Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft is gearing up for Windows 7’s launch at its annual partner conclave, Monday announcing upcoming markdowns for volume customers and emphasizing the revenue potential of the new system for resellers. However, although company executives spent time promoting Windows 7 during the first day of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 in New Orleans, […]

In spite of all the buzz and positive press that Windows 7 has gained, over half of IT decision makers don’t plan to adopt the upcoming OS, according to a new study. An online survey of 1,100 IT decision makers conducted in June by systems lifecycle management vendor ScriptLogic found that interest in a new […]

Microsoft is inching ahead on the next editions of its Office productivity suite, plans to announce today at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans that it has begun a large-scale technical preview of Office 2010. Although Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has demoed some features at conferences in the past nine months, this will be the […]

More than a month after it launched, Microsoft’s Bing search engine appears to be picking up some market share from competitors, but so far the numbers are small. However, the same Web analytics firm that declared Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing overtook second-place search engine Yahoo briefly on one of its first days of public use, […]

Microsoft has released a new feature in its Hotmail e-mail software lets users perform searches from their inboxes using the company’s new Bing search engine. In addition, search results are easy to import into messages. The new feature, called “quick add,” enables Bing’s search capabilities to be added into the e-mail client, making it possible […]

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 […]

Microsoft gave users notice on Thursday that it will release a total of six bug patches on Tuesday. As it has for several years, Microsoft releases its latest cache of bug fixes on the second Tuesday of each month — thus it’s termed “Patch Tuesday.” This month that’s Tuesday, July 14. After a record load […]

Steven SinofskySource: Microsoft Microsoft announced Wednesday that Steven Sinofsky, formerly senior vice president for Windows and Windows Live Engineering, has been promoted to president of the Windows Division. Now he’s got responsibility for the whole Windows enchilada — from engineering to marketing. Sinofsky is a 20-year Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) employee and distinguished himself in the […]

In an apparent move to end the thorniest of its legal hassles, Microsoft is reported to be in talks with the European Commission (EC) as it aims to settle charges over the software giant’s practice for more than a decade of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. According to a story Tuesday on Bloomberg.com, Microsoft (NASDAQ: […]

Windows 7 is about to hit a last, critical milestone for Microsoft — one that defines whether or not customers can actually find it on store shelves and in new PCs on October 22. That step, called “Release to Manufacturing” (RTM), is the point at which all the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) executives who have responsibility […]

Microsoft is warning users worldwide to take immediate steps to protect themselves from a new zero-day vulnerability that’s already under attack, particularly in Asia. The bad news is that it primarily affects Windows XP, the most installed version of Windows on the planet, as well as Windows Server 2003. Later versions of Windows are not […]

Everything seems to be getting back to normal after a fire in a Seattle datacenter last week knocked out power to racks of servers that support Microsoft’s new Bing Travel search site and a number of other Web sites. The problem began just before midnight on July 2, according to a statement by the datacenter […]