Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft won a small but important victory late Thursday, when a federal appeals court stayed a permanent injunction that a lower court issued last month. The injunction, which had been set to kick in Oct. 10, would have banned Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) from selling versions of Word that a lower court had previously ruled infringed […]

Windows 7 is the new Tupperware. Microsoft is teaming up with party planning service Houseparty.com to recruit a thousand or more hosts to hold Windows 7 house parties around the time of the product’s October 22 consumer launch. The event is even going international to coincide with the commercial availability of Windows 7 in 13 […]

Microsoft on Thursday released its monthly bug fix advance notice, warning IT shops that it plans to release five critical patches for virtually all versions of Windows next week on “Patch Tuesday.” Still, the warning notice may more notable for what is missing than what it will fix. Invariably fairly thin on details, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: […]

As the clock ticks closer to the official launch of Windows 7, Microsoft continues to bang the gong about the new system, hoping to pre-sell more copies before the sales race really begins in earnest. This week, it’s talking up volume upgrade discounts and free trial copies for enterprise users. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said that […]

Microsoft sent out a Security Advisory late Tuesday warning users of a critical zero-day flaw in older versions of its Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server software. Although Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said in the advisory that to date it knows of no active attacks in the wild, the company said it has seen “detailed exploit […]

Microsoft Tuesday said that a community technology preview (CTP) of the next embedded version of Windows is now available for download. Based on Windows 7, the CTP of Windows Embedded Standard 2011 is available to OEMs as well as developers of devices that use Windows Embedded, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said. The product was previously codenamed […]

Despite the dominance of Microsoft Office, Google Apps may be gaining ground with small businesses in the United Kingdom, according to a new study. Accredited Supplier, a U.K.-based B2B marketplace, polled 1,400 Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) customers, and found that 13 percent plan to switch from Office to Google Apps within the next 12 months. That […]

With just a day left until September arrives, Microsoft confirmed Monday it will not hit an August deadline to begin the technical preview of its upcoming Office 2010 Web applications, but said the test releases are pending. At its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in mid-July, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) began a technical preview of the PC-based […]

Microsoft gained some help this week from its two largest PC partners who asked the court to let them join in the company’s Word lawsuit as so-called “friends of the court.” Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) both filed what are known as “amicus curiae” briefs with the appeals court asking to have their […]

Many technology areas are still hurting due to the long-running recession. However, one area that appears to be a harbinger of good news is virtualization, according to a new report. That’s good news, not only for established virtualization market leaders like VMware (NYSE: VMW) and Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS), but newcomers like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), as […]

Microsoft executives must not be superstitious, otherwise why would CEO Steve Ballmer choose the same city — New York — for the Windows 7 launch gala as the company did for Windows Vista? Although the official invitations won’t go out for another week or two, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) started privately inviting a select group of […]

Microsoft this week is making Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) available to corporate IT shops via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). WSUS is Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) update deployment tool for IT organizations. As a result, IE8 is now available via WSUS for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows XP, according to a […]