microsoft

Microsoft has been making a lot of news lately about its dominance of the trendy netbook market. However, both Acer and RealNetworks have made splashes in recent days, announcing their intentions to use and develop for alternative netbook operating ... systems. Up to this point, Microsoft Windows XP has been the dominant OS for netbooks , the tiny 8.9" to 11.6" laptops with impressive web surfing speed but few hardware highlights. The majority of netbooks don't even have DVD drives, but given their sub-3 pound weight, miniscule width, and comparably cheap price tags, they've become awfully ... (view more)

This is turning out to be a big summer for Microsoft: lately the company has been both driving up excitement for Windows 7 and wowing gamers at E3 in Los Angeles, and now the Redmond-based firm has released a legitimate competitor for Google. But is ... new search engine "Bing" any good? The first thing a visitor to Bing.com will notice is the design. Even on a low-res netbook it's immediately clear that Microsoft wants to bring the allure of its 'Aero' Vista graphics to the search engine's main page. When I visited, Bing greeted me with a lush, blue mountain scene. Quite honestly, it is ... (view more)

If a company produces a product and then sells it, said company would expect to see their profits increase with each sale. When Microsoft attempts to follow this concept, the specifics on which product is being sold gets taken into account. In some ... cases, each sale could actually decrease their profits. Such is the case with Microsoft's long-standing love-hate relationship with netbook computers . On one hand, Microsoft loves being recognized as the leading operating system provider for most netbook models. Microsoft was given "alpha" distinction after stealing the title away from Linux, ... (view more)

Users of Mozilla's Firefox web browser may have received an unpleasant surprise when they performed a routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component. Tens of millions of computers have quietly installed an extra Firefox add-on whether ... users wanted it or not. Firefox .NET ClickOnce Addon The Firefox add-on shipped with a bundle of updates via Microsoft's .NET Framework Service Pack that was made available to users through the Windows Update Web site. If a user installs the .NET update, it automatically installs its own ClickOnce Firefox add-on that is both difficult and dangerous to ... (view more)

Yahoo is once again addressing partnership rumors with Microsoft, only this time adding more insight into what it would take for the two companies to strike an eventual deal: boatloads of money! A few months back, a potential Microsoft/Yahoo ... partnership was suggested that would see the two mega-companies pool their resources in an attempt to lure away a percentage of computer users who use Google search. At the time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was pressing the issue, while Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was honoring initial conversations, though nothing eventually came of these talks. Microsoft's ... (view more)

Microsoft has officially unveiled the replacement for its Live Search tool. However, the new instrument will be known as "Bing" rather than "Kumo," and is billed as a 'decision engine' rather than a search engine. The working name for the new ... service had been Kumo, but Microsoft eventually settled on Bing despite some problems trade marking the name. The firm appeared to be looking for an active name which could be used as both a verb and a noun, in the same way as 'to Google' has become another way of saying 'to search online'. As we've noted before, the main difference ... (view more)

Another remote hacker threat has arisen, and this time it affects popular streaming media tool DirectX. Microsoft announced yesterday that it is currently working on a fix for the security exploit, which could allow someone to take total control of ... a system by using malicious QuickTime video files. DirectX Exploit: Affected Users The exploit involves Microsoft's audio/video sourcing/rendering software DirectShow and the way it handles the QuickTime format files it supports. Users of Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP are those most affected and will want to keep ... (view more)

Unconfirmed reports suggest Microsoft will drop a limitation on the Starter Edition of Windows 7 that would prevent users from running more than three applications at a time. This comes amidst speculation that guidelines for the Starter Edition have ... been rigged to benefit particular manufacturers. The Starter Edition, aimed at netbook users, will not be available for consumers to buy separately. Instead, only manufacturers are allowed to license it and install it on their machines. In the originally published specifications for the Starter Edition, users could only run three programs at any ... (view more)

Microsoft plans to roll out its new search engine code-named " Kumo " that reportedly improves search results by suggesting more targeted searches capable of bringing users closer to the information they seek. The Kumo team's technology reportedly ... uses open-source software if it's available . (Source: cnet.com ) Kumo to Compete with Google's Storage Engine According to their blog , Kumo developer Powerset decided to turn to hadoop , a Lucene subproject that runs data-intensive applications on large clusters of commodity hardware. Unfortunately, there was no Hadoop equivalent to Google's ... (view more)

More details emerge regarding Microsoft's much talked-about Zune HD, a next-gen portable media device that the Redmond-based company hopes will help it overcome the iPod's worldwide dominance. Zune: A brief History The original Microsoft Zune ... reached retail shelves during holiday season 2006. Its main weapon in the war against Apple was WiFi capability, which Microsoft promised would allow two friends with two Zunes to transfer songs and other files back and forth. In order to skirt digital rights management (DRM) outcries, the media would disappear in a few days, just enough time for the ... (view more)