Microsoft said on Friday that the new version of its Windows operating system would be named Vista and would be released late next year.
The first of two test versions of the program will be made available to corporate technology managers on Aug. 3, the company said. The new version has been known as Longhorn since development began more than four years ago.
The name was chosen after eight months of research and focus groups because it "captures the idea of clarity," company executives said.
Windows Vista will be the first major upgrade to Microsoft's flagship product since the release of Windows XP in 2001. Windows runs on more than 90 percent of the world's computers and accounts for about a third of the company's revenue.
The naming of Vista, which was announced to Microsoft sales and marketing employees gathered at an annual sales conference in Atlanta, is significant because it means the program is entering the final stages of internal development and beginning the sometimes long and arduous process of external testing. It also signals the beginning of what will certainly be an expensive marketing campaign.
Charles DiBona, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein, said the arrival of the test version of Vista in August would give software developers confidence that the final product is on schedule. A new version of Windows, he said, "will help the whole Microsoft and Windows ecosystem."
Among Vista's features are new ways to organize information and connect to other devices. In Vista, for example, the icons used to represent files will be tiny snapshots of the actual files -- a photo or a letter, for example -- rather than a generic graphic.
The company has also put a particular focus on search capability.
"We're looking to go beyond search," Brad Goldberg, Microsoft's general manager for Windows development, said in an interview.
"It will be much more intuitive for people to organize their data," he said.
Goldberg said the program would also include better protection against viruses and spyware.
Microsoft officials did not say when the company would ship the second test version to a broader audience, but said the final version was on target to reach consumers in the last half of 2006. Many industry analysts expect Microsoft to release the product in time for the holiday season, but not before.
The company said a version of the program for server computers would follow in 2007. Goldberg said the company would release more details on Vista at a software developer's conference in September.
Microsoft first began demonstrating some of the new features in 2003, when the company was saying that the program would be released last year.
But development was delayed when nearly the entire Longhorn programming team was diverted to repairing security problems in Windows XP. In the process, the company learned it needed to focus acutely on the growing problem of viruses and spyware. At the same time, the company also changed some of the program's features, most notably scaling back plans to create an entirely new file system.
On Thursday, Microsoft reported that revenue grew only 8 percent in fiscal 2005, which ended on June 30, compared with the company's double-digit growth rate in past years.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts