May 10
Tags: internet, Microsoft, skype, video calls, voip
U.S. software group Microsoft Corp. is in talks about buying Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA in a deal that could be valued at around $8.5 billion, according to published reports.
The possible deal, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal, may be unveiled as early as Tuesday and would be one of Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions in years.
The transaction is expected to value Skype at $8.5 billion including debt, according to several reports.
Representatives for Skype and Microsoft MSFT -0.15% couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
The U.S. firm’s last significant deal was the 2007 purchase of online advertising group aQuantive Inc. for around $6 billion.
More here
Mar 16
Tags: browser, ie web standard, internet explorer 9, microsoft browser, modern browser
Microsoft has officially launched Internet Explorer 9. The browser, which is being touted by many reviewers already as the best version of the software the company has ever released, follows a long line of predecessors that at times won customers over and at other times failed miserably. But it’s a new day for Microsoft and Internet Explorer. The time has finally come for the company to face Google’s Chrome browser head-on.
But perhaps now Windows users are wondering if they should use Internet Explorer 9. Some of those folks are using previous versions of the browser and might be pleased with it. Others might be using Chrome, Firefox or Opera, and couldn’t fathom the thought of moving to Microsoft’s latest browser.
More on eWeek.com
Dec 31
Tags: beta software, download, Microsoft, os, torrent, windows, windows 7
Downloads of a new build of Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system have soared in the past two days, with thousands of systems now pulling pirated copies from BitTorrent sites.
Searches today on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, for example, returned multiple listings of Windows 7 Build 7000, which Microsoft identifies as a beta candidate in the file name. The torrent is a disk image of the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate; a 64-bit version is not yet available.
The most heavily trafficked Windows 7 BitTorrent on Pirate Bay showed more than 4,300 “seeders” — the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file — and about 7,500 “leechers,” or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. Less popular BitTorrents of the file on Pirate Bay claimed an additional 1,000 seeders and more than 3,000 leechers.
On Saturday, a day after the first copies of Build 7000 appeared on BitTorrent, Pirate Bay’s prime listing showed less than half as many seeders as it did today.
Read more at ComputerWorld
Oct 28
Tags: computers, Microsoft, operating system, windows 7, windows vista
The next version of Microsoft Windows, the software that defines the computing experience for most people, will nag users much less than its much-maligned predecessor, Vista. PC users will be able to test the new edition early next year.
The world’s largest software maker also is making Word, Excel and other key elements of Office — its flagship “productivity” programs — able to run in a Web browser. The move is meant to help confront rivals such as Google Inc. that offer free word processing and spreadsheet programs online, threatening one of Microsoft Corp.’s most precious profit centers.
The Windows and Office news came Tuesday at a Microsoft conference for software developers.
The forthcoming Windows 7 will let users choose to see fewer alerts and warnings from their computers. Rampant notifications alerting people to security risks irked many Vista users.
Read more from Yahoo Tech News
Jul 25
Tags: apache, funding, Microsoft, Open Source, open source projects, promoting open source
Microsoft on Friday expanded its support for the open-source community by giving money to the Apache Software Foundation, the first time it has given money to the long-standing open-source project.
Microsoft also said it is contributing code to support a PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) project and committing to offer royalty-free specifications for Windows Server and.NET Framework protocols as part of its expanded support for the open-source community. The company announced its plans at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) now being held in Portland, Oregon.
Full Story at Yahoo News
Jun 17
Tags: Microsoft, operating system, windows vista, windows XP, xp
The Windows XP era ends June 30 and soon hardware vendors will be shipping you all Vista all the time (in most cases). The save XP effort failed. The whining should cease. And now it’s time for Vista to sink or swim.
Ina Fried has a good overview of where Windows XP will stand with PC manufacturers. And Matt Asay highlights a report from Evans Data noting that 92 percent of developers are ignoring Vista. Coupling these two items together and you come to one conclusion: Folks are skeptical about Vista, but a lot of that skepticism is because XP is still lingering.
“Only eight percent of North American software developers are currently writing applications to run on Microsoft’s Vista operating system, while half are still writing programs for XP, according to Evans Data’s Spring 2008, North American Development Survey. These same developers forecast a fragmented Windows market in 2009 with only 24 percent expecting to target Vista and 29% expecting to continue with XP.”
Complete article here…
May 28
Tags: Microsoft, operating system, touch screen, windows, windows 7
Microsoft demonstrated its multitouch interface for its upcoming Windows 7 operating system on Tuesday. The interface provides a touch-screen input for users to interact with their computers.
Full Article at Pcworld.
May 22
Tags: microsoft office, open document format, open office, open standard, star office
Microsoft today broke from its tradition of primarily endorsing in-house formats by revealing that it will add support to Office for a number of universal standards outside of its own. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will support the Open Document Format (ODF) touted by OpenOffice, Sun’s StarOffice, and other third-party tools as well as similarly universal document types such as PDF 1.5 and PDF/A. The upgrade will let users both open and create files in the formats without requiring either a plugin or an outside utility to convert the formats.
View complete article from electronista.com
Apr 16
Tags: Microsoft, news, sp3, upcoming, windows, xp
Windows XP Service Pack 3 is a huge update and will feature more than 1,000 hot fixes and patches that have been issued in the past three years, as well as at least four new features, some of which will be ports of Vista tools.
Full article at newsoxy.com.
