Microsoft

It appears as if Windows 7 will not need to reach its designated release date to make a big splash in Europe. According to several sources, Microsoft's European online store crashed within hours of offering discounted pre-order copies of the new ... operating system. The sale officially encompassed the major markets in the United Kingdom (UK), France and Germany, where both Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional editions were being sold at very reasonable discount prices. Win7: More than Half-Off the List Price Windows 7E Home Premium is now selling for 49.99 GBP (Great Britain Pound) ... (view more)

A senior Microsoft executive says it will build some of its forthcoming retail stores near those of rival Apple. He also says Apple complained about the recent "Laptop Hunters" campaign, which he feels validates the ads' success. Microsoft announced ... plans to open retail stores back in February, hiring former Wal-Mart executive David Porter to oversee the project. At the time it appeared the firm wanted to take advantage of cheap retail unit rentals thanks to the recession. However, Microsoft's decision to build these stores, and to build them near rival Apple's outlets, might be ... (view more)

Microsoft has made available a patch that promises fixes for nine vulnerabilities, three marked "critical" and another three deemed "important." Most Windows users will be glad to hear that a solution for the much-feared ActiveX DirectShow flaw has ... also been made available. Last week Microsoft made big news in a bad way for its ActiveX security flaw, which threatened to sicken user computers via infected web pages and "drive by" or "browse and get owned" attack codes within legitimate web pages. Much criticism lodged against Microsoft for the company's alleged knowledge of ... (view more)

Analyst firm IDC suggests that a major economic upturn could spur in the near future and North Americans will benefit in large part from the sales of Windows 7 . The report even suggests that Microsoft's latest operating system has the potential to ... save us from the current recession all on its own. IDC estimates that Microsoft will sell about 177 million copies of Windows 7 all together, with 50 million of those sales coming from the European market. Windows 7 Stimulus Ripple Effect How will this help the rest of us? Looking at a sales snapshot from October 2009 (the expected release date of ... (view more)

Just a day after analysts predicted a dominant future for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system (due this October), a new report suggests that up to 60 per cent of all companies might be hesitant to make the upgrade from Windows Vista and XP. The ... IDC Win7 forecast discussed yesterday painted a pretty picture indeed for Microsoft, suggesting that 75 per cent of all corporations would ditch XP and Vista for Windows 7 by 2011, just two years after its release. Given that most business users are XP users, that's good news for Microsoft. ScriptLogic Paints Different Picture However, another group ... (view more)

Microsoft is in some serious trouble after sources confirmed that the company had known about the recent IE6 and IE7 virus attacks (also known as the infamous " browse and get owned " attacks) for more than a year. Hackers have been exploiting a ... vulnerability in ActiveX by enticing innocent users to click on infected web pages while planting "drive-by" attack codes within legitimate sites. According to ScanSafe, the number of compromised sites has entered into the millions since the attacks first began. Attacks Predicted One Year in Advance If the viruses and malware weren't bad enough, Mike ... (view more)

As we near the release of Microsoft's Windows 7 in October, insiders are now trying to predict just how popular it will be amongst consumers. A recent report suggests it could be very successful indeed. According to industry analysts IDC, Windows 7 ... should account for approximately half of all client operating systems shipped to corporate users by the year 2010. IDC predicts that should mean about 58 million copies of the new OS, which is set to ship October 22, 2009. Vista's Eclipse on Horizon The prediction means a quick eclipse of Windows Vista and even the long-lasting Windows XP, the ... (view more)

New Microsoft search engine Bing had a pretty hot month in June, growing an average rate of 25 per cent each week. At the same time, Google too got bigger, increasing its dominance over the search market from the previous year. Bing was unveiled ... last month amidst plenty of buzz . The new search engine promises more accurate and detailed results than its rivals Google and Yahoo, and clearly many felt Microsoft's promises were genuine. According to reports, Bing owned about 5.25 per cent of the total American online search engine market last month, the first 30 day period of its release. Bing ... (view more)

Microsoft is reportedly in talks with the European Union to settle a dispute over the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. It's a last ditch effort to stave off harsh disciplinary action from regulators. The talks are also said to involve ... complaints made in January 2008 that Microsoft hasn't shared enough technical details to allow rival firms to produce software compatible with Office components such as Word and Excel. (Source: bloomberg.com ) The discussion appears designed to not only find a negotiated resolution before the EU resorts to imposing penalties, but also to allow the ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed that thousands of legitimate web sites have been compromised by hackers and are now targeting innocent users through a critical unpatched vulnerability in Windows' DirectShow, part of DirectX . This is the second time in just ... six weeks that hackers have been exploiting the unpatched bug. This time, however, it appears as though Internet Explorer (IE) has been chosen as the weapon of choice when trapping innocent users. Browse and Get Owned Attacks: Drive-By Hackings The new wave of attacks is being referred to as "browse and get owned attacks" or "drive-by hackings". ... (view more)