Microsoft’s directors were meeting Wednesday to consider raising the software maker’s $41.9 billion bid for Yahoo instead of pursuing a threatened hostile takeover attempt, according to a published report.

A decision could emerge after the meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft also is weighing withdrawing its bid–a move likely to cause a precipitous drop in Yahoo’s stock, which has been bolstered by the 3-month-old takeover bid.

Microsoft in 2000 rolled out its Operation Manager software with the goal of bringing the same management strengths the company had in desktop environments to Windows-based data centers.

Now company officials are looking to continue expanding those capabilities to include virtualized and non-Microsoft environments.

At its Microsoft Management Summit April 29 in Las Vegas, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business, also will outline the company’s new use of open-source technologies and industry standards.

User Account Control is one of Windows Vista’s most controversial and most misunderstood features. This walkthrough will help you smooth over some of its harder edges without shutting it off completely.

Software developer Hans Reiser was found guilty today of first degree murder in the death of his wife in late 2006, a conviction that carries up to 25 years in prison and a possible death sentence for the Reiser4 file system.

ReiserFS (File System) is incorporated in the Linux kernel and is used in many top Linux distributions, although EXT3 has succeeded it a the leading file system. The Reiser4 open source project, the successor to ReiserFS also conceived by Hans Reiser, continues to be developed and supported by a group of open source programmers. In an e-mail interview over the weekend, Edward Shishkin, a top developer of Reiser4, said work continues on the file system but the fate of the open source project long term is uncertain.

Companies (at least publicly traded ones) are beholden to shareholders. But they also are beholden to their employees. And while most Softies are afraid to state for the record that they think Microsoft should abandon its takeover of Yahoo, that opinion is a real and prevailing sentiment among many in the Microsoft ranks.

These aren’t folks who are saying Microsoft should walk away from Yahoo so that Yahoo’s stock price will tank and Microsoft can swoop in and buy them later. They are folks who are opposed to a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo at any price. And while it’s tough to take over successfully a company where many of the employees don’t want to work for you, it’s potentially far worse to alienate your own employees by spending billions to buy technology and people with whom your rank and file have no interest in working.

Google continued its rapid cycle of innovation for its Docs trio of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications April 25.

Weeks after allowing Google Apps users to view and edit word processing documents offline, the company has added the capability to view its spreadsheets and presentations offline.

Microsoft has delayed the release of a third service pack for Windows XP, blaminga "compatibility issue" between the software and a retail-chain-management application.

Microsoft had said last week that it completed development on Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and that it would be available via its software-update services on Tuesday. However, incompatibilities discovered in the past several days between an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will force the company to hold off on releasing the software. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and mid-sized businesses.

Yahoo failed to agree to an acquisition deal with Microsoft by Saturday, the deadline Microsoft had set for wrapping up negotiations.

Now Microsoft must decide whether to pursue a hostile takeover via a proxy fight or to drop the bid and seek other acquisition alternatives.

A judge tells the Bush administration to collect and preserve all email in .pst files; millions are missing.

Concerned over contradictory White House statements about the government’s controversial email archiving efforts, a U.S. district judge April 24 ordered the Bush administration to collect and preserve all emails in .pst files for individuals employed at the White House between March 2003 and October 2005. Millions of White House email are missing from the period.

The White House admits emails are missing but insists the emails are on back-up tapes and drives that as yet haven’t been located. Federal law requires the preservation of all White House email. The period of time covered by the order includes the start of the Iraq war, the Valerie Plame affair and the White House response to Hurricane Katrina.

Dell will sell and support systems with the Windows XP operating systems to its customers even after the June 30 cutoff date set by Microsoft.

What will happen is that Dell will leverage on the "downgrade" license inherent in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate to pre-install Windows XP Professional on a selection of Dell desktop PCs and laptops. This will save users the hassle of having to do it themselves, says a Dell spokesperson. This service will be offered on some Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision systems for free. Some Vostro and XPS systems will also get this offer–for a small fee.