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By - Darren Straight

10 Minutes With Microsoft’s Desmond Nair

In an interview titled: “10 Minutes With Microsoft’s Desmond Nair”, blogged by Angelo Embuldeniya, Firefox is said to be loosing it’s community, Vista is coming to home users in January 2006 and MS is not going Open Source!

Angelo: Why did MS introduce tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)? Had Firefox anything to do with it?

Desmond: We introduced tabbed browsing in IE7 mainly to increase productivity. I mean today, it’s all about browsing and searching online and no one likes to keep opening new windows to view content, it’s time-consuming and that’s why we came up with tabbed browsing for IE7 in order to enhance a user’s browsing experience online. Secondly, it’s not a question of Microsoft going head-to-head with Firefox, competition will always exist. Now I’ve heard a lot about Firefox, and been meaning to install it but never got around to doing so. I think Firefox is loosing it’s community these days due to the management and people who designed the browser.

Angelo: Do you know what the reason might be behind this delay of releasing Vista to non-corporate users? To me it sounds a bit unfair, don’t you think so, it’s like saying if you got the $$$, then you’re getting Vista!

Desmond: Well, this is one of the hardest decisions that MS took, because originally we wanted to release Vista to home users in December, as that month in the US is when sales hit a peak due to major price drops, but due to the fact that computers are manufactured in China and there’s a 4 weeks wait on shipping and the like, MS decided that we’ll sit on it and work together with the hardware folks and release Vista in the New Year to home users. Now, you’ve talked about fairness and big bucks but realistically speaking, corporations aren’t going to sit around until computers are shipped, which is why they get vista before home users do, we’re looking more at quantity of computers being used by a corporate client than by a home user, I think we’re talking about the difference of 2 computers purchased by a home user in comparison to possibly more than a thousand by a corporate client.

Angelo: In early 2005, just after the tsunami aftermath, a source with MS Belgium stated during a relief operation, that MS would be going open source in the last quarter of 2007, Can you please confirm that as actually happening given that it’s been more than a year since that statement was mentioned?

Desmond: To my knowledge, MS has no plans to go completely open source, however, we already have certain code released as shared open source under something called the MS Shared Community License. And let’s not forget we just offered developers the full version of MS Visual Studio Dot Net 2005 Express Edition free for a year.

Readmore: Angelo Embuldeniya’s Blog

1 thought on “10 Minutes With Microsoft’s Desmond Nair

SJNAIR April 16, 2006 at 3:39 pm

Okay I agree with most of the views in the post but i can’t understand “IE7 mainly to increase productivity” what does it means? here is my blog please see http://www.naircaste.blogspot.com and can post some comments there. That blog deals from nair caste to nair products and Meera nair to navya nair every thing on nairs including the history and relevance of this warrior community. I believe in transparency and hope that will work wonders.- Regards- S J Nair

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