Focus On: Open Source

After a year of testing, French virus experts have concluded that Microsoft Office is less dangerous than its competitor, OpenOffice. In the short term, this is great news for Microsoft... outside of Europe. More anti-open source FUD will delay some planned migrations. Longer term, OpenOffice will benefit, as France and Germany pour resources into securing the product they now rely upon. The race is, as they say, afoot.

The ink hadn't yet dried on IBM's announcement of Lotus Notes on Linux, before anti-Lotus partisans unleashed their venom. Few gave weight to the thought that desktop Linux has suddenly gained collaboration abilities acceptable to enterprise-level buyers. But like it or not, Lotus Notes just raised Linux to a breathtaking, Microsoft-defying, new level. Question is, how long will it take Redmond to do what needs to be done?

If you sensed something might be slightly askew when Microsoft switched from allowing anonymous public comments about Internet Explorer 7 to requiring sign-ups in order to see Internet Explorer Feedback... you sensed right. The reviews of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 are in. After toting them up, Email Battles has Good News and Bad News. The good news is for Firefox. The rest of it belongs to Internet Explorer.

Samba allows UNIX, Linux, IBM System 390, or OpenVMS hosts to interact with Microsoft Windows clients and servers as if they were Windows file and print servers... Unless the remote client or server is running Windows Vista. At that point, client directory queries are returned with all but the first 100 files truncated. Microsofties say it's all Samba's fault. Email Battles begs to differ.

After all the criticism Microsoft has endured over Outlook through the years, the Redmond team can take some solace as the complaints pile up about the upgrade to Thunderbird's calendar extension, Lightning 0.1. In general, user requests fall into two categories: Make it more like Outlook with Exchange, and Everything Else.