Microsoft Support & Discussions

Windows IT Pro Apple this week revealed that it was willing to prevent competitors from providing apps on its iPhone and iPad devices unless, of course, they're willing to engage in a revenue-sharing scheme with Apple. It's the type of behavior that landed Microsoft in antitrust courts around the world, and one has to think that regulators everywhere are turning their attention to this matter right now. ... View the full article

To those wondering why Microsoft has become increasingly cautious about acquisitions, here’s another morsel for thought. Microsoft is shuttering its AdECN ad-exchange purchase. View the full article

On February 1, Google went public (via SearchEngineLand.com) with claims that Microsoft is copying Google search results with Bing. Microsoft is denying the charge, but has yet to provide specifics in its own defense. View the full article

Supersite Today: Boston preps for another Category 5 Death Storm, Google accuses Bing of copying search results, Apple takes a malicious new stand against the Kindle (and its users), Call of Duty: Black Ops gets a first map pack (only on the Xbox 360), and an inconvenient truth for Windows Phone 7 market share. ... View the full article

Internet Explorer (IE) is important to Microsoft for a variety of reasons, some obvious and some less so. It turns out that IE — specifically the IE 9 release — is also key to Microsoft’s tablet/slate strategy. View the full article

Microsoft is confirming officially that — as at least two bloggers reported in January — that Yahoo Mail is causing the data leakage problems that some Windows Phone 7 users have encountered. View the full article

Windows IT Pro Depending on what matters to you, it's been a tough decade for Microsoft. The company's stock price has stagnated as it matured from a quickly-growing upstart into a slow-moving, comfortable, behemoth. But in recent years, faster-moving companies such as Apple and Google have stolen the limelight, thanks to innovative and exciting consumer products. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro While overall Internet Explorer usage has generally shrunk slowly month-over-month for years, usage in its latest IE version, IE 8, grew faster than the competition. IE 8 now commands 34.17 percent of the market, up from 33 percent the previous month. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Microprocessor giant Intel has uncovered a hardware fault in a supporting chipset for its new CPU lineup and will take a $300 million revenue hit this quarter to fix the problem. The issue involves a design problem that causes its support chipset, the Intel i6 Series (codenamed Cougar Point) to potentially "degrade over time." ... View the full article

Supersite Microsoft's new Arc Mouse Touch combines the fun portability of its predecessor with an innovative new design and some cool touch functionality. ... View the full article

Supersite Today: A look ahead to back-to-back events in Las Vegas, a zero-day Windows flaw, Angry Birds jumps the shark, Netgear CEO lashes out at Steve Jobs and Apple, a silly look at Word "alternatives," Amazon Prime streaming service rumors, and the New York Times wakes up to why platforms matter (right, because Apple is doing it now too). ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Windows 8 changes could affect Windows Phone 7—plus, learn what to look for in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and why you might want to wait on iPhone 4. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Microsoft announced a formal lifecycle support policy for its online services for businesses and developers. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro According to market researchers at Canalys, Google's Android is now the number-one smartphone platform in the world, displacing Nokia's stagnant Symbian system. ... View the full article

Hi everyone. There is another thread describing my exact scenario, although there appears to have been no attempt offer any suggestions since it was initially posted over two months ago: Contacting Server for Information When Printing Email in Outlook 2010. So I thought I would phrase the question differently and see what anyone might have to say about it. It appears that on our PCs with Windows 7 Professional and MS Office 2010, when a user attempts to print an Email with a web page embedded in the body of the message, a message about "contacting the server for information" appears for upwards of 45 seconds, and then after another two or three minutes, the messa…

Russian website WZOR has somehow acquired an internal Microsoft roadmap/documentation that reveals the Redmond company's plans for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008. Based on the "leaked" information, consumers may see Windows 8 in early January 2013. According to the roadmap. Microsoft will commence development of Windows 8 Milestone 3 (M3) in March. Following M3, the company will release two public beta milestone builds in Windows 8's development. Microsoft will then develop and distribute the Release Candidate (RC) followed by the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) build reportedly three months later. Finally, as previously stated, Windows 8 will reac…

Only Microsoft knows how the next version of its Windows operating system will look and what it will be called, but big changes could be ahead for the OS observers refer to as "Windows 8." At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 will support system-on-a-chip architectures using ARM processors. Unlike the x86 architecture that today's Windows laptops and desktops work with, ARM-based chips tend to run such low-power devices as tablets and smartphones. In his CES keynote speech, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, "This announcement is really all about enabling a new class of hardware, and new silicon partners fo…

Supersite In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and I discuss Paul's controversial advice for Microsoft, Windows Phone sales, Microsoft's laughable iPad response, Microsoft is suing TiVo, some early 2011 video game shooters, and of course, weight loss. ... View the full article

Microsoft is still saying very little publicly about Office 15. But officials did share some of the priorities that are affecting their thinking in the creation of the next version during a day-long “Future of Productivity” event for press and analysts on January 28. View the full article

Another day, another Microsoft executive departure. The latest to go is Dave Thompson, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft is planning to move Corporate VP Lee Nackman into Thompson’s job later this year. View the full article

Supersite Today: It turns out the autistic kid really was cheating, Netflix is up, Hulu Plus is down, digital music will never save the music industry, AT&T is on the way down, and the next PSP looks like a winner for shooter fans. ... View the full article

Supersite Sometimes you run into a mobile app that is so useful yet so simple in purpose and so elegant in implementation. Shazam is such an app. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro An often irreverent look at some of this week's other news, including a ton of news around Microsoft's quarterly earnings and a farewell to Microsoft legend Dave Thompson. ... View the full article

Supersite Sometime in the coming days--perhaps even today--Microsoft will officially issue its near-final Release Candidate (RC) version of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 to the public. But before that release, a so-called "escrow" build of the IE 9 RC has leaked onto file sharing sites. So here's a quick look at this release in anticipation of a wider review of the actual RC. ... View the full article