Items tagged with Microsoft
Last quarter, Microsoft sold more than 2 million units of its Windows Phone 7 software to various handset makers. Although the sales numbers represents a strong start for the new mobile operating system, Microsoft still has a long way to go if it hopes to catch up to Apple's iPhone or Google's Android operating system. Some analysts have said...
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Microsoft's Office for Mac portal has been a little wonky for us today, which might be the result of increased traffic and downloads. Why, you ask? The Redmond outfit is now offering a free trial of its Office for Mac 2011 software. The trial lets Mac users test out full versions of the software, albeit for 30 days (Windows users can play...
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Microsoft's Surface has been an interesting technology platform ever since the company launched it back in 2007. The original Surface was built around a 30" LCD, ran at a resolution of 1024x768, could respond to up to 52 touches simultaneously, and was based on a 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2GB of DDR2-1066. Despite these impressive...
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Microsoft's demonstration of Windows 8 running on ARM processors may have been one of the major events of CES, but the OS's 2012/2013 release date has been criticized as a day late and a dollar short. One of the tidbits that slipped out of CES is that IT analysts aren't the only ones frustrated with Redmond's timetable. Intel Senior VP and...
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Windows Phone 7 users are complaining over what they call "phantom data usage." The nascent smartphone platform is, according to some accounts, using as much as multiple megabytes per hour of cellular data, and that's even when connected to wi-fi. Indeed, you read that correctly; even when connected to wi-fi, Windows Phone 7 seems to be defaulting...
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Apple has been eying Exxon Mobil's market cap since the Cupertino, CA-based company passed Microsoft last year to become the world's most valuable tech stock and the world's second most valuable company. On Monday, the first day of trading in 2011, Apple passed $300 billion in value, but Exxon Mobil's lead is...
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A sweet gaming system might include the ability to immerse yourself in a gaming world and fight, cast spells, whatever, by making the motions that you would need if you were actually part of the game. This Kinect hack doesn't go quite that far, but we can dream, can't we? Built by the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, FAAST, or the...
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Tablets and mobile devices are central to Microsoft's plans for CES 2011. In addition to its demo of an early Windows 8 build running on ARM CPUs, the software giant will be demonstrating a number of tablets running Windows 7. If this sounds familiar it's because Microsoft did much the same thing last year—but very little came of the...
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Is it really coming to an end this time? Microsoft's Windows 7 Family Pack has been a rather hot seller, if not a very popular talking topic, ever since it was introduced. $150 nabs three licenses for Windows 7 Home Premium, and considering that many homes now have numerous PCs laying around, the value proposition is quite high. But Microsoft...
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One of the big announcements at CES this year will be from Microsoft; the company plans to announce (and possibly demonstrate) a consumer-centric version of Windows running on ARM processors. The company's decision is a powerful endorsement. Other Microsoft products like Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile support ARM products but the...
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People are using the Kinect Xbox 360 add-on in ways that transcend the idea of a video console accessory. It was this type of development that was hoped for when a bounty was put out for open source Kinect drivers, and look what the latest possibility is: using Kinect to help people learn American Sign Language. >Researchers at Georgia...
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Well that didn't take long! A month after Rahul Sood resigned his post at HP, he has now found a home at a rival company: Microsoft. Rahul Sood is a major figure in the PC gaming world. He founded VoodooPC, which was then swallowed up by HP and woven into the "Envy" line of computers. But HP never really felt like a great fit for Sood, at...
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Well, at least Microsoft has spoken. They haven't said an awful lot that we didn't already expect, but it's something. Despite the fact that Windows Phone 7 went on sale to consumers weeks ago, Microsoft has yet to come forward with any near-term sales figures. Contrary to that, they were quick to point out 2.5...
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Ruh roh, Shaggy. It appears a recent update for Outlook 2007 wasn't quite ready for prime time, causing all sorts of connection and performance problems for those who tried to install it. It was issued as part of the monthly Patch Tuesday collection, and has now been pulled following several user complaints. "On...
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Microsoft's Office Genuine Advantage program (OGA), is no more. Reportedly, Microsoft has quietly retired the program, which formerly was used to validate an Office installation before add=ins or templates could be downloaded, without fanfare. In fact, Ed Bott discovered that Microsoft mentioned the shutdown in a KB...
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Do you watch movies on your phone? We have found the answers to that question to be fairly mixed, with some people saying that it just gets too cramped over time, and others really enjoying the portability. But there's no question that multimedia is booming on phones, and there's not much hope of slowing down the...
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Google has turned its Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts into a backup system for your Microsoft Exchange data. Called Google Message Continuity, the service is meant not just to back up, but to sync in real-time your Exchange data on Google's servers. The service is based on technology from Postini, which Google acquired...
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HTC let fly with their Windows Phone 7 lineup a month or so ago but to date we haven't gotten much in the way of hands-on time with the devices. Monday night in NYC, home of yet another disappointed New York Jets team (Go Pats), we got a little up close and personal with HTC's sexy new HD7 smartphone. The HD7 is currently offered...
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Microsoft introduced its free Xbox Live Rewards program to give loyal customers recognition and rewards for using Xbox Live. Members of the program will earn Microsoft Points—the same currency used by Xbox Live—when they use the service to renew a membership, activate Netflix, purchase merchandise, and more. According to Larry...
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No one actually doubted that motion gaming was popular. Nintendo sold through tons of Wii consoles, and for over year there was a consumer shortage. In fact, the movement was so noticeable that both Sony and Microsoft decided to embark on a journey of their own to embrace motion gaming. Sony chose the Move, and Microsoft chose Kinect. They're...
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Ah, the more users play with Kinect, now that there is an open source driver, the better things become. Here we see a Jedi Knight in training who has used the OpenKinect drivers and OpenCV to make himself into a Jedi Academy cadet. Here's what he said on his YouTube post: Proof of concept of tracking and rendering a lightsaber in real time...
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If you can't beat 'em, say it was your idea all along. Microsoft has said that the Kinect hacking which allows the Kinect to be used with other devices besides the Xbox 360, wasn't really hacking, and that they left the Kinect open by design. At least, that's what Microsoft said on NPR's Science Friday. However, earlier, in response to a $3,000...
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