Microsoft

IT'S EASY TO get mad at Microsoft. The barrage of worms, viruses and Trojan horses that have made life miserable for millions over the last few months is testament to a flaky Windows operating system that needs someone to pick it up by the scruff of the neck and shake some sense into it. But Microsoft does some things very well, and without a lot of fanfare. Although the company makes most of its billions from software, its lesser-known hardware division has a history of turning out first-rate mice and keyboards.

AT FIRST GLANCE, computer scientists and plant researchers don't have much in common, but these days, they're both talking about the dangers of a monoculture. The term comes from the world of biology, where it refers a single species of vegetation that covers a large area. A pine forest is a monoculture; so is the "perfect" lawn, or a county planted with one type of cotton. When everything goes right, monocultures can be efficient. A farmer who grows only one crop has to buy one type of seed and fertilizer, one type of pesticide.

"World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies" by Ken Auletta. Random House. 436 pages. $27.95 Microsoft and its lawyers will return to a Washington appeals court next month for round two of its historic antitrust battle with the U.S. government. At stake is whether one of the most successful and influential companies of the 20th century will survive intact into the 21st. For anybody who didn't get enough of U.S. vs. Microsoft the first time around -- or just didn't get it, period -- New Yorker writer Ken Auletta has just published his much anticipated behind-the-scenes account of the historic court battle.

Windows 95, the system software upgrade that was finally released last week by Microsoft Corp., has a number of keen and spiffy new features that will delight anyone who has never used an Apple Macintosh.Once they install Windows 95 and spend hundreds of dollars replacing their existing applications with Windows-95-compliant versions, Microsoft's customers will be able to use long file names; organize files in nested folders; use a mouse to drag files from one window on screen to another; add peripherals without needing an electrical engineering degree, and so on.The Macintosh operating system has had all these impressive features since the mid-1980s.

Q. What are your thoughts on Microsoft Corp.? My investment adviser is always pushing this stock.A. There are definite reasons why Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates is so rich.Buy shares of Microsoft (around $118 a share, over the counter), the computer software giant, for it's enjoying considerable success with its MS-DOS 5.0 upgraded operating system, said Betty Liter, analyst with Montgomery Securities.After getting off to a great start thanks to its relationship with IBM, Microsoft's image dimmed a bit in 1990 when that relationship soured.

THE MICROSOFT CORP. has long contributed to the electronic drain on America's productivity with games such as "Flight Simulator," "Solitaire," "Minesweeper," "Powerpoint" and "Windows Reboot."Its newest entry is "Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection," a project developed largely in Russia and overseen by Alexey Pajitnov, the Moscow-born designer of the infuriatingly addictive "Tetris." He works for Microsoft.The pack, on a CD-ROM, costs about $35; it is designed for Windows 95 computers with a 486/66 processor or better and can be installed to run entirely from your hard disk if you are willing to sacrifice about 30 megabytes of it.The nine games on the disk all demand strategic thinking.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks rallied yesterday as gains in Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp. shares sparked the market's first big advance in four days. The Nasdaq composite and Russell 2000 indexes reached record highs.Disney shares jumped $2.50, to $59, after the entertainment company named Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz as its president. Microsoft rose $2.25, to $98.75, catapulting technology shares, amid strong European demand for the company's new operating system, Windows 95.Led by Disney and Caterpillar Inc., the Dow Jones industrial average rose 41.56, to 4,659.

Don't expect Microsoft Corp. to slink off into a corner, licking its wounds now that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that the company violated federal antitrust laws. The Redmond, Wash.-based company, with its $21 billion in annual revenue and $22 billion in cash, continues to possess enormous financial and technological resources, industry experts said yesterday. In short, the courts won't squelch innovation at Microsoft's sprawling 26-acre campus. Indeed, Microsoft has a number of product development and service initiatives under way in a quest to diversify well beyond its operating system for personal computers, which dominates the PC market, and its Internet Explorer browser.

Check back on this slug frequently for updated details about the Xbox release. Microsoft today showcased details of its next-generation gaming platform, Xbox One, which will succeed the Xbox 360. The announcement at Microsoft's Redmond campus followed significant speculation about the new device, which is expected to include a built-in version of the formerly detached Kinect module. Don Mattrick, president of the interactive entertainment business, debuted the box at 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, with the Microsoft team showing off a "hub"-style device that relies heavily on voice commands and gestures for control.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft Corp., in the software industry's largest acquisition ever, agreed yesterday to acquire Intuit Inc., the producer of the leading personal finance program, in a stock swap valued at about $1.5 billion.For Microsoft, the world's largest software company, the ownership of the Quicken program would put the company in a position to dominate the emerging market for writing checks, paying bills and shopping electronically from home.Quicken, with 6 million users, is already the leader by far in financial software for personal computers, and is used by a few small banks in the United States as the means for letting their customers do their banking from home.