Stuart J. Johnston

A large percentage of U.S. mobile phone users are waiting for the roll-out next week of Apple’s iPhone, but according to a new mini-survey conducted for research firm IDC, most of them will continue to wait well past the iPhone’s June 29 ship date. Among the survey’s findings, only 10 percent of the respondents indicated […]

Microsoft has agreed to make changes to Windows Vista’s desktop search capability in the wake of antitrust accusations by Google made public last week. The announcement came Tuesday evening in a regular six-month status report that Microsoft, along with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the 17 states and the District of Columbia who […]

Microsoft officials said they are shipping today, as planned, major new versions of two of the company’s Dynamics business management packages. The two are members of the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) family – Dynamics GP 10.0 and Dynamics SL 7. The updates were first announced at Microsoft’s Convergence 2007 conference in mid-March in San […]

As the business of designing, building, and distributing PCs becomes increasingly globalized, U.S. PC vendors have exported less valuable work offshore, while keeping more valuable and innovative product development, project management and marketing and branding functions here. However, as countries in Asia and the rest of the developing world develop sophisticated engineering talent and production […]

Desktop search capabilities built into Windows Vista makes it extremely difficult for users to run Google’s  desktop search instead, and that has prompted the search giant to complain that Microsoft  is once again engaging in anticompetitive behavior along the lines of earlier ploys against Netscape. However, Google’s complaints to both the U.S. Department of Justice […]

Bill Gates spoke to Harvard alumni and newly minted graduates on Thursday during the day’s commencement activities at his old alma mater with his usual self-deprecating humor. How else would the world’s richest man begin an address to 70 years of Harvard grads gathered in Harvard Yard, when he himself never finished his degree at […]

In a move intended to enable competing identity management technologies to interoperate, a new forum will hold a key meeting in San Francisco on June 26 to find out first hand what users want. In fact, all parties agree it’s a necessary move but the question is how long will it take to bear its […]

Microsoft  today introduced the next release of its Office Live Meeting 2007 Web conferencing software, a product the company hopes will compete with market leader WebEx. Unveiled at the company’s TechEd conference in Orlando, Fla., the new Web conferencing software includes a unified client that will be shared with Office Communications Server 2007, as well […]

Microsoft’s  annual TechEd Conference is usually a place for the company to outline its latest vision of the IT world of the future. But this year – the 15th TechEd — perhaps sensing that IT staffers and developers may be bored with vision statements, Microsoft instead presented a lot of small details regarding actual products. […]

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) has ruled that Microsoft can argue that it is the rightful owner of a patent lying at the center of an expensive lawsuit. A 2003 verdict in the case had resulted in a tiny competitor being awarded $521 million for patent infringement. The case ultimately drove the software […]

A report released today ranking the top 100 online retailers for customer satisfaction finds that the customer’s experience with a retailer’s Web site is a key component in determining customer loyalty and an indicator of longer-term financial success. Rating highest were movie rental firm Netflix.com and apparel vendor QVC.com, which were tied at 85 on […]

Microsoft  chairman and soon-to-retire chief visionary Bill Gates has been touting alternative forms of computer-human interaction for years, such as tablet computing and voice recognition. On Wednesday, the company said it will deliver on that promise by the end of the year with a device that presents information using an intuitive touch-screen interface based on […]