Today's News: Fostering customer confidence the Microsoft way

[SearchWin2000.com]

Title: Windows Week that Was

Published by SearchWin2000.com   July 09, 2004 >> Receive this e-mail as text   >> About this e-mail  ISSUE SPONSORED BY: >>  SearchWin2000.com Career Center: Visit the Career Guide today  Top News of the Week  >>  Hints of hosted services, a global spam crusade SPONSORED BY: SearchWin2000.com Career Center Searching for career resources? Visit the SearchWin2000.com Career Center powered by Dice.com and find training, certification and resume resources along with over 27,000 IT job openings to search through. Get e-mails when a listing matches your search criteria, have your profile automatically sent to Dice.com member companies, access a host of career resources and tips and much more. Visit now!  Headline  Fostering customer confidence the Microsoft way John Hogan, Senior News Writer Steve Ballmer has employed an interesting tactic to improve customer perceptions of Microsoft: He's enlisting the help of the workers whose benefits he's cutting. In his annual state of the company memo, Microsoft's CEO told his charges that the software maker needs to cut its costs while continuing to innovate. Reports about the e-mail memo, which traditionally is seen by many outside of the organization, said Redmond is looking to trim about $1 billion from its budget. Much of that is expected to come from cuts in employee health care and stock programs. Ballmer used a chunk of the 4,000-word memo to urge his workers to change the way people think about Microsoft. "We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough, and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security," he wrote. Click here to read more about Microsoft's customer initiative, as well as a wrap-up of the week's Windows news. More on this topic: >  Microsoft looks to boost customer service >  Microsoft readies new hosted services for SMBs >  Old-school worm loves Windows applications >  60 nations start to tackle spam crisis >  E-mail policies set the bar  Survival Tips for the Windows Manager   Chapter of the Week: Clustering design issues Setting up a cluster server is a complex undertaking, but smart planning can help smooth the ride. This chapter from the book "Windows 2000 Clustering and Load Balancing Handbook," by Joseph Lamb, walks through the planning process in a simple, step-by-step manner to ensure minimum disruption and optimal performance. Featured Topic: Longhorn: Raging bull or bum steer? Will the next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn," be the bull of the woods -- or a bum steer? You be the judge, as you browse this collection of Longhorn articles and news. Tip: Manually resetting AUTOCHK.EXE for a drive Windows maintains a piece of metadata for each volume called the "dirty bit." The dirty bit is a flag that tells the system if there are still pending changes to be written to the volume. Read more about dirty bits in this tip. TRUE IT BLOOPERS Oops! True IT Blooper #143: Coffee: Not always IT's lifeblood Anyone in IT knows that coffee is an indispensable aid in daily operations, but as N.D. writes, sometimes the working man's best friend just might be his enemy...  Vent!  Will you stick with Internet Explorer? Take our latest poll and sound off. White Papers Enter your e-mail and start receiving White Paper Alerts. E-mail    Not a member? We'll activate your membership with your subscription.   Contact Us   SENIOR NEWS EDITOR John Hogan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send me your news, press releases and product announcements. SENIOR SITE EDITOR Marilyn Cohodas [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send me your original articles and best practices. SITE SALES MANAGER Mike Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact me to sponsor this or any other TechTarget newsletter.   A B O U T   T H I S   N E W S L E T T E R Contact us: SearchWin2000 Member Services 117 Kendrick Street, Suite 800 Needham, MA 02494 This e-newsletter is published by SearchWin2000.com, a targeted Web site from TechTarget, the most targeted IT media and events company. TechTarget offers magazines, Web sites, e-newsletters, Webcasts and conferences for enterprise IT professionals. Copyright 2004 TechTarget. All rights reserved. To unsubscribe from "Windows Week that Was": Go to unsubscribe: http://searchWin2000.techtarget.com/unsubscribe?track=NL-118&ad=486657 Please note, unsubscribe requests may take up to 24 hours to process; you may receive additional mailings during that time. A confirmation e-mail will be sent when your request has been successfully processed.