Stuart J. Johnston

The official, “invitation only” launch party for the release of Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 media streaming technology is still a day away, but apparently Microsoft couldn’t wait to let it out of the gate. On Thursday, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) quietly made the final code for the latest version of its competitor to Adobe’s Flash available for […]

It’s been a year since Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates stepped away from the company full-time to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates, however, retained his role as chairman of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) board. That left long-time CEO Steve Ballmerto make the myriad of decisions it takes to run the world’s […]

Users who thought sticking with the Windows 7 Beta would mean they’re good to go until the software’s commercial release in October will wake up to an unpleasant surprise on Wednesday. That’s the day that the beta will begin trying to drive testers to switch to the “Release Candidate” (RC). If they don’t, the beta […]

After a grassroots group barraged Microsoft with tweets this week requesting that the upcoming Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 switch back to using Internet Explorer’s HTML engine to render e-mails instead of using Word, the software giant politely declined. Instead, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has said that Outlook 2010 will follow Office 2007’s example by again using […]

Microsoft’s new effort at delivering a free anti-malware service now has an official name — and the software giant has set a date for public beta testing of the software to begin. The free service, codenamed “Morro,” is currently in internal testing within Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and will begin public beta testing in Brazil, Israel […]

In a reversal of its earlier stance, Microsoft officials confirmed that customers will be able to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows XP for a year and a half after the new system ships, or until the first Service Pack drops — whichever comes first. While some industry observers the modified downgrade policy is a […]

In a move aimed at keeping sales of PCs moving while users wait for Windows 7, Microsoft is about to begin a sales promotion that lets people who buy PCs pre-installed with Windows Vista — between June 26 and October 22 when Windows 7 ships — to get a free or discounted upgrade to Windows […]

Microsoft has published instructions for a workaround that will make it harder for corporate users of its new Bing search engine to access porn from their work PCs. Additionally, according to a posting on the Bing Community blog, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) plans to “formalize” the solution in “the next couple of months,” though it does […]

After weeks of vociferous complaints, Microsoft announced late Friday afternoon that it will, after all, remove the three-application limit for upcoming Windows 7 Starter Edition. That edition will become Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) default netbook offering when Windows 7 ships later this year. With the explosive success of netbooks in the past year and a half, […]

Microsoft announced this week that it’s publicly released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 SP2. The company released the second service pack for Vista to manufacturing, otherwise known as RTM, in late April. The two operating systems can use the same service pack because their code base is fundamentally the […]