Apr 8th, 2009 - Writing at the official Windows Experience blog, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc refers to the latest NPD Retail Tracking Service data which shows that as of the February 2009 the Windows share of the US netbook market is a staggering 96 percent. That's up from less than 10 percent of US unit sales... (Read More)

Sep 22nd, 2009 - There ain't no such thing as a free Windows 7 upgrade. At least that's what it is starting to look like for the majority of people, despite the 'free upgrade' vouchers that are being handed out with new computers as part of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option scheme. A scheme which has been introduced to... (Read More)

Jun 6th, 2009 - Isn't it amazing just how attached so many people are to Windows XP given that it is relatively old and relatively insecure? I will even admit to having a netbook which runs very nicely on XP thank you very much, and have no plans to 'upgrade' this to Vista or Windows 7. The Russian government, in... (Read More)

Mar 4th, 2007 - Microsoft Windows Live OneCare was already struggling in the credibility stakes after failing to pass the Virus Bulletin VB100 certification tests as I reported here last month. Talk about kicking a wounded animal, now the results of the latest, and much respected, av-comparatives are in, and... (Read More)

May 10th, 2009 - Microsoft has made a double whammy of Windows 7 update announcements. The first concerns a hotfix for a bug that could "cause some application failures on the English version of Windows 7 Release Candidate 32-bit Ultimate" while the second brings news of the arrival of as many as 10 'fake' updates... (Read More)

Feb 27th, 2009 - Steven Sinofsky, the Senior Vice President for the Microsoft Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, in an attempt to quell a beta tester rebellion over a perceived lack of feedback concerning bug reporting has made an astonishing confession: Windows 7 has at least 2000 bugs. Sinofsky states... (Read More)

Mar 2nd, 2009 - If you believe the results of the first annual Fiasco Awards then the answer would appear to be an unequivocal yes considering that Vista got a rather staggering 86 percent of the vote for the worst performing IT product of the year. But then appearances can often be deceiving, and I wonder if this... (Read More)

Jan 8th, 2009 - Barmy Steve Ballmer, sometime monkey dancer and full time Microsoft top dog now that Bill Gates has gone, has surprised us all by informing the world that January 13th will not be Windows 7 day as predicted. The good news is that Windows 7 day will be on the 9th January instead. Yes, Ballmer has... (Read More)

Jan 20th, 2009 - What do you do when you poo? It is the kind of question you might expect your ten year old son to ask his ten year old mates in the school playground. However, it seems that Microsoft has been asking pretty much the same thing in order to generate some much needed publicity for Windows Mobile. ... (Read More)

28 Days Ago - Yesterday was Microsoft's big day. Windows 7 was released. Did you go buy your copy already? Are you waiting? Whether you have or haven't doesn't really matter but I'm going to give you my five reasons why you should switch to Windows 7 and five more why you shouldn't. Both are compelling and... (Read More)

Jul 29th, 2009 - I'm having a rather traumatic experience with certain Microsoft products lately. My problem is that I'm trying to "get to know" Microsoft's Hyper-V for my virtualization column over at Linux Magazine. The problem is, that to manage a true Hyper-V system remotely, you must have a Windows Vista or... (Read More)

Jun 5th, 2009 - Intel acquired Wind River for $884 million to boost Linux adoption in the Intel Atom market. Obviously Intel sees Wind River's embedded Linux market as new opportunity for its Atom processor family. There's also buzz about multi-core processor offerings from the two in the near future. I see... (Read More)

Mar 20th, 2009 - As much as Microsoft loves to grinch about Linux, they've made significant changes over the years to compete with it--and will abandon it altogether to maintain their competitive edge. Windows 7 will be the last Windows product. What changes has Microsoft made to compete with Linux? They've... (Read More)

Feb 3rd, 2009 - Linux may never gain widespread success, that we, the Linux fans want it to, because it's just too complex for the average computer user. Sure, we now have KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and other fancy graphical user interfaces that attempt to mimic Windows and the Mac OS but underneath the shimmering polish,... (Read More)

Jan 24th, 2009 - Ah yes, another significant victory for Linux as the Russian government decides that there will be a national operating system based on Linux. This new operating system will be deployed in Russian schools sometime this year. The Russians plan to rid themselves of the capitalist opression of... (Read More)

24 Days Ago - There was a good analysis in the NYT yesterday regarding the Google Android strategy, which according to author Saul Hansell, is intended not to make money for Google, but to block Microsoft from getting traction in the mobile space. Given that Google is giving Android away, it's a theory that... (Read More)

30 Days Ago - It's supposed to be Windows 7's big week, but other news just seems to keep getting in the way. And it's not just competitors like the news coming out of Apple this week, it's big announcements coming from inside Microsoft too. You would think that Microsoft could at least keep its own house in... (Read More)

26 Days Ago - There was a a lot of news coming out Microsoft and Apple last week: * On Monday, Apple released its stellar earnings report. * On Monday, Microsoft opened up the SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas * On Tuesday, Apple released its latest product line * On Wednesday, Microsoft... (Read More)

31 Days Ago - 12206 I've lived long enough to have learned The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned But that won't happen to us 'Cause it's always been a matter of trust ~Billy Joel, Matter of Trust When word got out last week about the Sidekick data loss debacle, you knew it would be... (Read More)

Sep 25th, 2009 - Windows 7 is coming next month. That's hardly news to any of you, I'm sure, but have you considered that this major OS release could be the catalyst to end the recession? I'm guessing not many of you have come to that conclusion, but consider this: Many, many companies steered clear of Vista, but... (Read More)

Sep 29th, 2009 - In a strange part of what was otherwise and interesting and insightful interview with TechCrunch this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went out of his way to avoid naming Google, instead referring to them repeatedly as "the incumbent." This seemed to be a deliberate strategy and left me shaking my... (Read More)

Sep 9th, 2009 - It seems that Microsoft is now so threatened by Google that they have allegedly hired a high powered Washington lobbying firm to smear Google to government regulators. What's so interesting isn't that this approach is so petty and childish--although it is that--it's that Microsoft, rather than... (Read More)

May 15th, 2009 - I've never been a big fan of American Idol or reality TV in general, but the tit for tat going on between Microsoft and Apple ads reminds me a bit of a reality TV competition with bloggers acting as Simon and Paula and the gang. We watch. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we sneer, but it's all in good... (Read More)

May 3rd, 2009 - Last week we heard about the first Android-powered Netbook (which I wrote about in First Android Netbook Nothing to Write Home About). Then on Friday, analyst Michael Gartenberg, who is VP of Strategy at Interpret, and who writes frequently about consumer technology sent the following Tweet: Is... (Read More)

Apr 7th, 2009 - It's with more than idle curiosity that I've watched the recent Microsoft ads that attack Apple, subtly suggesting that it's too expensive and that it's all glitz with no real computing power. There is so much wrong with these assertions that it's hard to know where to begin. There is after all... (Read More)

Mar 27th, 2009 - Microsoft has been active lately, showing some signs of spunk. I reported last week that Steve Ballmer was going straight after Apple at the McGraw Hill Summit (as I wrote in Ballmer Wastes No Words Going After Apple). This week we see the release of an ad campaign comparing Apple prices with PC... (Read More)

Jan 30th, 2009 - I came up with an idea this week: What if Microsoft made Windows open source? Before you accuse of me of link baiting, I believe this idea has merit for several reasons. It will reduce the cost of development, put the power of the community behind supporting what's become an endless and expensive... (Read More)

May 3rd, 2009 - Some people like to get their free Microsoft products by adopting the eye patch and a parrot approach via sites such as The Pirate Bay. Some of us, however, rather like the idea of getting Windows 7 totally free, totally legally, and direct from Microsoft for good measure. Yes, I can confirm... (Read More)

Sep 23rd, 2009 - The Microsoft Windows embedded product portfolio has just been given a hefty push into the limelight with the official release of Windows 7 technologies over to what Microsoft refers to as manufacturers of specialized devices. During an industry address at the Embedded Systems Conference in... (Read More)

Apr 26th, 2009 - So now we know that Microsoft is pushing out the release version of the latest in the operating system line-up, Windows 7, starting this week on the 30th April according to official sources. However, we also know from various news reports that many existing Windows users are not exactly head over... (Read More)

Mar 26th, 2009 - Although there has been much speculation that the Windows 7 Release Candidate will finally arrive in April for testing, it would appear that actually it won't be until a month after that. Who says so? Microsoft, that's who. According to a page published at TechNet, albeit briefly, Microsoft will... (Read More)

Mar 16th, 2009 - As is to be expected as we fast approach the official launch of Windows 7, more changes from the Beta version to Release Code functionality have been confirmed by Microsoft. Although the Windows 7 team were at pains to point out that the latest update list is by no means exhaustive, it does still... (Read More)

Mar 8th, 2009 - Microsoft is tweaking the number of features that can be turned off in Windows 7, with the latest beta build adding Internet Explorer 8 to the killswitch list according Microsoft Product Manager, Jack Mayo. In the official Microsoft Windows Engineering Blog, Mayo says "If a feature is... (Read More)

28 Days Ago - So I'm helping host an event for Google yesterday - called Atmosphere, it was based in London and had about 300 CIOs present. I was lucky enough to be chairing a couple of panel discussions (and will put YouTube links in here if anyone's interested in what CIOs from Amazon, Jaguar Landrover and... (Read More)

31 Days Ago - The Microsoft Windows 7 launch is all but upon us and I can't say I'm sorry. Not that I'm directly affected as a Mac user but Vista is now almost officially acknowledged as a flop and it'll be good to see Microsoft back in the game properly, in terms of a good system as well as market share. The... (Read More)

Jul 8th, 2009 - Google has confirmed that it is working on an operating system called Chrome. It will be a rival to Microsoft Windows, a zillion flavours of Linux, the Apple operating system and any other minority systems of which you might be aware. A lot has been said across the web about how this will affect... (Read More)

Mar 26th, 2009 - It's not the users for whom I feel sorry. Yes, they'll have to learn a bit more about how they're going to interact with - sorry, use - their computers when multitouch comes into significant amounts of hardware with Windows 7.0, but if it's as easy and intuitive as some of the phones on the market... (Read More)

Dec 12th, 2008 - It's an odd thing, being a journalist. Your job is to report what other people have said and only occasionally should your own view creep in, if at all. It's the same in America; the serious newspapers were exemplary in being fair to both sides in the recent election, at least until Sarah Palin... (Read More)

Oct 5th, 2009 - With the release of any new OS release, the question facing developers is whether or not to port existing applications. Often the answer hinges on two major factors: Will the operating system be widely adopted and what's downside of doing nothing? In the enterprise the decision is often made for... (Read More)

Sep 27th, 2009 - Like many I'm sure, I'd heard a little of the Free Software Foundation - their petitions to the US Govt recently (and a public march if I remember correctly), brought a bit of a laugh. But I recently stumbled upon a new campaign being run by the FSF, entitled the "Windows 7 Sins"... you guessed it... (Read More)