Microsoft

After a series of delays, Microsoft plans to release Office for Mac 2008 to brick-and-mortar and online stores on January 15, making this the first update in about four years. We've tested beta versions of the new applications over the last month without running into glitches.

Office for Mac includes Word, Excel for spreadsheets, PowerPoint for presentations and Entourage for email and time management. There's no Microsoft Access database application for the Mac, although FileMaker's upcoming release of Bento offers Mac users a new choice.

Bloggers covering the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas can skip the taxi lines while getting in some Halo 3 time, courtesy of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT).

The software maker has partnered with PodTech to operate a bus that will transport bloggers around town to the show's various venues.

Onboard the 'Media Center Express': Playable demos of the Xbox 360 smash hit Halo 3, as well as assorted hardware running Windows Vista. Microsoft will also provide "refreshments" for the riders.

Microsoft now faces a lawsuit over recent problems with its Xbox Live online gaming service.

Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of themselves and others who have had trouble connecting to Xbox Live in recent weeks.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft's outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn't claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.

Microsoft Corp. deliberately broke access to older files, including many generated by its own products, to step up security with the newest Office 2003 service pack, a company evangelist said yesterday.

Microsoft is pshawing claims that it needs another five years of legal babysitting.

A legal coalition including 10 US states and the District of Columbia is asking Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to extend US government oversight of Microsoft imposed under a 2001 antitrust judgment against the software giant. n a court memorandum (PDF warning) filed last Friday, Microsoft claims the group is relying on "hypothetical scenarios" and "unsubstantiated facts" to argue for extending the antitrust oversight.

Virtual machines need an operating system with which to run, and the operating system most frequently being used in the current wave of virtualization is Windows, according to a survey sponsored by Sage Research and published in its recent Sage/CMB market Pulse newsletter.

Sage Research is the technology practice branch of custom market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey. Sage surveyed Chadwick Martin Bailey's panel of technology service providers and panel of professional technology users and found 96% of the respondents use Windows on their virtual servers.

Users who install Windows XP Service Pack 3 will not be required to enter Microsoft's product activation key before they use the operating system, according to a Microsoft whitepaper.

Instead they will get a 30-day period of grace -- the same as users of Windows Vista -- after which they will have to enter the key to prove that the product is genuine.

Problems can occur if a user legally obtains the software and, for some reason, a problem occurs with validation. By allowing a 30-day period, users have a chance to get the problem fixed while they are using the software.

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has launched a security blog that provides more technical details about the vulnerability research behind the patches and security updates the company releases each month.

The Security Vulnerability Research and Defense blog, introduced Thursday, provides in-depth technical information and ways security professionals can protect an organization from vulnerabilities. The blog will be updated the second Tuesday of every month, called "Patch Tuesday," which is when Microsoft releases security updates for Windows and other software.

In the software industry, data-damaging bugs are every product manager’s nightmare. When a reproducible bug in this category is identified, sirens go off, vacations get canceled, engineers lose sleep, and product managers pop Maalox until it’s fixed.

That’s the context behind the alarmingly terse Knowledge Base article 946676, published last week. The entire article encompasses only a few sentences, but it got the attention of anyone using Windows Home Server.

In his first official visit to the United States in 2006, China President Hu Jintao arrived for dinner at Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chairman Bill Gates' house with a gift for the host.

Shortly before Hu's Seattle visit, the Chinese government had issued a decree requiring all personal computers manufactured in China to come with a licensed operating system before leaving the factory gates.