Microsoft

While in Las Vegas this past weekend, Gates boasted that Microsoft has served more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS was launched to consumers last January. At first 100 million sounds impressive, but in fact it indicates that ... Microsoft's once dominant grip on the operating system is loosening. Based on what Gates said, Windows Vista was only on 39% of PCs that shipped in 2007. Statements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by Bill Gates this week show that Windows Vista is proving far less popular with new PC buyers than Windows XP did during its first year in the ... (view more)

Having etched his own place in tech history, Bill Gates' 'swan song' is now playing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The famous (and to some, infamous) Microsoft leader gave his final speech to the media Sunday night at the Venetian ... Hotel's Palazzo Ballroom. Ending a dominant legacy that to some was marked my monopoly more than success, Gates' address took time to both look back at his own history and the future of a company he made the most powerful in the world. With the former cutesy McDonald's tune "Do You Believe in Magic" thumping from speakers, Gates and his executives ... (view more)

CNET has an interesting article article praising the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), encouraging Windows Vista users to upgrade to Windows XP. In comparing Windows Vista to utter "crap," the report details what a substantial and ... extremely helpful upgrade Windows XP SP3 is -- going so far as to exclaim that it creates the best windows experience the author has ever had. Windows Vista still receives, for the most part, a lukewarm reception from consumers, even less from businesses. Windows Vista SP1 will be released early this year in hopes of gaining a greater customer base, but ... (view more)

Not so long ago they invested heavily in social networking magnet Facebook for the advertising payoff. Now, Microsoft has turned its attention to CNBC.com, nabbing rights to display contextual ads in the United States for the immensely popular news ... site. Although exact details of the deal are not available at this time, Microsoft and CNBC are acknowledging that the Redmond-based software giant will take over most of the banner and text advertisements for the page. Jon Tinter, general manager of Microsoft's strategy and business development, is in fact comparing the deal to Microsoft's ... (view more)

Microsoft acquired Multimap on Wednesday, a leading provider of location-based services in Europe. The privately-owned British company is one of the United Kingdom's top 100 technology firms, and was an early pioneer in online mapping for the island ... country. According to the Times of London, the deal is worth $50 million dollars, half of which will go to Multimap's founder Sean Phelan. (Source: timesonline.co.uk ) The website is the second most popular online destination in its class in the UK, trailing Google Maps and leading Microsoft's Live Search Maps (which came in fifth). This is the ... (view more)

Who's been naughty this year? Microsoft's Santa Claus IM bot, that's who. PC World and Metro UK have recently reported that a program designed to respond to children via Windows Live Messenger could be easily duped into responding to lude and ... suggestive dialogue. (Source: metro.co.uk ) The error was first discovered in an exchange that went something like this: User: eat it Santa: No thank you. I don't eat things! User: eat it Santa: See if you can get someone else to eat it! User: eat it. Santa: You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something ... (view more)

Intuit, the maker of well-known products such as Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax, has purchased Homestead Technologies, a provider of small business websites. (Source: www.techcrunch.com ) At face value there's nothing odd about this; Intuit has ... acquired more than 19 companies in the last decade. And yet, all of these previous acquisitions were directly related, in some way, to small business financial needs thereby complementing Intuit's focus on finance functions. Acquiring Homestead is out of character. Does it mean that Intuit has finally run out of room in the financial market? Maybe ... (view more)

A report entitled 'Top ten terrible tech products' released by CNET recently ranked Windows Vista number 10. As if Vista needed any more bad publicity, the report cited numerous reasons for the dubious distinction. Some of the reasons given for ... Windows Vista making the list include: Provoking a campaign for its predecessor's reintroduction (i.e. quietly introducing a downgrade-to-previous-edition option for PC makers due to increasing customer demands) deserves to be classified as terrible technology. An operating system that took six years at an ungodly cost to develop that is instantly ... (view more)

Why is it that Windows Vista hasn't completely taken over the operating system (OS) market? Is it glitches? Security concerns? Too many Microsoft-haters? According to one survey, it seems no one has a problem with the Redmond-based company at all. ... In fact, it's the success of its last OS that is keeping Vista on store shelves. In a recent survey of some six hundred U.S. and European companies employing over a thousand people each, 84% of all PCs continue to run Windows XP, Microsoft's last great OS. That's actually an increase of 67% from the year before, despite the fact that Windows Vista ... (view more)

A question-and-answer period held during a recent Microsoft shareholders meeting resulted in executives being asked to address recent stock sales by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, board member Jon Shirley, and other executives following a sharp ... increase in the stock a few weeks ago. (Source: Seattle PI ) One shareholder, Peter Schroeder of Seattle, said the talk out of Wall Street is that this showed a certain lack of confidence in the future of where the company is going, also noting that the stock has been slipping in recent days. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer retorted that there' ... (view more)