Microsoft has made a concerted effort to rev every product in its arsenal at least once every two years. We all know why it does that: buckeroonies. Keep pushing customers down the never-ending upgrade path and increase your revenues, easy peasy. But it gets a little more complex when you've got oodles of market share and some of your products require other products to do their job.

Frankly, Microsoft's been ignoring that little part of the equation and it's getting ever more annoying. The Vista delay announcements (http://www.infoworld.com/reports/SRmswindowsvista.html) haven't really been that troublesome; if I were contemplating a new desktop OS rollout, a sudden delay tossed my way would bother me only a little.

Having the "20 percent chance of another delay" announcement (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/07/17/29NNmsftpartnercon_1.html) tossed at me, on the other hand, followed by yet more silence would be downright annoying. Pick a date that's far enough out to be safe and be done with it -- what's with the stringing along, already?

But it continues. Last week's announcement that Expressions was going to be delayed by at least a year got my frown a-wrinkling, too. Expressions Studio is what FrontPage has become, though Microsoft says it's a completely different code base.

Apparently, the product was originally supposed to show up this summer and now won't show up until well after next summer and possibly not until 2008. That's not critical to us system admins, but developers sure are getting a curveball tossed their way, even those with duties as small as Sharepoint collaboration.