Thanks Mark for reminding me not to forget Paul Thurrott"s mostly relevant review of the past week. This week we have done you a bumper size 3 part preview as a starters to an always full blown 3 course meal you have grown to love and expect at both PT"s and Neowin.
Potential Mira Testers Complain of Cost, Age of Devices
I"ve received several emails from Mira beta testers, who are upset about the cost of the beta program and the fact that they"ll be testing outdated hardware. Rather than seed testers with new Viewsonic (or similar) Mira devices, Microsoft is requiring them to spend $800 on a Windows CE-based Web tablet that will be retrofitted with Mira capabilities. My recommendation to testers who have written in about this is simple: Don"t bother. You"ll be able to buy a real Mira device for less than that by the end of the year, and it will have better wireless range and weigh less.
MS Remedy Hearings: Microsoft Claims AOL Exec is Biased
And speaking of corporations acting like children, Microsoft accused a top AOL Time Warner executive of being biased against the software giant. I suppose this charge is so obvious as to be inarguable, but then aren"t Microsoft executives biased against AOL as well? After all, Microsoft refused to bundle AOL 7 with Windows XP because AOL Time Warner wouldn"t remove the integrated RealNetworks media player software. Imagine that: Microsoft getting upset because someone else integrated middleware in their product. I"m sure there were sound technical reasons for the integration.
and finally a 3rd piece next to my usual 2 from Pauls place, because it seems we agreed on something, it looks very familiar to this post where I recommended the very same thing.
Netscape 6.22 Released: Skip It
As if we needed yet another reason to question whether Netscape could have survived even if Microsoft had just ceded it the Web browser market five years ago, the company released Netscape 6.22 this week. The product is based on the Mozilla code base, but it seems to ignore many of the coolest new Mozilla features, including tabbed browsing and pop-up ad elimination. My advice: Skip it and go with Mozilla instead, if you absolutely must use a non-IE browser. The latest Mozilla version--0.99--is good stuff, and highly recommended.