Microsoft Support & Discussions

Windows IT Pro With Small Business Server 2011, Microsoft splits the product in two with the traditional Standard edition and a lower-end, cloud-based Essentials offering that targets small businesses. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Microsoft executive Kevin Kean sits down with us to discuss the two very different editions of SBS 2011. He describes how key differences between these editions will affect Microsoft customers and partners. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro There's been a creeping sense of inevitability to Google's rise to the top of the technology food chain. There's just one problem. Most of Google's products and services aren't actually that competitive, and some are even downright horrible. And two of those, the Nexus S and Google TV, are high-profile failures. ... View the full article

Supersite In this week's mailbag: Office 365 and non-profits, using Microsoft Security Essentials 2 with Windows Server, reading PDFs on the Kindle, finding Zune speakers in an iPod world, moving files and folders within Office Web Apps and SkyDrive, and fears about the future of Windows Phone. ... View the full article

Supersite In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Tom Merritt and I discuss how Microsoft can fix Windows to address new competitive threats, some Windows Phone 7 update rumors, Hotmail's new Active Views, Office 2010 security tech for Office 2003 and 2007, the Bing Fall Update, and another round of holiday tech gift picks. ... View the full article

Supersite When it comes to backwards compatibility, Windows is all things to all customers. But it's time to put legacy technologies on the backburner and turn Windows into a truly modern, componentized system that can be more easily optimized for a coming generation of PCs and PC-like devices. ... View the full article

It took a week, but Microsoft execs have come out swinging against Google’s plan for providing e-mail back-up for Exchange. View the full article

Microsoft plans to begin rolling out its latest service refresh to its Live@edu academic customers in February 2011, according to a UK Live@edu team blog post. View the full article

Supersite Microsoft has released its free Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 anti-malware solution. Upgrade today! ... View the full article

Supersite Microsoft this week quietly released a second major version of its free security solution for individuals and very small businesses, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) 2.0. This version of the product looks and works much like its predecessor, but unlike the original version, which appeared in September 2009, the new version offers deeper integration with other Windows-based security technologies ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro An often irreverent look at some of this week's other news, including a massive set of potential updates to Windows Phone 7 in 2011, Microsoft's backpedaling on the usefulness of Google Instant, Hotmail Active Views, Microsoft's HTML 5 video plug-in for Firefox, Microsoft hardware for business, RIM profits and BlackBerry sales, Google's book cataloging to lead to better understanding of language evolution, EU's expansion of the Google investigation, and Apple's dominance of digital music. ... View the full article

Microsoft released to manufacturing on December 16 its Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) 2010 security product. View the full article

The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell — has been unmasked. View the full article

There were a lot of promised deliverables on the Azure cloud roadmap that Microsoft unveiled at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2010. This week, the Redmondians rolled out more of them, including a public beta of the Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role. View the full article

Supersite Tech news and tidbits of the day, from around the web, including WSJ angst over the iPhone being made in China, a new Windows Live plug-ins site, how not to look lame carrying an iPad (hint: It's impossible), more. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Lync, Office 365, IE9, and Windows Phone—the latest from the industry insider’s industry insider. ... View the full article

Windows IT Pro Microsoft this week unveiled its Fall 2010 Update for the Bing search service, which will add prettier, more visual search results better performance social networking integration and new mobile apps. The update is just the latest in a long series of updates to the evolving service, which has captured almost 12 percent of the US search market. ... View the full article

Yes, calendar-wise it is mid-December. But that isn’t stopping Microsoft from calling a new set of social, mobile and local search enhancements it is rolling out to Bing users over the next couple of weeks its “fall update.” View the full article

Forrester Research is warning business users who are ready to move to Microsoft’s Office 2010 — especially from older versions of Microsoft Office — that they may face some easily and not-so-easily remediable pitfalls. View the full article

Supersite Tech news and tidbits of the day, from around the web, including an HTML 5 video extension for Firefox, IE security, Amazon MP3 on Blackberry, A Lulu replacement, more. ... View the full article

Microsoft made the Release Candidate (RC) test build of its Dynamics CRM 2011 offering available for download as of December 14. The global launch of the product is slated for January 20 next year. View the full article

In addition to talking up Windows tablets and slates at the January Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft execs also are expected to use the conference to give another push to Windows Phone 7. But the first “major” update to the WP7 platform may not hit until August or September, my sources claim. View the full article