Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has begun shipping the first eight language editions of Dynamics CRM 4.0 on schedule. The company shipped the English edition of the product just before Christmas and said, at that time, it would begin shipping the first batch of other language versions in January. The first delivery totals eight languages […]

Have that “bloated” feeling? About your PC, that is. Many users complain that Windows Vista is a memory hog that’s just plain bloated compared to earlier versions of Windows and competing operating systems. Now you can slice that porker down to size with vLite, a free package that lets you exclude the Vista components that […]

Microsoft Tuesday announced that the latest revision of its premier development suite – Visual Studio 2008, or VS2008 for short – is now generally available. Developed under the code name “Orcas,” the package was actually completed in mid-November, ahead of schedule, and made available to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers for download at that time. […]

Windows Vista is only a year old this week, yet reported sightings of an early alpha version of the next release of Windows have been circulating on the Web for the past week, prompting assertions by some that Vista has been a market failure. A handful of posters to several blogs and Windows enthusiast sites […]

Note to Office 2003 users: If you have put off downloading the latest service pack, you’ve got about a month to opt out of having it downloaded and installed automatically via Microsoft Update (MU). Office 2003 Service Pack 3 originally began shipping in September to users who downloaded it on a voluntary basis. Unless you […]

Similar to a stash of weapons a player might rack up during an online adventure game, high technology companies for more than two decades have racked up as many patents as possible. Patents can come in handy, for instance, as a defense – or an offense—when one company sues another for patent infringement. On the […]

A little like a senior who goes to high-school commencement but leaves with an empty diploma, Microsoft’s latest version of its flagship database will be featured at its big coming out party next month – but the software itself will still be months away. Microsoft disclosed on Friday that SQL Server 2008 will still be […]

Thursday, Microsoft broke sales and earnings records for its second quarter of fiscal year 2008. Statements by company executives, however, did not clarify how well Windows Vista, which launched a year ago, is actually doing in the marketplace. One analyst suggests comparing Microsoft’s latest revenue figures with related numbers, such as the growth in worldwide […]

UPDATED: The go-go days of Microsoft’s double-digit growth may not be over after all. Microsoft reported Thursday that it brought in $16.37 billion in revenues and $6.48 billion in operating income, yielding diluted earnings per share of $0.50, for its second fiscal quarter of 2008, ending Dec. 31. That comes on the heels of its […]

For Web developers and surfers who discovered that Internet Explorer 7.0 “broke” some (or many) of their favorite Web sites, there may be good news. Now, Microsoft is working to avoid that problem in version 8 by letting Web site developers signal to IE how standards-compliant it ought to be with their pages, according to […]

As it gears up to take on competing virtualization vendors in 2008, Microsoft this week announced new initiatives and product plans to help it get a leg up in what is becoming a cramped marketplace. This wave of announcements came Tuesday at Microsoft’s Virtualization Deployment Summit. For starters, the company announced it has acquired graphics […]

Microsoft this week is updating a two-year-old toolset meant to smooth the migration for customers switching from Lotus Notes and Domino to its own competing products. Dubbed the Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Domino, the free package provides tools designed to ease the transition to Exchange Server, Office SharePoint Server and the Office productivity applications […]