We are tickled to announce the winners of our October giveaways. The grand prize winner of the October Microsoft Subnet giveaway is Wendy Newton (pictured), IT manager for Bowman and Brooke LLP. She won a free Microsoft training course from Global Knowledge. Read more
Microsoft plans to release six patches that address 15 vulnerabilities next week for its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday, three of which are labeled critical and three, important. These patches fix holes in XP, Vista, Windows Server 2008 (all editions except R2), most recent versions of Office for both Macs and Windows. Read more
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said on Wednesday that it will cut 800 more jobs, bringing total cuts to 5,800 including the layoffs it announced in January. The company was not specific as to what kinds of jobs would be eliminated nor in what locations. Read more
UPDATED 11/04/09: Microsoft has revised two of the critical updates it released during its epic October Patch Tuesday to fix bugs in the patches. A reader writes to inform me that one buggy patch, which breaks Office Communication Server, has not yet been fixed has been fixed via another patch that OCS users can obtain and install manually. Read more
As promised, the latest version of Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows Server to fully support DNSSEC. DNSSEC is a security protocol that helps to verify that a Web address hasn't been hacked and redirected to a pretender. Better still, Windows 7 also supports DNSSEC, which Microsoft claims is a first among client operating systems. Read more
Here's a warm fuzzy story about Microsoft. Earlier this week, the company hosted its annual non-profit fair for employees on its Redmond campus. About 50 non-profits participated including a rather interesting one fighting AIDS called World Vision. World Vision provides support for the caregivers who nurse and otherwise help those suffering from AIDS. Read more
A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system. Read more
Microsoft officially announced that it would be opening its Outlook's PST file format by publishing documentation. Each time in the past that Microsoft offered to publish technical specifications, the company was responding to a bullwhip wielded by the European Commission. Is this time different? Not at all. Read more
Last week, Gartner declared that enterprises needn't wait for Windows 7 SP1. But over the weekend, the Microsoft help forums were flooded with questions and complaints from users having installation problems. Read more
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) on Friday posted $3.57 billion in net income (or 40 cents a share) on $12.92 billion in revenue for its Q1 FY2010. This was a 14% decline and an 18% decline, respectively, over the same quarter a year ago. But it was better than analysts expected. The company cut expenses to help it deal with its slowdown in revenue.
Analysts were expecting an average earnings per share of 32 cents and $12.37 billion in revenue. This compares to 48 cents per share and $15.06 billion in revenue for the year-ago period. Read more
Microsoft will report financial results on Friday, could this be the last bad news for a while? Read more
So how do you explain a picture of Linus Torvalds giving a thumbs up to Windows 7 in Japan?
The first public white spaces network officially launched on Wednesday in Claudville, Virginia. It uses sensing technology from Spectrum Bridge with software and Web cams supplied by Microsoft and PCs supplied by Dell. The project was funded by the TDF Foundation. Read more
After months of hype, Windows 7 officially launches tomorrow. Most enterprises will not be rushing to adopt it immediately, but market researchers do seem to agree that for those sticking with Windows, a Windows 7 cutover is inevitable (most likely within the next 18 months). Likewise, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be officially released tomorrow, too. Read more
On Monday, Microsoft announced that the beta version of SharePoint 2010 would be available in November. In true Microsoft form, this means Redmond will have a whole bunch of confusing editions. Eight have so far been announced. The list of eight in the photo below doesn't completely map to the editions list Microsoft made public on Monday. Microsoft added two new cloud versions. Read more
Microsoft says that while it is still working on recovering data lost by Sidekick users, it has made significant progress. Those who lost data as of today can begin the restoration process with a new tool posted to T-Mobile's site.
Microsoft apologized for the service outage that affected customers with Sidekick devices on T-mobile. It said that it restored most customers' data. But it also insists that Microsoft technology was not to blame. This hasn't stopped numerous lawsuits from being filed. Read more
The news of this has been all over Twitter today, so I thought I'd invite you to take a look for yourself. At least these spokespeople appeal to Microsoft's target 18-35 year-old generation.
I have mercilessly criticized Microsoft in the past for its never-ending bad taste in commercials from the ultimate bad taste (the woman vomiting while using Internet Exploer) to the nonsense between 90's comic icon Jerry Seinfeld and not-funny-at-all billionaire Bill Gates. Read more
Microsoft today announced a number of improvements to its hosted Office productivity suite, dubbed the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. Redmond has added support for PowerShell commandlets, tripled the number of users each account can support (to 30,000) and has improved life for its Mac users. Read more
Those waiting on word from Microsoft to find out if the company can restore the data lost from T-Mobile Sidekick devices, thanks to a massive cloud outage, got frustrating news. Microsoft says it is still trying to restore the data and that it will try to appease users with $100 discount that can be applied only to users' T-Mobile bills. Here is the full-text of the press release Microsoft issued today: Read more
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