Microsoft

Bill Gates and Paul Allen together again

Thirty-two years ago, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen took a picture together, surrounded by the computers of the time. It was 1981 and Ronald Reagan had just become president of the U.S. In June of that year, Microsoft incorporated in Washington state, and in August IBM introduced its first PC with Microsoft's fledgling operating system, MS-DOS. At the beginning of 1981, Microsoft had 129 employees. By 2012, Microsoft had more than 97,000 employees and MS-DOS still lives on.

The picture of the older Gates and Allen was taken in Seattle at the Living Computer Museum, … Read more

Google's Quickoffice comes to Android, iPhone

Some competitors would figure if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But when it comes to Google's strategy for competing with Microsoft's productivity suite, the company is trying to do both in a way.

Last night, Google released Android and iPhone versions of its Quickoffice software for handling Office files. The software, which lets people view and edit Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files, runs natively on various devices the way Office does, not in the cloud the way Google Apps does.

The software, available to customers of the company's Google Apps for Business service, is on … Read more

Microsoft Store slashes prices on Windows 8 tablets, hybrids

In what could be a sign of things to come, the Microsoft Store is slashing prices on a variety of hybrid laptop-tablet models.

Here are some of the highlights now appearing on the Microsoft Store "Tablets and Convertibles" page:

Toshiba Satellite U925t-S2130 Convertible Ultrabook: Cut to $799 from $1,149. 12.5-inch screen, Core i5 Intel chip, 128GB solid-state drive (SSD). ( Read the CNET review.) Acer Iconia W510-1674 Tablet: reduced to $399 from $499. 10.1-inch display, Intel Atom 1.8GHz "Clover Trail" Z2760 chip, 32GB SSD. ( Read the CNET review.) HP ENVY x2 11-g012nr Touchscreen: … Read more

Microsoft's Outlook.com calendar gets a makeover

Microsoft is finally applying a metro look and feel to its Web-based calendar.

On April 2, Microsoft officials revealed that the new Outlook.com calendar is rolling out now and will be available around the world this week at https://calendar.live.com/.

More from today's blog post about the calendar refresh:

"Outlook.com uses Exchange ActiveSync to sync your mail, calendar, and address book on your smartphone, tablet, in the new Outlook 2013, and with the Mail, Calendar, and People apps on your new PC or tablet running Windows 8. You can also use the Outlook connector … Read more

Windows Blue poised to become Windows 8.1

Microsoft officials supposedly have decided on the final name for Windows Blue. The final decision, one of my sources told me, is that it will be Windows 8.1.

The client version of Blue, codenamed Windows Blue, is a refresh of Windows 8. It is expected to be released to manufacturing around August of this year. As I've blogged a few times, Microsoft is planning to position Blue as part of the Windows 8 wave, not as Windows 9.

On Twitter this morning Roman L. (a k a @AngelWZR) posted a screen shot of what appears to be a … Read more

Former Windows Phone exec reportedly joins Amazon

Longtime Microsoft veteran Charlie Kindel, who left the software giant a year and a half ago to launch a startup, just joined Amazon to work on a "secret" project.

Kindel held several jobs in his 21 years at Microsoft, including general manager in charge of rallying independent software developers to its Windows Phone platform. His hire at Amazon could stoke more speculation that the online retail giant is readying a mobile phone of its own. Kindel isn't saying, noting on his recently updated LinkedIn page only that he's working on "something wonderful."

The news … Read more

Microsoft, Google swap April Fools' barbs

Microsoft and Google have both gotten in some April Fools' Day zingers against each other.

The two competitors often trade insults about each other's respective search engines, online office suites, and other products. But April Fools' Day inspired them to create a couple of full-blown Web pages to make fun of each other.

Microsoft laid its prank at its Bing search engine.

Surf to Bing and type Google in the search field. A Bing page pops up spoofing Google's pure white and stark home page. Hovering over the small boxes that populate the Bing page displays tips that … Read more

Safari jumps to 61 percent of mobile browser share

Safari has won back some of the ground it lost recently to rival mobile browsers.

Apple's iOS browser captured 61.79 percent of all mobile browser Web traffic seen by Net Applications in March. That was a healthy rise from the 55.41 percent tracked in February.

Safari remained firmly in the lead last month, followed by the default Android browser in second place with a 21.86 percent share and Opera Mini in the third spot with 8.4 percent. But Safari has seen its share of Net Applications' Web traffic rocked by the competition.

After rising steadily … Read more

Windows 8 ekes out 3.2 percent of desktop OS market

Windows 8 is slowly carving out a slightly larger slice of the OS market.

The latest flavor of Windows captured 3.17 percent of all desktop OS traffic tracked by Net Applications in March. That was a small gain from the 2.67 percent share in February.

Since its official debut last October, Windows 8 has very gradually risen up the ranks, at least in Net Applications' Web traffic reports.

Starting with a 1.09 percent share in November, the OS carved out a 1.72 percent share in December. It then grabbed a 2.26 percent share in January, … Read more