Word: microsoft
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Among the nominees for the Making Life Difficult for Yourself Award, it's hard to beat the Department of Justice. When probing for flaws in the Collossus of Redmond's armor last year, Joel Klein chose a dangerous gambit. Instead of launching a new and achingly slow suit against Microsoft that might take years to resolve, he decided to move much more speedily. Last October he sued to reopen an existing Windows 95 lawsuit. All went well -- at first. An irate Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in December ruled that Microsoft had violated a 1995 agreement with the government...
...Microsoft appealed that decision, and this week government lawyers learned a bitter lesson about the perils of gambling, overzealous federal district court judges, and how a choice that once seemed like a certain win may end with them losing their shirts. Not only did the appeals court slam the door on the Justice Department's lawsuit over Windows 95, but the decision imperils the mammoth Sherman Act case the feds and 20 states filed last month and on which they staked their reputations...
...otherwise known as Windows 98 officially went on sale at midnight, and despite the cloud of lawsuits peskily buzzing around, it looks as if Microsoft will once again be crying all the way to the bank. Despite Win98's mixed reviews, the early projections from industry analyst Dataquest say that it will account for 51 percent of all operating systems shipped on new PCs this year. Obviously, that will go up even more next year...
...news is for stores such as CompUSA, which are hoping to make a buck from the upgrade market. Dataquest estimates that Microsoft will move a modest 5.5 million of the upgrade packages; most people who have Windows 95 plan to stick with it for now. As usual with a a major Microsoft release, computer stores are hoping for a ripple effect, where customers buying Win98 will throw in extra bits of hardware or software that's billed as working especially well with Windows 98. CompUSA even had mimes at its Manhattan store at midnight attempting to entice cultured shoppers. Maybe...
...website this week, at time.com I was especially looking forward to the operating system's support for the so-called Universal Serial Bus--a thin socket that comes on most newer computers and allows you to plug in a variety of peripherals (scanners, mice, etc.) with fewer hassles. Microsoft lent me a new eyeball-size digital camera to try out the feature. Alas, my computer failed to recognize, let alone run, the USB device. I suppose that will get fixed in Windows...