Zimbra just released v5.0.  For those of you that don’t know Zimbra, it’s a Microsoft Exchange / Outlook competitor that Yahoo bought last year for $350m.  While v5.0 looks nifty, I was thinking about the release notice to Zimbra customers for Zimbra v6.0, which I assume will be released after Microsoft completes their conquest acquisition of Yahoo (for those of you that live under a rock in a cave, Microsoft made an offer to acquire Yahoo last Friday for $45b.)

Following is an approximation of what I expect a Zimbra customer to receive regarding an upgrade.

Some date, 2010

Dear Microsoft Zimbra Customer:

The latest release of Zimbra (Zimbra 6.0) has been released to manufacturing today and will be available within 60 days.  As part of this release, we are renaming Zimbra 6.0 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.  The upgrade will be automatically delivered as part of your Zimbra license (sublicensed under the Microsoft Live Enterprise Support Service.)

If you are running the Zimbra desktop client, it will automatically be deleted and upgraded to Microsoft Outlook. If you are running the Zimbra Windows Mobile client, it will automatically be deleted and upgraded to Windows Mobile Mail.  If you are running any of the other Zimbra clients, including ones for Palm, Symbian, iPhone, or Blackberry, they will simply stop working and you will need to upgrade to a Windows Mobile Device.

Please back up your data as we can not assure you that it will be transferred.

I have been a hardcore Outlook user for a long time.  I grimaced with empathy as I read through Stan James 67 Reasons That Outlook Sucks.  If you are having a frustrating Outlook day, Stan’s rant will make you feel better.

Brilliant strategic move by Microsoft today – offering a price for Yahoo that is both well above the market clearing price and done out in the open.  Microsoft’s Letter to Yahoo is great.  It coincides with Terry Semel leaving the Yahoo board, which is a small irony.

In other news, Microsoft is now the rumored buyer of the 432-acre Sun (Storagetek) campus just outside of Boulder.  And apparently the bloom is finally coming off of the Google rose.

I love this industry.  It is so endlessly entertaining.  I don’t have to watch the E! Channel or read People Magazine anymore to get my daily dose of drama.

Today the news started emerging that Office 2003 SP3 no longer supports older Microsoft Office file formats.  When I first read this, I figured it only referred to really obscure formats.  But I was wrong – it’s step 7 in trying to get everyone to use Microsoft’s OpenXML format.  WTF?  Has someone lost their mind?

My IT guy Ross has been having his fair share of them lately.  Ross has been blogging about silly Microsoft tricks, including Microsoft you’re about to lose me and Why Microsoft, why?

Ross isn’t limiting himself to bitching about things – he’s also offering useful suggestions such as Disabling Vista auto update.  Plus he’s writing about some obscure stuff such as Installing Vista on a MacBook Pro using Imagex.exe (only obscure if you don’t want to do it!)

I’ll continue to endlessly torture Ross by saying "hey Ross, can you …"  Hopefully he will continue to write about his experiences.  If you have an inner IT guy within your soul, or if you are an end user who just wants to hear about someone who is banging their head on the wall trying to get this crap to work quietly in the background, hang with Ross.