What we know

Microsoft can't leave the security market altogether; that would go completely against the huge strides Redmond has made in security over the past couple of years. Enter Morro, a free real-time antimalware solution for consumers to be released in the second half of 2009. It will not be bundled with Windows, and will instead be available as a standalone download for Windows XP/Vista/7. It will be "built on Microsoft's award-winning malware protection engine and will take advantage of the same core antimalware technology that fuels the company's current line of security products," a Microsoft representative told Ars. Furthermore, as more people use Morro, Microsoft will gain access to a larger amount of data that it can then use in security research and improvement of other solutions like Forefront.

Morro won't compete with other security alternatives (which typically do more than just remove malware); Microsoft has given up competing in the security software industry and is aiming for those who currently don't have any sort of security protection. This is between 50 and 60 percent of Windows users, according to the company, either because they refuse to or can't pay for it. "In addition, we believe that many customers will wish to continue with 3rd party security and PC performance protection suites," the representative told us. In short, this should help the company avoid antitrust issues.

What we don't know

When I asked whether Microsoft would work with security vendors to make sure there are no incompatibility problems between Morro and third party solutions, how the company will promote Morro to consumers currently without any protection, whether Windows 7 will have download links for Morro similar to the Windows Live ones, or whether OEMs will be able to bundle Morro on new PCs, I received the standard "We will announce more details closer to the solution being available" response. What I found the most interesting though is that Microsoft wouldn't discuss how Morro would work with or replace Windows Defender if it is already installed (it can be downloaded and installed for XP, is bundled with Vista, and is supposed to ship with Windows 7). How will the two coexist together?

Morro may be a big story now because it came out of the blue, but a while after OneCare is killed, Morro will likely fall back into the shadows, just like Windows Defender did. Whether Microsoft will be able to make a difference with Morro will become clear as soon as we receive more details on the technology. We'll keep you posted.

Chrome arrived two months ago, and while we had mostly positive thoughts about what Google was bringing to the table, we were also interested to see how the market would change from August to September. Chrome amassed a higher market share than Opera in its first month, stealing market share from the speedy browser, as well as IE and Firefox. Only Safari gained as well. This month, things have flipped around completely, except for Microsoft.

Between September and October, Internet Explorer dropped by a quarter of a percent: from 71.52 percent to 71.27 percent (quite a small drop for IE, compared to other months). Firefox has rebounded, jumping by 0.51 percent (from 19.46 percent to 19.97 percent), Safari dropped a minor 0.08 percent (from 6.65 percent to 6.57 percent), Opera grabbed the number four spot back by gaining 0.06 (0.69 percent to 0.75 percent) while Chrome dropped 0.04 percent (from 0.78 percent to 0.74 percent). The market share pie for October 2008, according to Net Applications, looks like this:

Data source: Net Applications

Things at Ars are very different: our demographic is more tech-savvy users. These individuals are more conscious of alternative browsers. Firefox's lead is unmistakable, while IE and Safari's market share are a close call: the default browsers for Windows and Mac OS still show their presence. Chrome at Ars does a lot better than Opera, suggesting that tech-savvy users prefer it and that the average Joe still hasn't heard about it. I'll be looking more closely at how this trend changes over the coming months.

Chrome's explosive growth is slowly settling in, and I don't expect there will be much activity with it until Google releases the next milestone build. With the delay of IE8, third party browsers have been given even more time to do damage to IE's browser market. Chrome's entrance seems to have alternative browsers battling more against each other than with IE. Do you think this, along with the release of IE8, is what the company needs to revert its downward spiral?

The latest post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog is about disk space and is written by Michael Beck, a program manager in the core OS deployment feature team. The Windows 7 team outlined tradeoffs between disk space and a few key features, and emphasized the reliability concerns that Windows Vista addressed in Windows XP. These justified disk space hogs include device drivers, hibernation support, the page file, international language fonts, logging, registry back up, and support for robust rollback and recovery after installing critical security and functionality updates (System Restore). The Windows 7 team is not just looking at the size of the system once deployed, but also how the system grows over time with logs, updates, backups, and service packs. Beck explains why disk space has suddenly become an issue with this upcoming release of Windows:

Don't worry; reliability and recoverability features aren't going to get cut. Microsoft has simply looked at feedback, and concluded it needs to let Windows make smarter choices about disk usage, and help the user figure out what potentially reclaimable space is being consumed. These underlying changes do need to be implemented across all Windows editions, but unfortunately, there's no "one size fits all" approach for users:

Beck expects Windows 7's disk footprint to be smaller than Vista's. The goal is to make sure that Windows 7 will clean up sometime after successfully installing updates, won't install certain components that don't make sense based on the form factor, make System Restore by default keep a sensible number of backups instead of a "up to 15 percent of the disk," shrink the hiberfil.sys file size, and will remove unnecessary clutter as it accumulates. In short, better settings by default and more control for the user. Whether these aims will be achieved or not we will see soon enough, but the fact that Microsoft is taking it into consideration in the first place is a good sign. My next computer will likely be sporting a new SSD, so this decision is something I definitely welcome.

Further reading

Microsoft bought FolderShare from ByteTaxi in November 2005, and made it a part of Windows Live in March 2008. The Windows Live version had no support for discussion groups and Remote Desktop Search, though it did include interface updates as well as support for Windows Vista. We haven't talked about Windows Live FolderShare, which keeps files and folders synced between two or more computers (Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X), very much on Ars—frankly, because it has always sucked. With the Wave 3 update, however, things are starting to finally pick up, starting with a more sensible name for the service: Windows Live Sync. The update will include the following:

When Sync becomes available, the FolderShare software will stop working and will ask you to upgrade to Sync. Sync will automatically rebuild your personal folders, but it won't be able to rebuild your shared libraries. FolderShare users will have to manually take note of their shared libraries and rebuild them in Sync. The new service will likely roll out with other Wave 3 web services, starting on December 1.

I find it surprising that Microsoft is keeping FolderShare afloat given that the company is also pushing the much more complex Live Mesh, and this service can easily overlap what FolderShare offers. A likely explanation for offering both is that Microsoft wants to give users a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Further reading

Yahoo's CEO stepped down this week, and eyes immediately turned to another CEO in the potential equation: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. However, at Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting, Ballmer only repeated what he has been saying for months: "We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo. I've said that a bunch of times. Somehow, some people have gotten confused nonetheless."

That means more bad news for Yahoo and more stock plummeting. On the other hand, Ballmer didn't rule out Yahoo from the equation completely; he did say that a search-only deal was still a possibility.

Ballmer isn't pressing though, because many Yahoo employees, including those in the search department, have already begun to jump ship. The latest is Sean Suchter, the VP of Search Technology at Yahoo, who was deeply involved in Yahoo's efforts to open up its search platform. He turned away from Yahoo and walked straight into Microsoft's outstretched arms. In July, during the Microhoo battle, Microsoft gave up trying to buy Yahoo and set its sights on just its search business. At that time, Microsoft was looking for a media partner that would be willing to do a deal with the search-free remains of Yahoo. The idea was to have Yahoo outsource search to Microsoft in exchange for guaranteed revenues over a set period.

Ballmer didn't reveal what exactly the company would consider doing now in order to grab Yahoo's search engineers, but if Yahoo continues its downwards spiral, Microsoft won't have to get its feet wet to get what it wants.

Further reading

Microsoft made a surprising announcement this week: OneCare is to be discontinued next year. A free solution, codenamed Morro, will be offered instead. I wanted to gauge the reaction of the security industry in general, so I asked competing security companies to comment on the surprising move.

Justin Priestley, senior vice president of Kaspersky's consumer sales, noted that market share was probably a big factor for the axing. "Having entered the US consumer market at the same time as Microsoft, we initially viewed them as a formidable player," Priestley told Ars. "They've continued to hold a very low market share in the consumer market, and we don’t expect the exit of OneCare to change the playing field drastically. With the increasing threat malware and web attacks pose, security is as important as ever, and we believe people will continue to choose anti-malware software based on the quality of protection and will choose the highest level product available."

Rowan Trollope, senior vice president Consumer Business, Symantec, went further, claiming that Morro would do even worse than OneCare. "Consumers have already rejected OneCare even though it entered the market at a lower price, because OneCare offered substandard protection and poor performance as evidenced by scores of third party reviews. The offering only gained modest market share and ultimately was deemed unsuccessful in the marketplace. Making a significantly scaled-back version of that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation," Trollope said. "Simply put, innovation and protection matter. So even if it's free, the Microsoft 'OneCare-light' offering will certainly fare worse than its predecessor, essentially putting consumers at increased risk without additional protection. Additionally, our research clearly indicates that, after effective protection, what consumers care most about in a security product is performance. OneCare is widely recognized as one of the most egregious offenders in hogging system resources."

Trollope may be going a little far with this sentiment, considering we don't know how exactly Microsoft will position Morro. It might not even be a competitor to current security solutions, as Reuters learned. I also asked for a statement from Eset, but received no response by publication time.

Microsoft officially set the deadline for the final version of Internet Explorer for the end of 2008, and never gave details beyond that. We noted in September that, according to the IE8 Beta 2 support page, prerelease versions of IE8 would no longer be supported come November 1, 2008. Earlier this week I noticed that that date had changed to December 31, 2008 and speculated that the final release of IE8 wouldn't be on time. My suspicions have been confirmed: IE8 has been delayed. The IE blog has given insight on the team's plans, but still hasn't given a concrete date:

Microsoft's goal is to use the IE8 release candidate as a final test case: the company will be asking the public to test their sites and services with the build. Only feedback on critical issues will be considered before the final version is released. We'll keep you posted for when the RC build arrives. I'm perfectly fine with more testing and bug fixing being done; does a delay bother you?

Further reading

The Ultimate Extras embarrassment has been quite an issue since the launch of Vista, and while things have gotten better, many users still crave one thing: power toys, just like Windows XP has. The most popular power toy is undoubtedly Tweak UI, and while Microsoft still has not responded to the tweaking community's cry for such an application for Vista, MVP Ramesh Kumar has heard it and has reacted. Ultimate Windows Tweaker may not be an official Tweak UI for Vista, but it's free and it's likely the closest we're going to get:

The standalone 368 KB program contains over 130 tweaks, organized into seven categories: Personalization, User Accounts & UAC, System & Performance, Security, Internet Explorer, Network Optimization, and Additional Options. Each tab has a "Create a System Restore Point" button, and as an avid tweaker who has never had a problem due to a tweak, I still recommend that you do so, just in case. The tweaks are mostly self-explanatory, but unfortunately they don't have much documentation beyond just their names. This is still version 1.0, so hopefully we'll see an improvement in that area soon enough, along with additional tweaks!

When Gizmodo recently visited Microsoft's Windows 7 Media Center team, they got a treat that many had realized Microsoft was working on, but few had actually seen. The current version of the Windows 7 Media Center interface has the ability to use touch controls without any third-party software, and multitouch support is on the way. All we need now is some much-wanted DirecTV support, and MC will be perfect. Here's a video that demonstrates where Redmond is currently at (in case you're wondering, that's an HP TouchSmart):

The Microsoft employee notes during the video that touch never made into Vista's MC, but it's there in Windows 7. Many have argued that touch doesn't make sense for desktops and laptops, but it certainly does for media center computers. When large desktop monitors become cheap enough, having multitouch support out-of-the-box will be great; what many fail to realize is that it's not there to replace the keyboard and mouse. It's there so that you can use it when you find it suitable. If Microsoft manages to get Windows 7 out in time for the next holiday season, many will be buying media center PCs for their loved ones.

Further reading

The Office Labs web site, which consists of software experiments related to Microsoft Office that will probably never ship and aren't even considered to be in alpha or beta status, was launched back in April. Since then, the site has released a couple of prototypes, and the latest one went live this week.

The Live Labs web site might not have been as busy recently, but their releases are technologies and not just prototypes. The latest project, Seadragon Ajax, brings Deep Zoom technology right to your own web page or blog (instructions), even if you're not a software developer using Photosynth or Silverlight. Deep Zoom allows you to smoothly zoom regardless of the size of the screen, bandwidth of your network, or the complexity of the images you're looking at. It's just one of those things that will impress your friends.

Further reading

In addition to continuously updating Live Search and trying to get developers on board with new features, Microsoft is also promoting Live Search via various deals and giveaways. The latest is Big Ticket Search, and surprisingly it's only for Canadians. Every search on the site gives you a chance to win a prize (1,488 total prizes):

(2) 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer SE, value of $21,493 (1) $10,000 cash (1) Two Raptors 09-10 Season Tickets, value of $8,000 (5) Entertainment Centre, value of $5,330 (1) Raptors VIP Package, value of $5,000 (15) HP Pavilion 15.4" Laptop, value of $800 (43) Xbox 360, value of $300 (43) 80GB Zune, value of $230 (400) Ticketmaster $100 Gift Card (15) Raptors signed basketballs, value of $100 (15) Raptors signed jerseys, value of $100 (947) Ticketmaster $50 Gift Card

The contest is an online card game where you will be randomly dealt two cards when you search. If the cards match, you receive an Instant Win notification on your screen stating: "Congratulations, you are an eligible winner of" a selected Instant Win Prize, and you will be directed to the entry form page. If the cards do not match, a message appears on your screen saying "Thank you for playing. Please try again." To participate, you must be a resident of Canada (excluding the Province of Québec) who has reached the age of majority. There will be one prize given out every hour; the contest ends at 11:59:59 PM (ET) on December 31, 2008.

I've always found it pointless to use Windows Live applications if they don't work together with the online services that I already use. Well, recently released plug-ins are about to change that, and make a lot of people happy in the process. With just a few clicks you can share your photos and videos on Facebook and YouTube. If you're more interested on how the plug-ins were created, you can even take a look at the source code.

LiveUpload to Facebook is a plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery beta. The plug-in takes advantage of the new people tagging feature in Photo Gallery, meaning tags of your friends in Photo Gallery will also appear on Facebook, assuming you have the same friends there too. You can also add multiple Facebook accounts (great for home computers), and upload your pictures to an existing or new album.

LiveUpload to YouTube is a plug-in for both Windows Live Photo Gallery beta and Windows Live Movie Maker beta. It works just like the Facebook plug-in, except that it allows you to upload straight to YouTube videos that you're storing in Photo Gallery or that you've just created in Movie Maker.

You can check out more plug-ins (Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, and Drupal) on the Windows Live Photo & Video Blog download page.

Windows Live Spaces is also getting a Wave 3 update next month, and so far the changelog is as follows:

We've seen that Microsoft is focusing a lot on photos with the Wave 3 release, and this emphasis is also obvious in the update to Spaces. All browsers will soon be able to insert images inline, without installing an upload tool. Installing the tool will, however, give you drag and drop features. Also, when you click on an image in the new version, instead of opening up a new window with a larger version of the image, the current page will show a preview of the original size image.

The main goal of the update is visual improvement (see comparison screenshots at the source below): the team is getting rid of the 3D "bevel" in the header and moving to solid colors or unobstructed background images and is also making Segoe UI the default font, since it is a larger font, using different size text for differentiating titles (instead of relying on bold). You can keep the current font by going to Customize => Advanced => Text colors and fonts => Verdana as well as Module colors and fonts => Verdana (for title font). If you're using a non-default font, you don't have to worry about the Wave 3 update changing it.

Further reading

Microsoft Research and the Disney-owned Pixar are offering you a virtual tour of the universe. Your tour guide? WALL•E, the animated robot from Pixar's latest film. You'll need the WorldWide Telescope (WWT), a Virtual Earth for the sky and beyond, if you want to download and use the WALL•E tour. Since WALL•E doesn't have its own voice, Academy-Award-winning director Andrew Stanton narrates the tour. Curtis Wong, manager of Microsoft's Next Media Research Group, explained why Microsoft went with WALL•E:

When we tried out WWT in May, we loved it. The application makes it easy to see the best images from ground- and space-based observatories across the world. In July, the software broke the 1 million download mark, and we weren't surprised in the slightest. Considering that Pixar put a teaser of the tour on the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the movie and that WALL•E was a huge hit with kids and adults alike, how long do you think it will be before Microsoft can break the 10 million mark?

Further reading

Windows HPC Server 2008, released in September, has achieved its first milestone. The Windows HPC Server team has something to celebrate today: it has finally gotten Microsoft on the list of the top 10 of the world's most powerful supercomputers. The Dawning 5000A, located at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center, China, placed 10th on the November 2008 Top500 list with a parallel computing speed of 180.6 teraflops at 77.5 percent efficiency. It was also the top non-US supercomputer. A year ago, the top Windows HPC Server computer placed 116th. This achievement confirms the performance improvements Microsoft has been talking about throughout the development of its supercomputer operating system.

Vince Mendillo, director of the HPC Division at Microsoft, said: "Beyond the top 10 number itself there are two things that are very impressive—Windows HPC Server 2008 worked at this scale, and we demonstrated that we have expertise inside Microsoft to lead the integration of a top 10 HPC system. We have come a long way in the past four years from building our first 10-gigaflop cluster to the top echelon of the world's fastest supercomputers."

Among other applications and code, Microsoft is offering a Top500 Excellence Kit, which includes a Top500 guide containing best practices and internal knowledge from Microsoft developers on how to achieve the highest-efficiency LINPACK runs, several management and performance tools, and a High-Performance LINPACK (HPL) Wizard. With the release of Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft is also planning to deliver developer tools such as Task Parallel Library, Parallel LINQ, and Coordination Data Structures for managed code to ease the transition to parallel code.

We'll see next year for the next TOP500 list whether Microsoft can create a trend out of this progress; competition in the supercomputer market, like anywhere, will bring great results.

Further reading:

The third generation Zunes arrived in September, along with the 3.0 firmware and software releases available to previous Zune customers. Here we are, two months later, and Microsoft is already rolling out version 3.1 with some price cuts, just in time for the holiday shopping season. You can get the latest software by going to settings => check for updates. Once Microsoft uploads it, the 3.1 version should be available on the Zune.net website as well.

The 3.1 update includes three new free games (Checkers, Sudoku, and Space Battle), a new multiplayer mode and single player difficulty levels for Texas Hold'em, a visual refresh to Zune Social, and a new feature called "like minded listeners," which will let you see how compatible your music tastes are with other listeners and friends. There's also stability and performance improvements for the Zune PC software and device firmware, such as improved play count reporting and content synchronization between the Zune software and the Zune device.

Update details aside, here are the price cuts that will finally make the Zune cheaper than the iPod:

In related news, during the last episode of Heroes Microsoft ran a TV spot for the Zune Software, but for version 3.0 and not 3.1. The Zune also makes a two-second appearance in the new music video for a song that got stuck in my head: Universal Mind Control. The PBS network was also recently added to the Zune Video Marketplace, so you should be able to download shows like Ken Burns Jazz, Wired Science, Scientific American Frontiers, Carrier and so on.

Further reading

In a very surprising move, Microsoft has announced today that Windows Live OneCare customers will be getting the shaft next year. The software giant has decided to replace OneCare with a free security solution (codenamed "Morro") to be released in the second half of next year. The yet-to-be-announced product will be a realtime anti-malware protection solution, whereas OneCare offered that plus backup and management features. Sales of the Windows Live OneCare subscription service as well as Windows Live OneCare for Server on SBS 2008 will end on June 30, 2009.

If your subscription is about to run out, I'd suggest looking for an alternative instead of renewing a product that is on its way out the door. Sure, OneCare will continue to be available online until Morro is available and your subscription will still work until it ends, but Microsoft's decision makes the company look unreliable.

When the new solution becomes available, OneCare users will have the option to move to it (it will be available everywhere OneCare currently is), but few will be happy enough with Microsoft to do so. Still, Morro will be free. I'll reserve judgment until we have some more information, but for now it's hard to argue with gratis. What are your thoughts on this out-of-the-blue development?

Update

Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Microsoft Equipt, which Microsoft announced just a few months ago, is also going the way of the dodo. The company will be offering refunds and will allow customers to keep the included Office Home & Student edition for free.

Last week we were told to expect the Windows Live Wave 3 web services by the end of the year, with the Windows Live Wave 3 client applications following soon after. As usual, Microsoft didn't give any official dates to the public in its announcement. But yesterday, the company sent out an e-mail to its beta testers, in which the software giant explained, among other things, that December 1 was the day to mark on the calendar.

So what exactly will be happening on December 1? Not all that much. It's the day that the rollout will begin. That means that beta versions of the Windows Live web services will be slowly ported to the final and publicly available version. Assuming that all goes as planned, you'll start seeing the final Wave 3 versions of Windows Live Home, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live Skydrive, Windows Live Groups, and Windows Live Photos start popping up in early December.

What about the client application updates (Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, Family Safety, and Office Outlook Connector)? Microsoft doesn't explicitly say in the e-mail, but it does warn that the beta client applications will start to break, since many features are dependent on the beta web services that will be disappearing. However, Microsoft apparently has made sure that Windows Live Hotmail (which is already at Wave 3), Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Messenger won't be affected by the transition, so the company won't be too pressured to rush the Wave 3 client applications.

The rumored client app update launch, February 10, seems a little far off, and later in December would be much more exciting. Regardless, whenever the client versions get updated, the final version of the Windows Live Wave 3 installer will be available at download.live.com.

After one Community Technical Preview in April and a second one in July, Redmond has kept its promise of releasing Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (RDS) 2008 before the end of the year. The company underlines four main improvements in this release:

The third release of Microsoft's robotics programming platform will set you back $500 USD, if you're purchasing the Standard Edition. The Academic Edition, which is identical, is available through MSDNAA and through Dreamspark. The Express Edition can be downloaded free of charge from the Microsoft Download Center (Offline installation: 353.9MB, Online installation: 75.1MB) and installed on XP, Server 2003 SP2, Vista or Server 2008.

Microsoft took advantage of today's launch to boast about how well its software has been received throughout the robotics community: more than 250,000 copies of Microsoft RDS have been downloaded and more than 60 hardware and software companies support or use the platform.

Further reading

The next version is expected to arrive sometime in 2009, but the roadmap of how exactly Microsoft will get there still hasn't gone public. If you want to help the software giant improve Silverlight, take the recently posted Silverlight 2 survey. The battle between Flash and Silverlight is intensifying, and us consumers will be the ones to benefit the most from the competition.

Further reading: