Microsoft has at last confirmed plans that it will launch its own music-download store next year, putting it on the path to direct competition with Apple Computer's iTunes and a growing list of rival digital song stores.
With unequaled software reach, Microsoft's entry into the market will almost necessarily create a splash larger than that of virtually any other company, despite being as much as a year behind Apple and others. But the company's service is also certain to be closely scrutinized by antitrust regulators who are already examining its music policies with a microscope. The plans also represent a change in direction that has left some of Microsoft's own customers feeling betrayed. When Apple's store launched last year, Microsoft publicly stated it had no plans to compete directly, preferring instead to let other stores use Microsoft technology for their own efforts.
But those assurances changed over the course of the last few months, rivals said. "They called up and said they were going to do it themselves, but the person on the phone said, 'You know us, it's going to take us more than a year to get it up,'" said one executive at a rival music service, asking not to be named. "It was a bad news, good news kind of thing." The official confirmation of Microsoft's music-retail plans come after months of speculation and hints from as high as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates himself. Gates said in July that he was considering building a song store, even if he didn't see it as a direct profit center for the company.
News source: C|Net News.com
With unequaled software reach, Microsoft's entry into the market will almost necessarily create a splash larger than that of virtually any other company, despite being as much as a year behind Apple and others. But the company's service is also certain to be closely scrutinized by antitrust regulators who are already examining its music policies with a microscope. The plans also represent a change in direction that has left some of Microsoft's own customers feeling betrayed. When Apple's store launched last year, Microsoft publicly stated it had no plans to compete directly, preferring instead to let other stores use Microsoft technology for their own efforts.
But those assurances changed over the course of the last few months, rivals said. "They called up and said they were going to do it themselves, but the person on the phone said, 'You know us, it's going to take us more than a year to get it up,'" said one executive at a rival music service, asking not to be named. "It was a bad news, good news kind of thing." The official confirmation of Microsoft's music-retail plans come after months of speculation and hints from as high as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates himself. Gates said in July that he was considering building a song store, even if he didn't see it as a direct profit center for the company.
News source: C|Net News.com
The benchmark updates tell us the following story, here compared with rival Xeons from Intel:
SPECint®_rate2000 2P Servers
Opteron 248 33.1 (109%)
Opteron 246 30.5 (100%)
Xeon 3.2 GHz (1 MB L3) 28.3 (93%)
Xeon 3.06 GHz (1 MB L3) 27.4 (90%)
The use of PC3200 memory gives, Opteron a further boost:
SPECfp®_rate2000 2P Servers
Opteron 248 31.6 (106%)
Opteron 246 29.9 (100%)
Xeon 3.2 GHz (1 MB L3) 21.1 (71%)
Xeon 3.06 GHz (1 MB L3) 20.8 (70%)
Xeon is not even in the same league, and its scaling is poor against Opteron.
SPECweb®99_ssl 2P Servers
Opteron 248 2240 (112%)
Opteron 246 2000 (100%)
Xeon 3.2 GHz (1 MB L3) 1440 (72%)
Xeon 3.06 GHz (1 MB L3) 1382 (69%)
SPECjbb®2000 Performance 1P Servers
Opteron 248 38222 (109%)
Opteron 246 35115 (100%)
Another solid Opteron showing. I couldn't find any recent submissions for Xeon, for some reason.
SPECjbb®2000 Performance 2P Servers
Opteron 248 64427 (106%)
Xeon 3.2 GHz (1 MB L3) 61096 (100%)
Opteron 246 60865 (100%)
Xeon 3.06 GHz (1 MB L3) 57653 (95%)
Xeon is now showing respectable performance, but it's still not good enough to overcome Opteron.
SPECjbb®2000 Performance 4P Servers
Opteron 848 113473 (105%)
Opteron 846 107786 (100%)
Xeon 2.8 GHz (2 MB L3) 94405 (88%)
That whole thing about them not making any profit off their sales...yea...that cant be good
anywayz ..back to the topic .. MS is always late ..but in the end they win the whole game. well I dont know what will happen this time ........
They where late making a GUI, they were late in browser market, MS word or Excel wasn't the first word processor or spreadsheet .. etc etc ...
I'm not sure who the RIAA trusts more, Apple or Microsoft. WMA is quite secure compared to AAC. I've watched a friend of mine edit an open source apple application, made by apple themselves, and allow it to convert a protected AAC file to an unprotected AAC file with no quality loss.
Granted, anyone can playback the file and record it, but it's not like anything can stop us from doing that.
Not saying it can't be done, it can, but so can circumventing WMA.
you want me to tell the whole neowin comunity, and probably alot more people than that, how to crack AAC protected files? yea, that would really be a good idea
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