Microsoft

Microsoft next week plans to deliver a whopper of a security update, complete with 12 patches that address 57 vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Security Essentials has once again proven that it's not adequate for protecting a user's computer, after failing another antivirus test by scoring well below competitors' products. Dennis Technology Labs evaluated eight major antivirus programs from October to December 2012, awarding each program both a total accuracy rating and a protection rating, and in their testing they found Microsoft Security Essentials to be significantly worse than the other seven products on the test bed.

A pair of European cyber security initiatives are helping to make the region safer to surf, according to Microsoft.

The company said in its Security Intelligence Report on the security landscape that countries who participate in the Council of Europe and London Action Plan security initiatives are more likely to perform at or above expectations in comparison with other countries.

 Over the past few years, Microsoft has been proactive in trying to shut down criminal botnets that use malware to infect PCs for the use of their illegal activities. So far, the company has conducted operations to take down the Rustock, Kelihos, and Zeus-based botnets, among others.

Today, Microsoft announced yet another takedown of a botnet and this time it worked with antivirus company Symantec to do so. The official Microsoft blog has the details of this new move, called Operation b58, to deactivate the Bamital botnet.

 Microsoft has provided a SkyDrive "Modern" UI app for Windows 8 and Windows RT for some time, however the app still lacks some features compared to the Windows desktop app. For example, the "Modern" app cannot currently sync your SkyDrive account down to a local folder on your Windows 8 or RT PC. Windows 8 owners can do this with the desktop app, but if you own a Windows RT device, such as the Surface RT tablet, you are out of luck.

While the Surface RT was aimed at Apple's iDevices, its posh Pro cousin is Microsoft's Windows 8 showcase in the PC space, and on midnight on February 9 the first units will go on sale. But we got one early, lived with it for a week, and have, ahem, surfaced to tell of our experience.

Dell has announced a deal that will allow the company to go private and Microsoft will soon become a significant stakeholder in the private company.

It will cost Dell $24 billion to go private and they will pay $13.65 per share which is about a 25% premium on the stock from when word first broke about the possible deal.

A few days after launching its consumer-facing Office 365 offering, Microsoft is experiencing an Office 365 outage affecting some users in the U.S. and possibly elsewhere.

Some users began reporting around 8:30 a.m. ET via Twitter and the Office 365 Community Forums that they could not access their hosted Exchange mail and Lync unified communications offerings, which are hosted in Microsoft datacenters. They also said they were not getting  updated status information via the Office 365 health dashboard.

Last week, the old gaming laptop that my wife and I had repurposed for a media center PC decided to overheat and fry. I chose to replace it with a late 2012-edition Mac mini server I bought last week from Apple. I had highlighted the Mac mini in my recent gift guide and it does have a heck of a lot of bang for both the buck and space.

Microsoft officials said in November last year that the 7.8 update would be preloaded on new Windows Phone handsets aimed at specific markets, and then pushed to existing Windows Phone 7.x handset users in "early 2013."

If you are a Windows Phone user with a different handset, when will you get the update? I asked Microsoft and officials declined to comment. I'm guessing this lack of comment is because Microsoft isn't controlling when the carriers will push this. But otherwise, all I can say is SIGH!