Articles about Microsoft

Microsoft values its customers’ security, and it wants them to know that. The company announces its plans to frequently update Windows 10-powered desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets. At Ignite 2015 event, the company says that it will be pushing security updates every day instead of delivering them once a month.

Home users will be getting updates more often than ever, Windows chief Terry Myerson notes. Businesses, however, will remain sited on their monthly cycle -- popularly known as Patch Tuesday -- as the company plans to first test the update with home users and ensure that those codes aren’t breaking anything. Sounds reasonable.

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Many tech pundits put down Windows nowadays, but there is a big problem with that; pundits aren't always a good representation of the working world. Every time I read a review from a tech writer about how they can get all of their work done with a Chromebook, I just laugh. Why? Most of the world isn't writing for a living. No disrespect for writers, but hardware and software needs for that profession are not demanding.

For the rest of the world, getting work done often involves Microsoft solutions -- including Windows and Office -- and for good reason; those solutions work well. Today at Ignite, the company underlined its commitment to the Enterprise with a deluge of announcements; Windows Update for Business, Office 2016, Skype for Business broadcasting -- phew! In other words, Microsoft is Igniting the Enterprise.

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Build is over for another year, but that’s not the only Microsoft conference around. Ignite, the new enterprise focused tech event, starts today in Chicago.

Not familiar with Ignite? It’s essentially a number of Microsoft conferences rolled into one. As the tech giant describes it, Ignite is: "for big thinkers looking for an edge. It’s for anyone who attended the Microsoft Exchange, Lync, Project, SharePoint, MMS, or TechEd conferences -- and then some. It’s for senior decision makers seeking what’s next, and who want insights on key technology trends in the industry. It’s for IT professionals who need hands-on experience to enhance their tech skills. It’s for enterprise developers and architects looking for innovative ways to maximize application development. It’s for those who want to feel inspired and enlightened. It’s for you".

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It's been about a year since I’ve felt prompted to write anything; but the recent Microsoft announcements about Windows 10 has brought on the urge. I'm not really interested about the pricing or upgrade options for consumers as they have all been commented to distraction. My interest is the concept of the Operating System as a service.

Whenever anyone changes the goalposts on a supplier-customer relationship, it piques my business interest as there is no such thing as a free lunch -- particularly not from the likes of Microsoft or Apple.

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In the new world of Microsoft there has been a distinct shift in focus; Satya Nadella has said that the company's focus is a "mobile-first, cloud-first" strategy. This is all well and good -- and in many ways makes a great deal of sense -- but there is a very real danger that Microsoft is focusing too much on these new goals and to the detriment of other areas.

Windows 10 is an excellent case in point. This is an operating system that is destined for a wide range of devices, from phones and tablets to desktops, consoles and IoT devices yet to be devised. But in catering to the mobile side of its dream for the future, Microsoft has lost direction for desktop users and has made far too many compromises.

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Microsoft has confirmed that it is buying "advanced digital pen technology" from stylus manufacturer N-Trig. The company is behind the Surface pen and the acquisition sees Microsoft bringing more of its hardware production in-house.

The acquisition follows on from rumors that surfaced earlier in the year, and Microsoft has already been working closely with the company for several years now.

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When Microsoft announced it was planning a summer release for Windows 10, there were some raised eyebrows. When AMD suggested the new OS would launch in July, there were a lot more raised eyebrows. Windows 10 is coming on nicely, but there’s still a lot of work to do to get everything done and dusted in time.

It turns out Microsoft agrees. While Windows 10 will be released in the summer (not "July", just "summer"), it will only be available for desktop PCs, at first.

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In the world of wearables, Microsoft Band may not hold the same gravitas as Apple Watch or the various Android Wear devices, but the company is still trying to get more developers on board -- today launching the Microsoft Band SDK, following on from February's preview release.

With support for Windows Phone, Android, iOS, and full-blown Windows, Microsoft is clearly keen to appeal to as many developers as possible. This full SDK release offers access to all of Band's sensors -- as part of a push to get more third-party apps on the device.

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Microsoft has created a new website which makes use of its recently released Face detection APIs to guess a user’s age based purely on a photo they submit.

The creators expected around 50 people to be interested in trying out the project, but the site has gone viral, racking up over 35,000 users as of yesterday, and likely hundreds of thousands more today. People want to know how they are perceived by others and a site that promises to predict their age based on an uploaded photo was bound to be a hit. It’s a shame then, that a random number generator could probably produce more accurate results.

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I was sold on Windows 10 before I could even try the first Technical Preview. Now, after seeing the latest slew of changes unveiled at Build 2015, it is clearer than ever that Microsoft is on the right path and that Windows 10 will be the most impressive release yet. There is no doubt in my mind about it.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Microsoft expects Windows 10 to attract one billion users within the first two to three years of its release. The timer starts this summer. It may sound like an empty claim, but when you look at everything that has been done so far to make Windows 10 so exciting, and consider the huge unlocked potential, it certainly sounds plausible. While I am no fortune-teller, I can’t see Microsoft getting anything important wrong. And that’s something I haven’t felt in ages in regards to the software giant.

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Adobe Reader 10 has 39 vulnerabilities and is unpatched on 65 percent of private PCs in the US, whilst Adobe Reader 11 with a 55 percent market share has 40 vulnerabilities and remains unpatched on 18 percent of machines.

This is one of the findings of the latest Secunia country report. Additional findings show that 14 percent of PC users in the US (up from 12.9 percent last quarter) have an unpatched operating system, and that Oracle Java once again tops the list of applications exposing PCs to security risks.

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Add-ons are a common feature of traditional, offline applications, but they're becoming increasingly popular in online services. Microsoft is the latest to get in on the action, announcing a batch of new add-ons for Outlook.com, including one from PayPal that makes it easy to make payments via email.

The add-ons were made possible when Microsoft launched the Outlook APIs at Build. They can be used by developers to create plugins with HTML, CSS3, and JavaScript. Microsoft is pushing the "write once, run anywhere" nature of the API that means the same plugin can run in Outlook.com, Outlook Web App and the desktop version of Outlook.

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When the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched its new Raspberry Pi 2, we were impressed to hear it would be able to run Windows 10. Admittedly it isn't the full PC version of the operating system, but rather a special version created especially to run on such devices.

Yesterday, following the keynote at its Build developer conference, Microsoft released a new build of Windows 10 Insider Preview, but that’s not all. It also pushed out a Windows 10 IoT Core Insider Preview with support for Raspberry Pi 2 and Intel’s Minnowboard Max. So if you have either of those devices, you can download and try out the preview right now.

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The Premier League is almost over, but the final positions of the 20 teams is still up for debate, with several middle of the pack teams currently tied. Microsoft’s Bing Predicts looks to answer where every team will be come the end of the season.

Using algorithms based on past matches against future opponents, current form, injuries and other factors, Bing Predicts has a good overview of the entire situation, although nothing is for certain.

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When Microsoft unveiled HoloLens a few months ago, it came as something of a surprise. It's essentially Google Glass meets virtual reality on steroids, throwing the users into a 3D world filled with holograms, all powered by Windows 10. Today at build 2015, Microsoft showed off some of HoleLens' capabilities.

Something that had been talked about when HoloLens first came to light was the possibility of running regular Windows 10 apps in HoloLens. In a demonstration, Microsoft showed how Windows 10 Universal apps can be used in 3D space, 'projected' onto floors, walls and other surfaces.

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