The Wall Street Journal do a decent piece on their frankly bizarre relationship.

The Microsoft story is pretty amazing. One of the most interesting business books I ever read was Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.

All the really juicy stuff happened long ago (1980). But one or two swift moves saw them take over the world. You would be amazed at how much luck played a big part in all of this.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html

I am not a big fan of Microsoft Desktop Search but if you are running Office 2007 on Windows XP then you pretty much need it for basic things like searching for e-mails in Outlook.

There are other Desktop Search options (Copernic and Google Desktop Search) but better the devil you know.

Microsoft have just released Version 4.0 for all their major platforms (XP, Vista and Server).

Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems:-
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost) 
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations 
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster preview updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors
• Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects

Download Links are available on the link below.

The 5mb download for Windows XP requires the system to reboot after the install.

Tip: The new version rebuilds the index so be you may not be able to do proper searches in Outlook until fully complete (see below). It will index quicker if the computer is idle.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157

Microsoft today opened their dedicated UK online store selling retail Windows and Office products.

This is a good news / bad news story.

The good news is you can now download at the point of sale. So if you need Office 2007 at 3am, well now you can.

The bad news is their online store prices are ridiculous.

Example: Microsoft Office 2007 Professional

Microsoft UK Online Store £449.99 for Download

However…..

Amazon.co.uk Boxed Retail Product is £349.98 (Sold by Amazon)

This is such a crazy world. The company that makes the software can’t sell it cheaper than a competing Internet retailer based on a non physical product.

Microsoft then have the front to charge you extra for shipping and handling if you want a backup DVD of your software.

I find it more or less impossible to recommend anyone purchase from the Microsoft online store based on their pricing model.

Pay more get less, this is borderline moronic.

No doubt there is some anti competitive shenanigans Microsoft has to observe, but really why bother. Another boxed ticked at Microsoft HQ I guess.

Link: https://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/

PS

If you believe in conspiracy theories this news story is running in the the same news cycle  as Adobe announce a new online collaboration suite  over at www.acrobat.com

Check out this write up

Link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_launches_online_office_suite.php

I’m not kidding about the conspiracy either I monitor several Microsoft UK employees blogs and each one of them posted about the Microsoft online store one after each other like dominoes.

There is a lot of noise, sorry news about Windows 7 the successor to Windows Vista (Link).

Bill and Steve are giving us a nice chat about it at the All things Digital Conference (Link)

However the fact of the matter is the next Version of Windows is not due until the 2010.

Microsoft wants us to focus on the past (”look how far we have come”) bypass the elephant in the room (Vista) and now want us to look to a future in which Windows 7 will make it all better again.

I think I can be a more useful talking about technology and products that actually exist, so that’s it on Windows 7 for while.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was pelted with eggs in Hungary.

The unhappy chappy with the projectile dairy product was protesting the license agreement Microsoft has with the Hungarian government.

A couple of things strike me.

1) Does Ballmer not have security? He is one of the richest men in America ($15.2b).

2) The chap with the eggs was wearing a shirt that said in large letters “Microsoft = Corruption”.

Bad day the office…