Microsoft delays Memphis until 1998, will release IE 4 PPR2 next week

Microsoft has finally conceded that the release version of Memphis, thenext version of Windows, will occur in 1998, not late this year as planned.Until this week, officials had hoped for a Christmas 1997 release. Even ifthe Memphis code is finalized before year's end, retailers and OEMs willnot see it until early 1998.

"We are going to get Memphis out as quickly as we can toward the end of theyear, but realistically we will get it out in the first quarter of 1998," said product manager Phil Holden.

Meanwhile, the next public release of Internet Explorer 4.0, which Microsoft is called a "preview release," is due next week. The previousrelease was called a "platform preview release" and it was meant only fordevelopers, not end users. The new version is geared toward a much wideraudience and it will support Channels, Java Package Management, andJ/Direct, the new Java/Win32 API. Microsoft is still claiming that IE 4 will ship by summer's end