News

• Microsoft Azure enters price war with Amazon Web Services

  Microsoft is dropping prices for Azure Cloud Services and for Azure virtual machines to match those of Amazon Web Services and implies that it will cut the prices of other Azure offerings as well to match those of AWS.

• Dell remains committed to Windows RT

  Dell remains committed to Microsoft's Windows RT, despite the poor market reception to the OS and a decline in prices of related tablets.

• Don't blame Windows 8 for PC slowdown; Apple hit, too

  Don't blame Windows 8 for plummeting PC sales, a retail analyst at NPD Group said today.

• Microsoft smart watch would be 'snipe hunt' distraction from Windows 8

  Microsoft is reportedly working on designs for a touch-enabled smart watch, a move one analyst called a "snipe hunt" that would distract it from the critical chore of getting Windows 8 off the ground

• Cisco extends Microsoft support in datacentre portfolio

  Cisco last week extended its datacentre product line to support Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 hypervisor and VM management features to more tightly align their respective datacentre and Cloud architectures for joint customers.

• Windows 8 update: Gartner, IDC diverge in blame game

  The problem with Windows 8 sales isn't Windows 8, it's Windows Phone 8, says a Gartner analyst.

• Microsoft urges Windows 7 users to uninstall 'Blue Screen of Death' patch

  Microsoft today urged Windows 7 users to uninstall a patch shipped earlier this week that has crashed customer's PCs and crippled the machines with endless reboots.

• Windows XP's looming retirement won't shake PC business out of sales funk

  But Microsoft is likely to reap more revenue from the disappearance of XP than will system builders, as many customers will do in-place upgrades to Windows 7 on current hardware.

• Microsoft's stock slides after dismal PC shipment reports

  Microsoft's stock took a beating in trading today after a pair of research firms said PC shipments in the first quarter were down as much as 14% from the year before.

• Surface 'Mini': ARM, Atom or both?

  Microsoft will launch a new line of Surface tablets later this year, including one or more smaller 7-in. devices, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• Windows 8 takes blame for 'brutal' PC sales slide

  Microsoft's Windows 8 took another knock Wednesday as research firm IDC laid much of the blame for the first quarter's historically-horrible PC numbers at the feet of the beleaguered operating system.

• Report: Microsoft plans 7-inch tablet to compete with Apple, Google

  Microsoft is said to be planning a 7-inch version of its Surface tablet to help it compete with similar size devices from Apple and Google.

• XP migration easy pickings over, say experts

  The easy upgrades to Windows XP have already been done, migration experts said, predicting that a large number of enterprises will still be running the aged OS a year from now.

• Microsoft releases Office 2010 SP2 public beta

  Microsoft has released a public beta of Office 2010 Service Pack 2, the first major update to the suite in almost two years.

• Microsoft tempts XP laggards with $84 upgrade discount

  Microsoft today kicked off a new promotion aimed at Windows XP customers, who have just one year to ditch the 12-year-old OS before it's retired from support.