The folks at the Redmond, Washington, headquarters of Microsoft, could be biting their nails to the cuticles, anxious about the launch of some of the company’s betting-the-store products next week. The portfolio will include the Windows Vista, Mi-crosoft’s brand new desktop operating system in five years, Office 2007 application suite, and the Exchange Server 2007 e-mail system, but the most interest would be on Vista.

So, what’s next for Microsoft, and, more importantly, the Windows OS? CEO Steve Ballmer says, "There are a lot of requirements for any operating system. Hardware continues to evolve. We have new connectivity types, new chip architectures, new storage paradigms and storage types, we have the move to embrace software and service and what does that mean for the operating system."

"We’ve got new development models, richer graphics interfaces, new ways for users to integrate data across applications down at the client level, new form factors, mobility, tablets," Mr Ballmer said in an interview to InformationWeek, ahead of the launches. According to him, "We don’t live in a static environment, so we’re going to have to continue to move Windows along with the times and we’re going to have to continue to innovate, particularly in terms of the new application models and new end-user scenarios."

"You have other guys out there like Apple who are pushing on the end-user scenarios, in the case of Linux, on different application models. There are special-purpose devices which are trying to unseat the PC by just doing one thing and supporting the hardware for that really well," he said.

Mr Ballmer acknowledged that Microsoft had a "lot of competition and things to focus on, but at the end of the day, most people who make PCs, most people who use PCs, want one piece of software that brings it all together for them - the full value of the experience: Enabling the hardware, third-party applications, services, and put-ting the user in control. "Windows does the best job of that; Vista takes it to a whole new level with its new UI, built in services, hardware support. We just need to continue to run fast," he said.

The Vista, which is expected to be shipped to consumers in January, reportedly has between 50 million and 100 million lines of code, compared to the estimated 10 million that Windows 95.

Mr Ballmer said that the next "version of Vista will be compatible, it will support 99 per cent of the hardware that Vista supports; it will support a high percentage of the applications that Vista supports; it will support all the end-user scenarios and more that Vista supports." That remains to be seen, as does whether Vi-sta will perform as advertised.

WHILE the term ‘Gandhigiri’ is increasingly becoming popular among people across different sections of society, Gandhi’s books are becoming popular too. The Navajivan Press which specialises in publication of Gandhi’s writings says that a significant number of people are now buying books written by Gandhi in English as well as its translated versions.

Statistics show that the English version of Gandhi’s autobiography is the most sought after as the total number of copies printed before 1995 was 11,39,000. While 80,000 copies of the English version were reprinted in 2005-06, 65,000 copies were reprintd in 2006-07.

The Bengali version of the autibiography, however, stands to lose as only 10,000 copies were printed before 1995 and no copies were re-printed later. However, while 8,000 Urdu copies were printed before 1995, there was only one reprint of 3000 copies in 2006-07.

Sunil Upadhyaya, Assistant Sales Manager of the Navajivan Trust says, ‘‘One of the causes of the increasing sales and publishing of these books is the awareness created about Gandhi in today’s world. There are of course lot of local, national and international issues related to the reason behind this awareness. One reason would be the existence of a violent world wherein non-violence is offered as a solution.’’

Upadhyaya says that although earlier the focus was purely on two versions of Gandhi’s writings, the press has moved on to publishing the works of Gandhi in regional languages only recently. ‘‘The autobiography of Gandhi remains a favourite among people and is a best-seller, while earlier concentration was only on English and Hindi, we switched to publishing the autobiography in other regional languages,’’ he says.

He says that there is a conscious effort being made by the press to publish other works of Gandhi, other than the autobiography. ‘‘We are also making an effort to print the rest of the works in form of booklets in Tamil, Malyalam and Marathi. These booklets are priced between Rs 5 to 10 and are thus made easily available for people interested in reading Gandhi,’’ he added.

Source: Expressindia.com