Microsoft Works started development as "Mouseworks" from "Productivity Software", and involved developers of the original Apple II AppleWorks. The first release was in 1986 for the Apple Macintosh. It seems that Microsoft purchased it mainly to compete with Lotus Jazz.
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11. The Internet is a global electronic network, consisting of smaller, interconnected networks, which allows millions of computers to exchange information over telephone wires, dedicated data cables, and wireless links. The Internet links PCs by means of servers, which run specialized operating systems and applications designed for servicing a network environment.
78. Although they have been the most prominent, Netscape's Navigator and Sun's Java implementation are not the only manifestations of middleware that Microsoft has perceived as having the potential to weaken the applications barrier to entry. Starting in 1994, Microsoft exhibited considerable concern over the software product Notes, distributed first by Lotus and then by IBM. Microsoft worried about Notes for several reasons: It presented a graphical interface that was common across multiple operating systems; it also exposed a set of APIs to developers; and, like Navigator, it served as a distribution vehicle for Sun's Java runtime environment. Then in 1995, Microsoft reacted with alarm to Intel's Native Signal Processing software, which interacted with the microprocessor independently of the operating system and exposed APIs directly to developers of multimedia content. Finally, in 1997 Microsoft noted the dangers of Apple's and RealNetworks' multimedia playback technologies, which ran on several platforms (including the Mac OS and Windows) and similarly exposed APIs to content developers. Microsoft feared all of these technologies because they facilitated the development of user-oriented software that would be indifferent to the identity of the underlying operating system.
112. At the end of May 1997, Gates told a group of Microsoft executives that multimedia streaming represented strategic ground that Microsoft needed to capture. He identified RealNetworks as the adversary and authorized the payment of up to $65 million for a streaming software company in order to accelerate Microsoft's effort to seize control of streaming standards. Two weeks later, Microsoft signed a letter of intent for the acquisition of a streaming media company called VXtreme.
113. Perhaps sensing an impending crisis, executives at RealNetworks contacted Microsoft within days of the VXtreme deal's announcement and proposed that the two companies enter a strategic relationship. The CEO of RealNetworks told a senior vice president at Microsoft that if RealNetworks were presented with a profitable opportunity to move to value- added software, the company would be amenable to abandoning the base streaming business. On July 10, a Microsoft executive, Robert Muglia, told a RealNetworks executive that it would indeed be in the interests of both companies if RealNetworks limited itself to developing value- added software designed to run on top of Microsoft's fundamental multimedia platform. Consequently, on July 18, Microsoft and RealNetworks entered into an agreement whereby Microsoft agreed to distribute a copy of RealNetworks' media player with each copy of Internet Explorer; to make a substantial investment in RealNetworks; to license the source code for certain RealNetworks streaming technologies; and to develop, along with RealNetworks, a common file format for streaming audio and video content. Muglia, who signed the agreement on Microsoft's behalf, believed that RealNetworks had in turn agreed to incorporate Microsoft's streaming media technologies into its products.
114. RealNetworks apparently understood import of the agreement differently, for just a few days after it signed the deal with Microsoft, RealNetworks announced that it planned to continue developing fundamental streaming software. Indeed, RealNetworks continues to do so today. Thus, the mid-summer negotiations did not lead to the result Microsoft had intended. Still, Microsoft's intentions toward RealNetworks in 1997, and its dealings with the company that summer, show that decision-makers at Microsoft were willing to invest a large amount of cash and other resources into securing the agreement of other companies to halt software development that exhibited discernible potential to weaken the applications barrier.
132. In sum, from 1994 to 1997 Microsoft consistently pressured IBM to reduce its support for software products that competed with Microsoft's offerings, and it used its monopoly power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems to punish IBM for its refusal to cooperate. Whereas, in the case of Netscape, Microsoft tried to induce a company to move its business away from offering software that could weaken the applications barrier to entry, Microsoft's primary concern with IBM was to reduce the firm's support for software products that competed directly with Microsoft's most profitable products, namely Windows and Office. That being said, it must be noted that one of the IBM products to which Microsoft objected, Notes, was like Navigator in that it exposed middleware APIs. In any event, Microsoft's interactions with Netscape, IBM, Intel, Apple, and RealNetworks all reveal Microsoft's business strategy of directing its monopoly power toward inducing other companies to abandon projects that threaten Microsoft and toward punishing those companies that resist.
239. Microsoft has largely succeeded in exiling Navigator from the crucial OEM distribution channel. Even though a few OEMs continue to offer Navigator on some of their PCs, Microsoft has caused the number of OEMs offering Navigator, and the number of PCs on which they offer it, to decline dramatically. Before 1996, Navigator enjoyed a substantial and growing presence on the desktop of new PCs. Over the next two years, however, Microsoft's actions forced the number of copies of Navigator distributed through the OEM channel down to an exiguous fraction of what it had been. By January 1998, Kempin could report to his superiors at Microsoft that, of the sixty OEM sub-channels (15 major OEMs each offering corporate desktop, consumer/small business, notebook, and workstation PCs), Navigator was being shipped through only four. Furthermore, most of the PCs shipped with Navigator featured the product in a manner much less likely to lead to usage than if its icon appeared on the desktop. For example, Sony only featured Navigator in a folder rather than on the desktop, and Gateway only shipped Navigator on a separate CD-ROM rather than pre-installed on the hard drive. By the beginning of January 1999, Navigator was present on the desktop of only a tiny percentage of the PCs that OEMs were shipping.
367. AdKnowledge does not undertake to collect data on the use of browsing software to navigate proprietary OLS content or intra-enterprise networks ("intranets"). This does not detract from the value of the AdKnowledge data as a measure of usage share for developers' purposes, however, for most developers of network-centric applications look to write applications that will run through Web sites, not through OLS proprietary content or pages on an intranet. Most developers will therefore pay most attention to estimates of the extent to which a particular type of browsing software is being used to browse the Web. Moreover, only a very small percentage of the copies of Web browsing software in operation are used exclusively to navigate intranets.
400. Recognizing ISVs as a channel through which Java runtime environments that complied with Sun's standards could find their way onto Windows PC systems, Microsoft induced ISVs to distribute Microsoft's version instead of a Sun-compliant one. First, Microsoft made its JVM available to ISVs separately from Internet Explorer so that those uninterested in bundling browsing software could nevertheless bundle Microsoft's JVM. Microsoft's David Cole revealed the motivation for this step in a message he wrote to Jim Allchin in July 1997: "[W]e've agreed that we must allow ISVs to redistribute the Java VM standalone, without IE. ISVs that do this are bound into Windows because that's the only place the VM works, and it keeps them away from Sun's APIs."
403. Microsoft anticipated that the Java language would become a popular medium in the multimedia arena. It thus wanted to ensure that the Java software created to deliver multimedia content would not rely on Java implementations that fostered portability. RealNetworks developed the most popular software for the creation and play-back of streaming multimedia content. Therefore, Microsoft sought to ensure that, to the extent Java developers relied on RealNetworks' technologies, they would not be relying on a Java implementation that complied with Sun's standards. So, in the July 18, 1997 agreement that it entered with RealNetworks, Microsoft conditioned its agreement to distribute RealNetworks' media player with Internet Explorer on RealNetworks' agreement to exert its best efforts to ensure that its player primarily use Windows-specific technology, rather than any analogous interfaces that Sun or Netscape might develop, to display multimedia content. Absent this obligation, there would have been no technical reason why RealNetworks could not have designed its media player to support both Microsoft's technologies and ones developed by Sun or Netscape. Although RealNetworks subsequently announced that it planned to continue developing its own fundamental streaming software, the July 18 agreement limited the extent to which that software would include Java technologies that complied with Sun's standards. 2ff7e9595c
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