In sports, they call it a rebuilding year, a period when a team works on the fundamentals and prepares for the next season's championship run, doing all it can in the meantime to keep the stadium filled with fans. It might be tempting to think of Microsoft Corp.'s 2004 in those terms, sandwiched as it is between major releases of the company's biggest products. New versions of Microsoft Office and Windows Server debuted in 2003. And the next Windows for PCs, code-named Longhorn, isn't due until 2005 or 2006.
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