Microsoft Corp has quietly dropped its plans to include personal communicators on the list of equipment that is being made compatible with Microsoft at Work, the system for giving users desktop control of electronic office equipment from within the Windows environment. According to Suzan Fine, group product manager, the reason for the decision was if you look at handheld equipment, the market for that is different from that for office equipment, and because including communicators confused users about what exactly At Work was supposed to be. The move means that the range of equipment that can be managed by At Work is now looking very thin. It basically consists of printers, facsimile machines, scanners and, to a lesser extent, copiers. But Ms Fine points out that the company has also been licensing the technology to companies such as facsimile server manufacturers. Microsoft is still planning to provide compatibility between Windows and communicators, and this may use elements of At Work according to Ms Fine, but the Personal Systems division is said to be in the process of re-analysing its strategy, so much has yet to be decided. Ms Fine also confirmed that, although Microsoft and Novell Inc did hold talks about providing compatibility between At Work and the Novell Embedded Systems Technology, these talks have now been broken off and Microsoft is not planning to go down that path. On the subject of At Work being moved into the PC Operating System unit, Ms Fine said that far from being a demotion, it is an indication of the importance of At Work to the firm. As opposed to being less important, we have greater attention focussed on us, she declared.
