Is Today the Day? Microsoft Poised to Make Yahoo! Move
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will allegedly pull the trigger on his company's hostile takeover bid for Yahoo! as soon as today. Or he won't. Those, as we say in the business, are the two choices he could make. Excited? I know I am. But seriously, folks. How many days of non-news news can one take? This week has been a monotonous series of "will they or won't they" articles from press both mainstream and tech-oriented, with no apparent end in sight. So with my sanity hanging in the balance, Mr. Ballmer, I'm begging you: Just do something. My advice is to walk away. But if you just have to spend that $44.6 billion or whatever, do it. Just do it today. Please?
FYI: No XP After June 30 Doesn't Mean XP Support Ends
If I ever write a book about Microsoft, it will be called "Damned if You Do..." It seems like everything the software giant does is misconstrued and misunderstood, and nothing they do will ever make people happy. Windows Vista falls neatly in that second category. But focusing on the first for a second, let's turn our attention to the pending expiration of Windows XP sales, which will occur June 30, 2008. Despite what I see as a very clear bit of communication about this event, it seems that some customers still don't understand is happening on that day. So here goes: June 30, 2008 is the last day that users will be able to purchase XP at retail or via a new PC (aside from so-called Ultra-Low-Cost PCs, or ULCPCs, which will still offer XP Pro only for another year). But Microsoft is not ending support for XP on that day: It will continue to offer software updates, including security hot-fixes, for some time to come. In fact, XP's mainstream support period doesn't end until April 2009. But even after that, Microsoft will continue to support XP with free security updates, until April 2014. So rather than complain that Microsoft is killing XP "too soon," why not acknowledge that the company is actually doing the right thing? Which it is, by supporting Windows XP for an astonishing 12.5 years.
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