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News for the Week Ending Nov 10, 2002

Reuters - MS has $40.5 BILLION CASH in the Bank

...One of the main reasons why Microsoft will remain everyone's favorite company to sue is its huge cash hoard, $40.5 billion at last count, bigger than Gates's $32 billion stake in the company.

...Microsoft, by its own admission, has built up its cash position to deal with the consequences of litigation.

..."We continue to have a lot of risks and opportunities in our business and we continually assess those with our board of directors," Ballmer said in response to a question.

Many shareholders may start to more forcefully question whether Microsoft might start drawing down its cash in the form of dividends, analysts said.

"That's a huge question, one issue that is actively discussed within the company," said Hill, "It's no longer a growth story."

Microsoft, for now, appears to disagree and insists that investing retained earnings back into the company is better for shareholders than paying out profits.

"We won't see Microsoft pay a dividend to shareholders anytime soon because the company believes it can still grow the stock price through investments, and because the tax implications for large shareholders (including top Microsoft executives) would not be good," said Rosoff.

In the hours after the judge handed down her decision, Microsoft shares jumped to $56.33, from their Nasdaq closing price of $53.

Shares in Microsoft have gained 28 percent since Oct. 10 but are still down some 20 percent since the start of the year.

TomsHardware.com - Verizon Wins "Spam" Suit

Verizon Communications has scored a legal victory against a major provider of spam, or unsolicited and unwanted bulk e-mail, Additional Benefits LLC, a Michigan based company.

The federal court issued its ruling and obtained an agreement that Alan Ralsky's Additional Benefits Company will cease its unwanted e-mail solicitations of Verizon customers in 40 states for online casinos, diet pills, Viagra, and credit repair organizations, among other types of advertising.

The settlement comes after Verizon filed in federal court in Virginia claiming that its online customers were inundated by millions of e-mail solicitations from companies that work with Ralsky, clogging Verizon's mail servers and its customers' inboxes with unwanted and annoying advertisements.

PCMag.com - Office 11 Snubs Windows 9x, Me, NT

Microsoft Corp. has told beta testers of Office 11, its next-version Office desktop productivity suite, that the product will only work with the Windows 2000 operating system with Service Pack 3 installed, Windows XP and later desktop releases.

TomsHardware.com - Not-so-Distant Future Holds Roll-up Screens for Computers & TVs

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are the future for viewing screens, according to British company Cambridge Display Technology. Cambridge Display Technology recently announced that it will become the world leader in the production of glowing plastics as a result of its acquisition of the Opsys technology of rival Oxford University, which will be combined with their light-emitting polymers (LEPs) to enhance OLED technology.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) also claims that they will have mastered the technology to produce roll-up computer and television screens by 2005. CDT and Oxford currently sell their 'know-how' to major electronics manufacturers, including Philips, DuPont, Siemens-owned Osram, and Seiko Epson, some of whom have just opened factories for production of the first generation of monochrome OLED displays used in cell phones and razors.

OLED technology is made from polymers that emit light and do not require the backlighting of current flat screen liquid crystal displays (LCDs). This makes them energy efficient and so thin that they can literally be folded. Opsys technology, developed at Oxford and St. Andrews Universities in 1997, uses dendrimers, polymers that are brighter and more energy efficient than CDT's light-emitting polymers (LEPs).

The U.S. producer and a pioneer of OLEDs is Eastman Kodak. The market for OLEDs is predicted to grow from $85 million this year to $3 billion by 2007, according to U.S. market research group, DisplaySearch. CDT Chief Executive David Fyfe expects that by 2005 the technology will have matured sufficiently and the price will be competitive enough that it will challenge and eventually replace LCD full-color flat screens, even though these just recently started displacing 70-year old cathode ray tube technology (CRT). According to Fyfe, "The attraction is that (OLEDs) are much more energy efficient. It doesn't generate as much heat and the light goes only in one direction."

Reuters - Tablet PC To Be Launched on Thursday
Reed Stevenson

After a decade of development, false starts and hundreds of millions of dollars, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) will launch on Thursday its long-promised Tablet PC that allows users to write with a pen.

With the device, a flat laptop-style computer, users can annotate documents, jot down and exchange notes as well as convert them to text or save them as-is.

...Microsoft's early attempts to get pen-based computing off the ground failed and Apple Computer Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:AAPL - news) Newton, the precursor to current handheld computers, was also a commercial flop though one that was hailed as visionary.

Determined to avoid that fate, Microsoft is putting its full muscle behind the new platform with an estimated $400 million already invested in development and research.

Gates said he will unveil the Tablet PC at Thursday's launch ceremony in New York City. Although he oversees an expanding empire of products, he has devoted a good portion of his time to the new gadget.

..."I do think its success will really be determined by the applications," Smith said, saying that he expected "quite a few partnerships to be announced" at the launch.

The Tablet PC is debuting at a time when PC sales are slowing in a weak economy and sluggish corporate spending environment.

"It's certainly not the right time economically. People aren't looking for new things now that times are tough," said Smith.

The new high-tech tool is being targeted at "corridor warriors," or people whose days are filled with meetings.

"Those are the kind of people you see at Microsoft," said Matt Rosoff, analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent researcher.

Microsoft is also betting that professionals such as doctors and lawyers will be a key market for the note-taking PC, as well as most large corporations.

Since Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft makes its business in software, it has had to work closely with the 13 hardware vendors that will build the Tablet PC to ensure it works seamlessly.

Microsoft is developing a special version of its Windows XP (news - web sites) operating system for the device, which will include handwriting recognition technology. Users can have the Tablet PC convert their handwriting into text or store handwritten notes.

Rosoff notes that Microsoft has been careful to play down the handwriting recognition features of the Tablet PC, given the past difficulty in developing a reliable system.

"They've been careful to emphasize the note-taking abilities of the machine instead," Rosoff said.

Still, some early users of the new flat-panel computer have said that the handwriting recognition technology is the most advanced they have seen.

The Tablet PC, which will be made by computer hardware makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news), Japan's Toshiba Corp. (6502.T), and Taiwan's Acer Inc. (2353.TW) is similar in size to smaller notebook PCs.

Most come with a swiveling screen that allows users to fold the PC back up to hide the keyboard. Others do away with the keyboard altogether.

They are expected to cost between $1,700 and $2,400, with most falling in the middle of that range.

Gartner's Smith said that the while the prices seemed high, they were also more likely to come down over time: "The price differential between a typical notebook and Tablet PC may come down to about $200."

ITWorldCanada.com - Corel Slashes 22% of Workforce

Ottawa-based software firm Corel Corp. on Wednesday announced it is reducing its global workforce by 220 employees — approximately 22 per cent of its workforce — in order to "streamline operations and increase efficiencies."

The company said in a statement that these reductions would be occurring across all departments within the organization, and will enable a payroll cost reduction of approximately US$12 million per year. The company will also be incurring a one-time charge of between US$5.8 and US$6.3 million because of the layoffs.

"While we anticipate revenue growth for fiscal 2003, we are adopting a conservative approach in aligning our cost structure to reflect the company's current revenue patterns," said Derek Burney, president and CEO of Corel, in a statement. "A decision of this kind is never easy. We value all of our employees and their contributions to Corel's success."
 

With offices in France, Germany and the U.K., Corel’s worldwide workforce now stands at 769 employees.

TomsHardware.com - New Outlook version to fight "Spam" - It Is About Time!!

Microsoft's new version of Outlook, Outlook 11, will no longer automatically grab data from outside servers when previewing Web page formatted e-mail. Data files (i.e., sound, image and video) in HTML-formatted e-mail are usually pulled from a Web server similarly to the way a Web browser grabs this data when a user is surfing the Internet.

However, when content is accessed through a Web browser, it is because a user has chosen to visit that site; with Web-based spam mail, the content is delivered to the addressee uninvited. The spam e-mail content is downloaded so that it can function as a "Web beacon," which then notifies the spam sender that the e-mail address is valid. Even viewing the message in a 'preview pane' in Outlook without opening it can trigger the Web beacon, according to analysts, and the beacon can produce more unwanted mail from the original sender and from other spammers who have access to the same mailing list.

Outlook 11 will reportedly block much unwanted spam. "We've taken a step backward, so to speak, by blocking external content when you preview e-mail," said Simon Marks, Office XP product manager for Microsoft, and says this new feature is an important spam-fighting tool.

Reuters - MovieMaker 2.0 to be Released to WinXP Owners

commodore.ca - I understand the MovieMaker 2 was planned for release in Windows Longhorn but given the delays in that product, MS has opted to allow free download for Windows XP owners.

...Movie Maker 2, whose beta, or test version, which will be available for download on Microsoft's Web site from Friday, is meant to dispel the notion that home video editing take hours and requires a lot of learning, said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager at Microsoft's digital media division.

...Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft also said the "release candidate," or next-to-final version of its Windows Media Player 9 series would be available from Friday. The latest version of that player, Microsoft's program for playing audio and video sent over the Internet, features advanced CD-burning capabilities and synchronized lyrics support.

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