When Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 yesterday they said what most people were expecting them to, that a new tablet-friendly interface would be the default way to interact with the new version of the OS.  This new Metro UI would load when you start Windows and that Microsoft expected most people to interact with Windows 8 [...]

Windows chief Steven Sinofsky unveiled Windows 8, well some of it anyway, to the world today and put most of the focus on touch and the new Metro interface that we’ve seen previously.  He made a point of saying that there are ‘hundreds’ of new features in Windows 8 and we’ll find out about them [...]

It is the second Tuesday of the month again and this means security patch day at Microsoft and Adobe. Adobe has just released a security bulletin for Adobe Reader and Acrobat that fix several critical vulnerabilities in versions of the pdf software. Vulnerabilities affect Adobe Reader X and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe [...]

Tomorrow (Tuesday 13th September 2011) sees the official unveiling of Windows 8 from Microsoft at their BUILD conference in Anaheim, California.  The keynote address, which goes out at 9am PT | 5pm – London | 12pm – New York | Fri 2am – Sydney | Fri 1am – Tokyo | Fri 12am – Beijing | [...]

Have you ever worked with two or even more computers at the same workplace? Maybe by using a desktop computer and a laptop at the same time. If you did, you had to cope with two keyboard and a mouse or touchpad on each computer. Not very handy, especially not so if space was limited [...]

Since the beginning of last month, Microsoft started pushing out blog posts over at the Building Windows 8 blog. This is more or less a repeat of the marketing efforts when the Windows 7 operating system was developed back in 2009. The long articles sometimes offer interesting insight into the decision making process, and more [...]

Metro UI; That’s the name of the new user interface that Microsoft plans to ship with the Windows 8 operating system when it comes out next year. What we did not know until now was how the interface would be integrated into the operating system, especially so on desktop PCs. Many users suspected that the [...]

I like the ability to mount iso images on my operating system. Have used this feature for a long time. Up until now, I had to install a third party iso mounting software for that. While that worked nicely, it was always a burden to install those virtual hardware drivers to add support for that. [...]

Microsoft is currently pushing out new announcements like crazy on the Building Windows 8 blog. We for instance know that the company will improve file management features like copying in the new operating system. Today another major change was revealed in a very detailed post on the blog. Windows Explorer will receive a complete redesign [...]

Most new PCs these days will come preinstalled with Microsoft’s relatively new Office 2010 Starter.  This is the replacement for the frankly awful Microsoft Works and gives people a much better upgrade path to the full version of Office if they want it… or does it? I get a regular tech mailbag of people asking [...]

I just love stories like this and it is the silly season after all so here’s a story to make you chuckle for the end of the weekend.  A man known as David Stebbins from Arkansas has filed a motion in Seattle against Microsoft claiming that they owe him half a billion dollars. The claim [...]

Remember how Microsoft marketed the Windows 7 operating system back in 2008 before it was available on retail channels? Right, with a series of blog posts aimed at developers and end users a like, then the beta release followed by the release candidate and RTM version. It appears as if Microsoft is intent do repeat [...]

Researchers at Black Hat have said that they’ve found Windows 7′s Enterprise security to be better than that of Apple’s OS X operating system. The problems for OS X seem to stem from user privileges.  While Windows 7 isn’t perfect, OS X seems to have more “soft spots” according to a report by Network World.  [...]

Microsoft have now released their popular note-taking app, OneNote for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.  The program, which is part of their Office suite is popular with people wanting to make notes in meetings of who want to jot down thoughts on the go. While built-into the company’s own Windows Phone operating system, iOS is [...]

Last month Microsoft changed the default log-in experience on their Live services, which include Hotmail.  The change meant doing away with the tile you could click (that was also more finger-friendly) and the “Remember me” box and replacing them with a more ‘traditional’ text entry box for your username. In order to make the system [...]

It’s very common for the major technology companies to release video adverts for their products that deride or poke fun at the competition, probably the best example of these are Apple’s excellent parodies of Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” adverts. Now though Microsoft are hitting out at Google with the introduction of the Gmail man, an annoying [...]

Now look at that. One of the things that Microsoft’s Windows Live Photo Gallery was criticized for in the past was lack of digital camera RAW format support. DSLR cameras give their users options to save their photo shootings in various formats, including RAW which offers several advantages over the compressed JPEG format. Among them [...]

Despite the problematic relationship between Microsoft and Linux vendors over the years, it’s not always been a case of frosty relationships.  Previously Microsoft decided to work closely with Novell on the Enterprise version of SUSE Linux, and now the company has renewed their alliance with SUSE by purchasing $100 million of support. This support will be [...]

Microsoft’s Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a tool for system administrators to verify that the Internet connectivity of specific Microsoft services is setup and configured properly. The online tool has been initially released under the name Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer back in 2010. It has now been rebranded to take into account the availability of [...]

At last week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft detailed it’s ongoing strategy to bring a connectedness to all the different types of devices in its product ranges.  This makes sense to a certain extent as a unified interface across Windows PCs and tablets, Windows Phone, Xbox and other devices makes considerable sense and is what Apple [...]

The day is finally within sight when Windows XP and the dreaded Internet Explorer 6 will finally be out of support.  This means that there will be no further patches or updates for the operating system at all past April 8th 2014.  On their website Microsoft are keen to point out that “Without Microsoft support, [...]

If you use Microsoft’s Outlook Connector software to synchronise Microsoft Outlook on your PC with your Hotmail or GMail account, then you might want to read this.  It’s become apparent that the latest update to the software, part of Microsoft’s Live Essentials Suite, has broken the calendar synchronisation with Hotmail, and may also be causing [...]

When you look at various sign in and log in forms on sites and services like Google Mail, Facebook, Yahoo Mail or Hotmail you will notice that they all look different despite sharing the same basic principle. Users somehow need to enter their username and password, and often have options to stay logged in for [...]

Microsoft today has released the Office 2010 Service Pack 1 which combines improvements, new features and previously released updates in a single update pack. The update is available for free if downloaded from the Internet. Microsoft notes that Office 2010 SP1 contains all “public updates that were released through June 2011″ and all “cumulative updates [...]

The computing industry is unlike any other in the way that it divides people into one camp or another. People sometimes become fanatical about the way they follow one company, and they can be completely scathing about others. The example you’ll all be able to recognise here is Apple fans who will sometimes go to [...]

Tomorrow Microsoft launch their new Office 365 business cloud platform integrating email, calendaring, office, sharepoint and intranets with communications and messaging.  It’s a big platform with a big future ahead of it as I wrote about the other day. Now Google are hitting out with a blog post entitled “365 reasons to consider Google Apps“.  [...]

As we get closer to the official release of the first major update for Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, more details of features are emerging, and some of them are looking extremely useful indeed. The expanded features list comes courtesy of WPSauce.com and includes… AppChecker – a feature that will find appropriate applications in the marketplace [...]

Next Tuesday Microsoft officially launches its Office 365 product.  This product, which was expected for several years before any official announcement came, is the company’s new subscription service for business.  In short it takes the IT department into the cloud with email, calendaring, exchange, Office, Sharepoint intranet services, Messenger and their new Lync communications suite [...]

Twitter has not only become a tool for Internet users to write and exchange messages, but also for marketers and researchers who want to analyze the dynamics or trends on the Internet platform. They can do that by searching on Twitter directly, by writing their own programs that utilize the Twitter API or use third [...]

SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud hosting service, has been around since 2007. The service gives users access to 25 Gigabytes of free online storage, for file hosting, sharing and collaboration. While it has been a great service to store data online from the start, it felt slow at times especially when navigating folders or photo albums in [...]

It’s being reported that the US Federal Trade Commission has given the green light to Microsoft’s proposed buyout of Internet communications company Skype. The purchase was announced a few weeks ago and will cost the Redmond giant $8.5 billion. This will make the Skype purchase the company’s largest ever acquisiton in cash terms and is [...]

When you are in charge of your company’s or organization’s infrastructure, you need to plan ahead. That’s probably one of the core reasons why many tech savvy users are speculating about the release date of the beta and final release of the Windows 8 operating system. A larger group is made up of tech enthusiasts [...]

Microsoft has released a total of 16 security bulletins on this month’s patch day. Patch day refers to the second Tuesday of each month on which Microsoft will release security patches. This month’s patch day consists of many different patches. Nine of the 16 bulletins have a maximum severity rating of critical, the highest possible [...]

Apple this week announced their new iCloud service, bringing together MobileMe and iTunes in the cloud. With it though they also announced they were dropping support for Windows XP from the new product. Indeed they were only supporting their own desktop operating system, OS X, going back four years to 10.5 ‘Leopard’ too. This raises [...]

We may still be at least a year away from Windows 8′s big debut in 2012, but the OS arena is heating up like never before, and new competitors are stepping up to the plate. It’s no big secret that Google has been preparing a streamlined, Chrome-esque operating system to challenge Microsoft’s double decade monopoly. [...]

Information about Microsoft’s next version of Windows have been limited to indirect sources including job postings, Windows 8 leaks or third party sites that got insider information. Yesterday Microsoft published a first demonstration video showcasing Windows 8 at the AllThings D9 event. The first official Windows 8 video concentrates on the new tablet user interface [...]

This story has been repeated elsewhere on the Internet under, you might think, more sensible headlines such as “influential hedge fund manager…”, “New York Hedge Fund Manager” and so on. I’m sticking to my guns with my headline though, but not because I think Steve Ballmer should stay on at Microsoft. At an investment conference [...]

For all of you who have been to a Microsoft Tech.Day or TechEd event you’ll be familiar with the format.  A series of presentations throughout the day, organised into relevant groupings, on various Microsoft technologies and including a scattering of guest speakers from industry.  You’ll commonly find that there are no new announcements made at [...]

There’s been so much news in recent weeks about stuff that’s going to turn into our computing future that I’m hardly surprised most people have failed to join the dots. If you look at some of, if not all of, the major technology announcements in recent weeks we can see that there is a very [...]

Since being awarded my MVP from Microsoft on January 1st this year I’ve had a fair few questions from people asking about the MVP program, what  it is, what the benefits are and how you can become one.  I thought I’d write this up here for you all as a guide as we all know [...]

Bing back in February announced the integration of Facebook likes into the search results. Friend recommendations appeared only on some results pages at that time. This changed yesterday with the roll out of the second stage of Facebook integration. What’s the reasoning behind adding friend likes to the search results? According to Microsoft, it stems [...]

If you were looking for a reason to make the switch to Windows 7, you may have found it in form of Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report. The document, available for public download at Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report website, covers the state of Windows, application and web security in the year 2010. Security interested users [...]

Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion Dollars, that’s the big news today. This deal brings up lots of questions. Did Microsoft overpay for Skype? The current owners have bought Skype one and a half year ago from eBay for $2.75 billion Dollars, which makes the $8.5 billion Dollar offer an increase of more than [...]

Microsoft is keeping tight lipped about the name of the next windows. Many users assume that it will be named Windows 8. Others use the name because it is convenient at the moment, mainly because there are not any solid alternatives at the moment, besides The Next Windows maybe, and that the community interested in [...]

The sheer volume of excitement about Windows 8 has taken me quite by surprise with more leaks than we ever saw with Vista or Windows 7 in the same time-frame.  The excitement and hype easily matches that of Google’s Chrome OS in the same period of its development, even though when the operating system finally [...]

I’m well known for being a PC minimalist. I even make a bit of a fuss about this in my book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, that if you want to have to keep repairing problems in Windows one of the best ways to achieve this goal is to keep installing software into it. There’s [...]

Those of you who follow me here or somewhere like Twitter might know that I was invited to Microsoft yesterday for meetings.  Apparently my name had been coming up in conversation and several people there wanted to see me.  I thought I’d write up here about my experience at Microsoft’s UK campus and split this into a two-part [...]

Office 365, Microsoft’s attempt to bring Office to the web as a subscription based service, has been available since 2010 for a select number of beta testers. Back then you were able to enter your email address to receive a notification once the service would enter public beta. That day has come and users from [...]

Yesterday’s monthly patch day was a big one, with 17 patches fixing a total of 64 security issues in Microsoft products. Affected applications include Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. If you look closer you notice that nine of the 17 patches have a maximum severity rating of critical, the highest possible rating. The [...]

Microsoft came under heavy fire with the launch of Windows 7 for not offering a direct migration path from XP. The older operating system, which is now ten years old, is something Microsoft and many other technology firms are keen to move users away from because of its inherent problems with security. There were perfectly legitimate [...]