Microsoft Support & Discussions

Microsoft has no plans to follow VMware’s lead with new pricing/licensing changes in the virtualization space that have led to VMware customer outcry. In fact, with Windows 8, Microsoft is taking the opposite tack, officials said. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft is continuing to inch toward the roll-out of Mango, the next version of its Windows Phone operating system. The company just made available to developers a new Silverlight toolkit for the Mango release. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Following in the footsteps of its special partner Nokia, Microsoft this week also weighed in on Google’s plan to purchase Motorola Mobility for a whopping $12.5 billion, a deal that is entirely about smartphone/mobility patent-infringement protection. But a bit surprisingly, the software giant is using this event to tout its own Windows Phone platform as the only truly "equal" mobile platform for partners. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott It’s been a while since I published a "What I Use" article, but I have an excuse of sorts: When we converted this web site over to Dot Net Nuke, we misconfigured the What I Use page as a static HTML page instead of a dynamic site section where I could add articles over time. That’s still not fixed, but I figured I’d jump the gun and provide a quick update. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Microsoft today announced the availability of a new, free eBook: Microsoft Office 365: Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime by Katherine Murray. It’s currently available in PDF format, but as with other Microsoft Press eBooks, it will soon ship DRM-free ePUB and MOBI formats too. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Sony today lowered the price of its PlayStation 3 video game console by $50. So the 160 GB version now costs $250 (down from $300). And the 320 GB model is now $300 (down from $350). But let’s cut the chase, since there’s only one thing that matters here: When--not if--will Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox 360 to match? Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott I’ve been spending a lot of time on the What The Tech podcast lately, and in this week’s episode, Andrew and I discuss Google and Motorola Mobility, the pros and cons of Intel, and what it will take for Windows 8 to be successful with consumers and developers. Source: Win Super Site

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Starting October 1, Microsoft is making adjustments to its Windows Azure pricing and terminology in the hopes of attracting developers building and running smaller apps on its cloud platform. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft is cautioning users of its BPOS cloud suite of applications against attempting to manually migrate to Office 365 and is advising them to wait until September for the transition period to begin. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott By purchasing Motorola Mobility, Google will finally pay to enter the smartphone market, meanwhile building a mobile industry patent portfolio that will rival those of the other major industry players. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott These days, I’m a fan and advocate of Amazon’s superior Kindle eReading platform and it’s amazing to watch it get better and better with each passing month. But years ago, one of the early innovators in the eReading space, believe it or not, was Microsoft. In 2000, the software giant launched its Microsoft Reader software for Windows and Windows Mobile, providing knowledge workers on the go with a pretty decent reading experience. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott In this edition of the mailbag: Netflix and subtitles, whether the Bing and Motorola partnership will be affected by Google purchase, Windows Phone 7.5 and gapless music playback, Windows Home Server 2011 hardware concerns, Windows 7 and Media Center Extenders, drive cloning, Windows Phone and game progress sync, I still recommend LastPass, and a weight loss update. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Say what you will about Windows Phone, but even at this early stage, Microsoft’s latest mobile platform has established itself as a leading video game platform thanks to its inclusion of Xbox LIVE services, services which are getting only better in Windows Phone 7.5 ("Mango"). But today on the Windows Phone Blog, Microsoft revealed some additional functionality coming to Windows Phone gaming, along with a ton of great new games. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Microsoft this week is touting the results of two recent studies from NSI showing that its Internet Explorer 9 web browser does a better job of protecting users from malware than the competition. In fact it’s not even close: In the first study, IE 9 is shown to block a whopping 96 percent of live threats online, compared to just 13.2 percent for Google Chrome, 7.6 percent for Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, and 6.1 percent for Opera. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft kicked off a new Windows 8 engineering blog about a month before the company is expected to release a first widespread test build of the next version of Windows. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Just weeks before Microsoft is set to reveal all about Windows 8 (and, presumably, Windows 8 Server), Microsoft’s Windows chief, Steven Sinofsky has provided the first post to the new Building Windows 8 blog, a successor to the earlier Engineering Windows 7 blog. This early in the game, there’s not a lot of details, but here’s what he’s got to say, along with some commentary. Source: Win Super Site

With the Google announcement that it intends to buy Motorola Mobility, the Microsoft vs. Motorola patent battle just took a new turn. Source: All About Microsoft

Does Google’s acquisition of Motorola mean it’s finally time for Microsoft to buy Nokia or RIM? I still don’t see the potential gains from a handset-maker purchase offsetting the losses. Source: All About Microsoft