Microsoft Support & Discussions

In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and Paul discuss Kinect for Xbox 360, IE 9 winning a key HTML 5 compatibility test, Hotmail opening up to non-Live domains, Microsoft's secret plan for Silverlight, and smart phone market share. View the full article

Microsoft is on to something with its Kinect motion sensor add-on for the Xbox 360: This fun and innovative device brings family-friendly fun to the living room, and gives you a decent workout in the process. Dedicated gamer or not, you're going to want one. View the full article

Facebook is one of the best looking and most useful Windows Phone 7 apps yet: It retains the branding and look and feel of Facebook while utilizing unique Windows Phone 7 user experience features. View the full article

Using the system imaging functionality in Windows Backup and a system repair disc, it's possible to replace the hard drive in your PC with one that is bigger, while not losing any crucial data, settings, or installed applications. View the full article

Watch for more consumer announcements from Microsoft next week, alongside some IT-focused news coming out of TechEd Berlin. This week, Microsoft made headlines around open-sourcing F#, moving Seadragon Ajax to a new home and surveying Azure users on another possible new pricing model. View the full article

It's another overdue update to "What I Use." New this month: The Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7, my favorite Windows phone apps, a new hybrid hard drive for the laptop, the Kinect add-on and games for Xbox 360, a new version of Adobe PhotoShop Elements, an HD PVR, a DroboPro, and a color laser printer. View the full article

On November 4, Microsoft began selling its Kinect sensors for Xbox at retail. Gamers — and those with a hidden inner gamer just waiting to break free without a controller — your star ship has arrived. But what about those of us who don’t care about gaming? View the full article

The Kinect motion-sensing add-on for the Xbox 360 arrived today, and the Thurrott kids are quite happy about it. Here are some hardware pics. View the full article

A problem with the Microsoft SmartScreen malware-thwarting technology in Internet Explorer 8 rendered countless users unable to access all kinds of sites throughout the day on November 4. View the full article

Microsoft officials have been talking up plans for the successor to the company’s BizTalk Server 2010 product for a while now. It wasn’t until last week’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), however, that the cloud angle of Microsoft’s plans for its BizTalk integration server became clearer. View the full article

Microsoft is backpedaling on its Silverlight strategy, but make no mistake: When it comes to cross-platform development on desktop computers and mobile devices, only one technology makes sense, and that's HTML 5. View the full article

While Windows 7 is running on only one out of every 10 PCs at North American and European businesses,that percentage will grow considerably in the coming year, according to a new report from Forrester Research. View the full article

I am trying to uninstall a beta version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, so that I can install my new Professional Plus 2010 on my computer. Every time I try to uninstall the beta, it says: "The language of this installation package is not supported by your system." And whenever I try to install the new, bought, version of it , it says: "Setup is unable to unable to proceed due to the following error(s): Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of Microsoft Office 2010. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of Microsoft Office 2010 products and associated technologies. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run…

Microsoft specifies some pretty high-end hardware that must be included with every Windows Phone. But the list of hardware that is optional or just not available is equally interesting, and this feature focus looks at both. View the full article

There’s one more new Windows Server variant in the Microsoft pipeline, in addition to Vail, Aurora and SBS 7. Here’s a bit more on Windows Server Breckenridge. View the full article

Google is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) over a bid for a new hosted e-mail system which Google claims unfairly benefits Microsoft. View the full article

Microsoft has posted an update on the future of Silverlight which confirms the shift in the company’s strategy about which I blogged last week. View the full article

At the company’s Professional Developers Conference in Redmond late last week, Microsoft execs fielded another new positioning attempt for its Azure platform. Microsoft is claiming to be the leading general purpose platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud platform. View the full article

In this week's mailbag, Windows Phone 7 and email polling, Windows Phone 7 and custom ringtones, a faux Windows 8 delay, Windows Phone 7 and multiple calendars, how mobile carriers really can't screw up Windows Phone 7 software updates, and my true feelings about the iPad. View the full article

Microsoft has purchased for an undisclosed amount the technology, people — and perhaps most importantly, the intellectual property — of chip maker Canesta, according to a press release issued by Canesta on October 29. View the full article

In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and Paul discuss PDC10, Windows Phone and micro-SD storage expansion, Ray Ozzie's hand grenade-like goodbye memo, the Slate PC, Service Pack 1 RC1 for Windows 7 and Serer 2008 R2, and travel sites opposed to Google's purchase of ITA. View the full article

It would not be hard for Microsoft to run Windows on ARM. It has runs its Windows CE on ARM for years, so it has intimate knowledge of the hardware. Microsoft licensed the ARM core recently, but didn't say why. One reason could be it wanted to get intimate knowledge of what a 64-bit ARM implementation would be like for Windows 8. With ARM pushing toward desktop and even server markets, it will need to deliver a 64-bit core. Again, the Windows 8 timeframe would be about right. I asked Jeff Chu, director of mobile computing for ARM what he thought about Windows 8 on ARM. "It would be a fantastic thing to see," he said. Of course Windows on ARM doesn't e…

The Harvest is a stunning 3D action RPG for Windows Phone 7 that puts to rest any doubts that this is a major new mobile gaming platform. View the full article