Microsoft are set to launch the final version of Windows Live Essentials  2011 later today according to NeoWin.  I suspected something was happening when I awoke this morning to see that Microsoft senior vice-president Steven Sinofsky had changed his profile picture on Facebook to the Windows Live Essentials 2011 logo, the story from NeoWin then [...]

For a few years now the Apple version of Microsoft Office, which is one of the biggest-selling software packages on the platform, has lagged behind its Windows cousin  due to the absence of the intuitive Ribbon Interface.  This was partly because of the different way Apple’s OS X handles drop down menus and commands for [...]

The Windows Live team announced yesterday that they added additional security features to Windows Live Hotmail. The majority of those features were aimed at protecting email accounts against hijackers, and improving options to recover hacked accounts. This guide describes how to configure Hotmail’s new security features to improve the overall security of the email account. [...]

A rough time lies ahead of the 30 million or so Windows Live Spaces customer who operate their own web blog at the Microsoft owned service. Microsoft’s Dharmesh Mehta revealed that Microsoft teamed up with Automattic, the parent company of the popular blogging platform WordPress, to migrate Live Spaces users to WordPress. At the moment, [...]

Microsoft have announced that they;re to shut their underused blogging service, Windows Live Spaces, and instead port everyone’s account to WordPress.  The announcement, made at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference and later reported by LiveSide, said that all 30 million active bloggers on Live Spaces would be migrated starting today. The Spaces migration to WordPress.com will [...]

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray, the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, discussed how and who Google now needs to compete against and it’s clear that the foundation of the company, search, is still its main focus going forward. In the interview, Schmidt described Microsoft’s search engine as their main competitor, [...]

In a u-turn for Microsoft, the company has now announced that it will licence it’s free Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) anti-virus product for small businesses from October. The move is a turn around from the launch of the product, which is based on the same scanning engine as the company’s award-winning ForeFront Client Security, corporate [...]

Bing Maps until recently only offered driving and walking directions for users of the maps service. Today the team announced that they have expanded this by adding transit information for 11 US American and Canadian cities to the information already displayed. While eleven may not sound like much, it is a solid start and the [...]

Microsoft’s latest game release for it’s ever popular XBox 360 console, Halo 4 is set to be available from midnight tonight as stores aim to cash in on the popularity of the Halo game series, and the inevitable popularity of this new game. Halo 3 previously held the title for the biggest selling game of [...]

If you are tech savvy, you usually notice things related to technology that friends, family and work colleagues may not. This includes a very broad realization that most computer users have difficulties staying safe on the Internet. Not because they do not want to, but because they do not know or do not care about [...]

Microsoft have reached a big milestone with their new smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 7.  Today, Terry Myerson the Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Engineering has announced that it has been finalised and released to manufacturing. This means that the version of the operating system Microsoft have released today, is the same version that [...]

gHacks editor Mike Halsey will be appearing on BBC Radio Sheffield tomorrow (Thursday 26th Aug 2010) at 11:30am in the UK (06:30 est, 03:30 pst, 12:30 Europe, 20:30 Aus) talking about his work in ICT and how it led to writing two books about Windows 7 including his forthcoming Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out which [...]

Windows Live Sync, formerly Live Mesh and part of the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 Suite is now available for the Apple Mac, as reported by Windows Observer.  The beta can be downloaded hereas a .dmg file. Live Sync is an excellent tool that I’ve come to rely on myself for automatically syncing files and [...]

Mary-Jo Foley of ZD Net has reported that Microsoft is readying another public beta of their forthcoming Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite, an update to the previously titled Wave 3 suite of programs. Windows Live Essentials is commonly described as being exactly that, essential, as it’s suite of add-on programs, including Mail, Photo Gallery and [...]

Today is the second Tuesday of the month and that means it is Microsoft Patch Day. Microsoft is keeping a tight schedule when it comes to security patches. If they are not heavily exploited or very critical they are released on the second Tuesday of each month. Today’s patch day is already available via the [...]

In times of economic uncertainty there have been questions asked by Microsoft shareholders about the company’s intentions with the slate / tablet PC form factor.  At the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting this week CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows 7 slates were “job number one” according to ZD Net.

Microsoft has announced that it’s to extend it’s Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) to include vulnerability sharing information from Adobe. The programme, launched in October 2008 allows sharing of information about security vulnerabilities with security software vendors.  So far 65 companies have signed up to the scheme.

Just as Microsoft and Yahoo! have joined forces in search, now Yahoo! Japan and Google have linked up too. Yahoo!’s Japanese search engine will now use Google’s technology rather than stick with fellow partner Microsoft and their Bing search engine as reported by NeoWin.

Apple software had more reported security vulnerabilities than any other company in the first half of 2010, according to security company Secunia, a reputable security company that tracks security vulnerabilities since 2002. Last years leader, Oracle, dropped to second spot while Microsoft managed to retain the third spot firmly in the last five years. Adobe [...]

Microsoft has released a second Office 2010 guide, after the previously reviewed Getting Started With Microsoft Office 2010 Guide. The new guide, Operations guide for Microsoft Office 2010, provides information on how to maintain and manage Office 2010 in an organization. It is in this regard even more specialized than the getting started guide, the [...]

Microsoft have warned of a critical vulnerability in Windows Shell, caused when parsing .lnk shortcuts that can automatically launch a malicious program through use of a specially crafted shortcut. The vulnerability afcects all versions of Windows including XP and Windows 7.   On Windows 7 the exploit can bypass the operating system’s security as it does not [...]

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has bequeathed the majority of his estimated $13.5bn (£8.8bn) to philanthropy after his death according to the BBC. Allen set up a charitable foundation 20 years ago to which he has personally donated $600m.

Yahoo and Microsoft have been testing Bing powered search results offline for some time now. A recent email sent out to advertisers confirmed that the testing will be moved to the live search results shortly. During that period part of Yahoo’s Live search results will be powered by Bing, “with paid search volume in particular [...]

Following the recent US / Russia spy drama, however Microsoft have now claimed that a 12th spy was working for them.  In an interview with Newsweek, they said that Alexey Karetnikov had worked for the company as a software tester for nine-months.  Russia’s foreign ministry declined to comment. Ten members of the spy ring were [...]

How do you know if an online business is legit or a scam? Many Internet users share their personal information online even though they should not be doing so, at least not on websites that should not be trusted. Information can be used against the user, especially if they happen to enter social security numbers, [...]

Microsoft has just released a Getting started with Microsoft Office 2010 guide that gives customers an overview of the Microsoft Office 2010 suite and how to get started with Office 2010. The book’s core audience is mainly IT personal, help desk, deployment staff and consultants even though it contains valuable information for end users as [...]

An unpatched bug in the Windows XP Help and Support system is being increasingly attacked by  virus and malware writers, as reported by the BBC. Microsoft has reported it’s seen more than 10,000 PCs hit by the attack so far and it’s still not been able to find a fix for the problem.

It was only released a week ago, but already 1 million people have downloaded Microsoft’s new Windows Live Messenger software for the iPhone.  This has got to make it one of, if not the, fastest moving software in the iPhone app store. In a statement for Microsoft, Michael Chang, Group Product manager for Windows Live [...]

The war of the webmail is raging on with the continued roll out of Microsoft’s new Hotmail service.  Now Google is coming back with new features to it’s own GMail service, the first of which was quietly announced over the weekend. The company has added a one-click preview for the world’s most common file format, [...]

Installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 seems, on the face of it, much less hassle than with service packs for previous editions of Windows as I discovered today while testing the beta. Here are a selection of screenshots of the service pack, the easy install process and the end result.

Since Windows 7 was launched on October 22nd last year Microsoft has now sold a very impressive 150 Million copies of it and they’re shouting from the rafters.  In a post on the Windows Team Blog they’ve rather triumphantly said… I have a couple of things to tell you about today. First off, we are [...]

I’ve long been a subscriber to Microsoft’s Action Pack which is for small businesses.  You get 10 licences for Windows and Office plus a Windows Server licence or two for £220 a year.  Plus the software never expires. Many people say that subscription software is the way we’re all going but I’ve been making significant [...]

The Internet Fraud Alert System is a partnership between Microsoft and the US National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) backed up by organizations and companies like Accuity, American Bankers Association, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, eBay and PayPal. The system addresses a problem that security researchers and companies have faced in the past. Security researchers [...]

You know what it’s like when you’re sitting on really great news for several months but you can’t tell anyone?   This is even worse writing for gHacks every day knowing I’m sitting on a great nugget  :} Well after a long period of frustration I can now officially announce that I’ve been signed by Microsoft Press to write [...]

The prime choice for most users who wanted to manage documents online was up until recently Google Docs with its advanced set of features. Microsoft yesterday launched the Office Web Apps on SkyDrive service which might put a serious dent into Google’s domination. Office Web Apps on SkyDrive has been made available for users in [...]

I have been working with the Bing search engine for the last couple of days after switching to it from Google Search. It still takes time to get used to this new search engine after using Google for the last decade or so almost exclusively. I really do not want to say to much about [...]

Windows 7 has been gaining market share ever since it has been released in October 2009. The latest operating system market share trends, courtesy of NetMarketshare, has seen another strong month for Microsoft’s latest operating system which managed to gain another percentage mainly at the expense of its predecessor Windows Vista but also the market [...]

Apple is gearing up for the launch of the next iPhone, widely expected in the next couple of months.  Now though rumours are circulating that Microsoft and Apple are in talks to replace Google as the phone’s default search engine with Bing. TechCrunch are reporting “Multiple sources at Google tell us that in informal discussions [...]

Apple’s share price has now risen to the point where the company’s value pushes it above long-time rival Microsoft.  After some choppy trading on Wednesday the company’s value topped $222bm (£154bn) the BBC reports. Microsoft finished the day valued at $219bn.  It’s not all bad new for Microsoft though as they still have much higher [...]

The Microsoft Download Manager has been designed to provide Internet users with a faster and more reliable way of downloading files from the Internet. It has specifically designed for downloads from Microsoft pages on the Internet but can be used for every http based download. It becomes obvious right after startup that this download manager [...]

Should you make the switch to Microsoft Office 2010? If you are not sure yet you could download the latest version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus to evaluate it for 60 days. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 is the top of the line edition of Office 2010. It is the only edition that contains all [...]

Microsoft has just added the security updates for April 2010 to Windows Update from where every Windows user can download and install them on their operating system. A total of eleven security bulletins have been released that update the Windows operating system as well as other Microsoft software like Microsoft Office. The updates fix security [...]

Microsoft has published the whitepaper “Enhancing the performance of Windows Internet Explorer 8″ recently which provides information about Internet Explorer 8 performance issues and how they can be rectified. The company is addressing five general issues that from their experience and statistics affect Internet Explorer 8 performance the most. The whitepaper concludes with two advanced [...]

IT professionals, system administrators and end users have several options to find out if a software program is compatible with Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows 7. They can install the operating system on a single computer to perform individual compatibility tests, take a look at Microsoft’s Windows 7 Compatibility Center or download the Windows 7 [...]

The Windows 7 operating system is for the most part a stable and reliable operating system. It is that stable that several companies decided to make the switch to it without waiting for the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Many companies and system administrators waited until the first service pack was released before [...]

Microsoft yesterday released security patches for Windows and Office products on their monthly Patch Tuesday. A total of two security bulletins have been released by Microsoft that patch flaws in Microsoft Excel, Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Producer 2003. The severity of both security bulletins has been rated as important. Attackers can exploit the issues [...]

There are two types of Office users: Those who know everything – or nearly everything – about the program and those that do not. The latter group usually has to look really hard, consult an online help, book or colleague if they have to do something in Microsoft Office that they have not done before [...]

Microsoft decided that a design change was overdue for the MSN webpage which had not had a major redesign done in the past ten years. The new MSN homepage went live in November of last year and many users criticized it. The main point of criticism was the to bright color scheme on the MSN [...]

Microsoft plans to release the final version of Microsoft Office 2010 on June 15 and is – as always – offering free upgrades for users who happen to purchase the previous version of the Office suite shortly before that release. In a blog post over at Technet Microsoft announced that the free upgrade period starts [...]

Microsoft and Adobe have released their regular security updates today. Microsoft has only released one patch for most of its operating system. The patch fixes a vulnerability in the embedded OpenType font engine that could allow remote code execution. The rating of this vulnerability is low for all operating systems but Microsoft Windows 2000 Service [...]