New details about packaging & licensing, hardware vendor certification, support requirements, and low-end fault-tolerant hardware configurations become available

A look at new technologies for improving reliability, exploiting simplified hardware, and setting up "unmanaged" networks that may show up in the next version of Windows 2000

The deal with ContentGuard will improve the ability of Microsoft's e-commerce platform to protect books, music, video, and software sold over the Internet

Newly released details on Windows 2000's implementation of Kerberos should help other vendors to interoperate

Chances improve that SOAP, a platform-independent remote procedure call protocol and key element in the Windows DNA 2000 platform, will become an industry standard

The formats describe how sales transactions and product prices should be represented in XML

SR1a fixes a bug that caused browsing features to break on some Windows 2000 machines upgraded from Windows NT 4.0

The first update since Office 98 for Macintosh is expected in the second half of 2000

The online version at encarta.msn.com will help promote the CD-ROM product

Runs the latest version of Windows CE; offers much stronger multimedia support than its Palm rival