Beyond Binary

At its Government Leaders Forum in Berlin on Wednesday, Microsoft plans to announce that it is reinvesting in its Partners In Learning program, a global effort to provide software and training to teachers, students, and schools. The company is committing to another five years of the program.

In its first five years, Microsoft said the program reached 90 million people in 100 countries. The company plans to spend $235.5 million over the next five years, bringing its total investment to $500 million, but reach twice as many people in the next five years as it did during the first … Read more

Microsoft's decision to allow Home versions of Vista to run inside virtual machines may have far-reaching benefits in the coming years.

The initial market for such virtual Vista machines is likely to be among Mac users looking to run Windows or within the ranks of hard-core PC enthusiasts. But the move could also benefit the average PC user who just wants a machine that's easier to use, says Woody Hobbs, CEO of Phoenix Technologies, a leading maker of the BIOS (basic input/output system) software that loads before a PC boots up.

Phoenix has been working on HyperSpace, … Read more

Microsoft is making a new bid to get governments to go with its technology, rather than open-source alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.

At its Government Leaders Forum in Berlin, which kicks off on Tuesday, the company plans to announce what it is calling the Citizen Service Platform. It's not a whole new set of products, but rather templates and architecture that use a range of Microsoft products to provide electronic access for residents.

At its most elaborate, large governments could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on everything from Dynamics CRM to SharePoint to Internet Information Server to … Read more

That Microsoft has its sights set on the virtualization market dominated today by VMware is nothing new. However, the announcements Microsoft made on Monday show that the company is putting a tremendous amount of resources toward moving from vision to reality, analyst say.

Microsoft's approach of having a data center that can respond dynamically to business needs, while still years off, is compelling, said Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett. Virtualization is a key component that can take the Dynamic Systems Initiative of a few years ago and make it approach reality.

Now, Microsoft is far from alone in this … Read more

Most people expect some flip-flopping in an election year, but not usually from their software vendor.

Nonetheless, Microsoft on Monday changed its mind again, saying it will allow users to run Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium as guest operating systems on a virtual machine. The news is especially welcome for Mac users who want to run the latest Windows version without having to pay an arm and a leg. Until now, Mac users and others wanting to run Vista virtually have had to fork over for the most expensive Business and Ultimate versions.

Microsoft had briefed reporters in … Read more

Lotus Notes is one of Microsoft's favorite punching bags.

It's a frequent target at Microsoft's partner conferences and sales meetings. Want more sales, go after Notes.

The effort appears to be paying off. Microsoft says that in the last six months of 2007, more than 300 big companies, representing 2.8 million people, began switching from IBM software onto Exchange Server, Office and SharePoint Server.

The company said it expects an even greater number to switch in the next six months. That's despite the fact that the number of Notes customers has been shrinking.

"The … Read more

Microsoft is looking to make its Bluetooth notebook mouse more Mac friendly.

The emphasis in that sentence is on the word "looking."

The software maker hasn't made any software or hardware changes to the Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. It has, however, created new retail packaging for the product, dubbing it Microsoft Notebook Mouse for Mac.

Gone is the red packaging and the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo. In its place is a Mac logo and white packaging. Of course, the same mouse is inside, meaning the Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 works perfectly well on a … Read more

From a marketing perspective, multicore processors are an easy sell. Two brains are better than one. Four brains are better than two. You get the idea.

The challenge is that a whole lot of computer software has been designed to take advantage of ever-faster brains, not a computer packed full of them. It's a particular challenge for desktop and mobile computers. On the server and supercomputing side, the notion of parallel computing has been around for some time.

In the PC world, software makers have been scrambling to find new ways of thinking as Moore's law is quickly … Read more

From the moment I played with the iPhone and Microsoft's Surface tabletop computing technology, I have been waiting for pinch-zooming and other motions to make their way into mainstream PCs.

The wait is essentially over.

Although it's the MacBook Air that's been getting all the ink for adding such gestures, Synaptics announced at the Consumer Electronics show last week a version of its touchpad for Windows notebooks that will also support a range of gestures, including methods for continuous scrolling, zooming in and out, and trackball-like movement.

And that's just the start.

"There will be … Read more