Microsoft Corp. may have tooted the public relations horn about Vista's power-saving features, said a Gartner Inc. analyst this week, but businesses would be smart to look at ways they can save electricity on their XP-powered PCs rather than worry about what the new OS offers.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the results of tests by U.K.-based PC Pro Labs that said Vista's improved power management features could reduce carbon emissions for a business with 200 PCs by 45 tons annually, and save the company $90.50 per PC per year in electricity costs.

"Before embarking on an expensive Vista upgrade to achieve green benefits, businesses should spend a much smaller amount on a broad-based education and training program to help staff understand why saving energy is important to the business," Gartner analyst Simon Mingay wrote in a research note this week.

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Five months after its introduction, industry experts give Microsoft Corp.'s Zune media player barely passing grades in terms of its marketplace success while Microsoft insists the device is on course.

"I'd give them a B-minus," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for market research firm NPD Group. Other analysts gave Microsoft roughly the same marks.

"We are very definitely on target," insisted Jason Reindorp, a Microsoft marketing director for Zune. He said there will be some changes in Zune's direction, including, possibly, a Zune phone, but said Microsoft is satisfied with Zune's progress.

However, citing market studies, the analysts note that Zune has yet to make a dent in the large market lead of Apple's iPod. They also pointed to five specific areas in which Zune must improve.

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As momentum grows around its new Windows Home Server line, which is due for release towards the end of this year, Microsoft is looking to keep the love flowing with its hardware partners, software developers and end users alike.

Joel Sider, Senior Program Manager for Windows Home Server, told APC that the company intends to release a software development kit (SDK) for the platform early next month.

While already available to OEMs such as HP, which was the first to sign up to produce a Windows Home Server system, making the SDK available to all third-party developers should result in a wide range of add-on programs ranging from free utilities to commercial applications.

"One of the exciting things about home server is that it's Windows Server, it's an application platform, so we're expecting to see a lot of third-party applications" says Sider. "When we release the SDK and post the documentation on MSDN we'll be giving developers the means to start building Windows Home Server applications.

"This could include centralised family schedule management, or maybe some syncing capabilities so as you record your favourite TV shows on your media centre they're automatically going onto Home Server in a very easy hands-off way. You could also think about webcams and security applications".

As with Windows Server itself, Microsoft's focus would remain on adding "features and core functionality to the home server itself" says Sider, although he suggested that it would make sense for the platform to "work with the Live services we already have out there, (we could) make it really easy to take your content from Home Server and post to a blog".

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Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year.

Office 2008 for Mac, as the product is known, helps bring the desktop suite back into compatibility with two key technologies. First, the product is the first version of Office that runs natively on both Intel- and Power PC-based Macs. The new software also adds support for the XML file formats that Microsoft added to the Windows version of Office--Office 2007, which hit store shelves in January.

Microsoft did not say how many people are taking part in the private beta or whether it will have a public test version, but a representative said Friday that the company is still on track to have the final product out sometime in the second half of the year.

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OK, I just packed and I am headed to the San Diego Airport soon. Via Minneapolis I will arrive in Amsterdam Saturday morning local time.

I hope you enjoyed the MMS reporting.

Next event? probably WinHEC 2007 in Los Angeles in May.

Maarten Goet of Techlog.org made picture of a lunch we had yesterday:

Today, at day three, at the Microsoft Management Summit, I met with some other great people. Steven Bink from http://bink.nu, Stefan Stranger from http://weblog.stranger.nl, Erik Luppes from http://www.buit.org, Roeland Kuipers (a friend of Steven), Daniel van Soest from http://blogs.microsoft.nl/danielvs and Robert Bakker from Microsoft NL were there. We enjoyed the sun, ate some burgers and fries and talked about great things like Veridian and upcoming products like Office Communications Servers, etcetera. Here's a quick capture:

Today marks an important milestone for BizTalk Server customers and the BizTalk team – the release of BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Beta 2.  As you know, the product team has a great history of getting products out the door and this yet another example of the priority placed on making sure our customers feel great about their SA value. We would encourage everyone to explore the latest release at http://connect.microsoft.com/ .

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will be 5th major release of BizTalk Server.  This is another huge step forward for our 6,500+ customers globally and will add new capabilities for customers that need EDI and RFID.  While there are numerous improvements to BizTalk, this release has three major themes:

• EDI: The native support for comprehensive EDI and AS2 protocols in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will provide much richer data integration and management capabilities for our customers. The Base EDI adapter that comes with BizTalk Server 2006 enables the sending and receiving of messages using X12 and EDIFACT. Customers can leverage this base functionality in order to build custom EDI solutions.
• RFID: BizTalk RFID provides rich data, device and event management, as well as open APIs and tools.  The capabilities allow customers to cost effectively build vertical solutions and configure intelligent RFID-driven processes.
• Platform Alignment: BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features improved alignment with 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista, including key .NET Framework 3.0 technologies such as WF and WCF.  This alignment will help customers access LOB data, as well as system-to-system or supply-chain processes from within their Office System applications (like SharePoint Server, InfoPath and Dynamics). 

The Australian Customs Service (Customs) wanted to improve the management and security for its 5,800 client systems including 600 executive notebooks deployed in the field for intelligence gathering, the majority of which are running on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP2.  A pilot deployment and a business-value case study that involved a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis was conducted by IDC, and showed how upgrading Customs’ PCs to Windows Vista would provide these benefits.

The analysis indicates that when Customs upgrades its PC base to Windows Vista it can anticipate saving $262 per PC annually in reduced IT support costs and user labor.
 IT labor is projected to decrease by 23% or $51 per PC
 User labor is expected to decrease by 25% or $211 per PC

IDC estimates that Customs will realize a Return On Investment of 203 percent and a payback period of 5 months, assuming Customs uses its existing hardware refresh cycle for the upgrade.

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