We’re talking about something that’s four-and-a-half years old. Although there are a lot of businesses that still have Office 97 running, getting free support so many years after, that’s pressing your luck.

It is proving a challenge for them.

What the federation approach does is provide the capability, through Passport, to make a single administration point for internal and external sites.

They’ve really done a 180 on this. The new fix that they have in Beta right now for Outlook completely removes programmability except as manually authorized in each case by the user. And this will...

This is the last hurrah for the current architecture. The next version of Microsoft’s consumer operating system, Windows 2000, will be based on [a Windows] NT kernel. The business user transition from Windows 95 to...

From Microsoft’s standpoint, they need that revenue. People should become aware of the [product lifecycle]; they should also become aware that Microsoft is changing its licensing model.

The question is, to what degree can Microsoft integrate what’s on the operating system with the services it offers on the Web and avoid tripping over the antitrust issue? I think Microsoft is very sensitive...

This sounds like Adobe’s pound of flesh to me.

Microsoft is taking steps to include its Hailstorm services into all of its products. Hotmail can be expected to be a key beneficiary of that integration.

One of the things that users can expect is that there will be more and more integration between Microsoft’s services.

I really think that AOL is going to have to be pushed real hard to sign on to this.

Gates is still in charge, but I think he’s happy about Ballmer taking care of his baby.

If you look at what the opportunity is for Microsoft, it’s that it just starts to sell one thing instead of another — it’s not an increase for them. The revenue opportunity of the release...

Microsoft has been relatively less able over time, to persuade their installed base to make the switch. People are just happy with what they have already.

Microsoft would no longer have guaranteed placement on users’ desktops. That would mean its ability to leverage the desktop in terms of selling other services would be severely reduced, or it would have to negotiate...

For instance, on a small business computer from Hewlett-Packard, the word ‘Microsoft’ may never appear on the screen.

What Microsoft is seeing is the proportion of their base that upgrades is not as high as it used to be. For a lot of people today, they buy their PC, they plug it in,...

It makes storing objects locally or on the Web essentially follow the same process.