to hunt them down in an age where “technology” has become a synonym for “now.”

Better with Age?

Whether it’s a well-deserved complaint or pure calumny, Microsoft is known for releasing software with dozens or…

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