Articles about Microsoft

Microsoft made Office Mobile available for free since launch, on both Android and iOS. But, in order to take advantage of its features, users had to tie the app to an Office 365 subscription. So it was free, but not void of additional costs.

Yesterday, Microsoft launched Office for iPad and announced a subscription is now no longer necessary to get the best out of Office Mobile, which was just updated on both platforms to reflect this decision. While this only applies to home users -- which means a subscription is still needed for non-personal (commercial) use -- it is certainly a welcome change. But, it also means Windows Phone just lost one of its most important advantages over its main rivals.

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It’s taken a very long time, but today, finally, Microsoft unveiled Office for iPad. Despite the name, Office for iPad is three separate apps -- Word, Excel and PowerPoint -- which are individually available in the App store.

The apps have a familiar interface, with the same Ribbon interface and layout. But at the same time, they’re not just a port of the regular desktop version. Menus have been optimized for touch; objects can similarly be dragged, rotated or resized with a swipe; Excel has a special formula keyboard to help you enter data quickly, and everything scales properly in both portrait and landscape mode.

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Analyst Gartner has just released its latest worldwide devices forecast, which shows, unsurprisingly, traditional PC shipments declining, and tablets, mobile phones, and ultramobiles (hybrid and clamshell) all growing. In total, device shipments are set to rise 6.9 percent, up from the 4.8 percent growth achieved last year.

There are few surprises in the report. Shipments of mobile phones, the most popular device type in the market, are expected to reach 1.9 billion units in 2014, a 4.9 percent increase from 2013. The worldwide tablet market is forecast to grow 38.6 percent in 2014, shipments of traditional PCs are forecast to total 276.7 million units in 2014 (a 6.6 percent decline from 2013), and ultramobiles are set to grow from 21.1 million in 2013 to 37.2 million this year. Gartner has also forecast shipments by operating systems, and while Windows still shows growth, overall it's far from happy times ahead for Microsoft.

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What can you get for $15 these days? Not a lot, really. A few Starbucks, perhaps, a burrito and a couple of slices? Or you can get yourself a cheaper, almost throwaway, replacement mouse to chuck in your laptop bag. This is the bill that the Microsoft Wireless 1850 fits. The mouse was announced just recently, and we've got our hands on one to put through its paces. To cut to the chase, this is a perfectly acceptable mouse, but it ain't going to blow your mind.

This is a mouse designed with the pocket in mind in more ways than one. Yes, it's super low-cost, but it's also super lightweight; and I mean that both in terms of mass and features. Oh, at this point it's worth highlighting something I touched upon the other day when talking about the price of digital downloads. While in the US this mouse costs $14.95, over here in the UK it has a £16.99 price tag. Sure, US buyers have to factor in taxes, but $14.95 should translate into about £9, so the trip across the ocean from One Microsoft Way has resulted in the price almost doubling!

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At 10am PT, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is set to discuss the intersection of cloud and mobile at an event in San Francisco.

Although there’s no mention of it in the details we’ve seen, and no pre-briefings have been given, it’s widely expected that Office for iPad will be unveiled at the event. This will be a big move for Microsoft if it turns out to be the case, but unlike Apple's iWork suite for iPad, which is sold for a one-time fee (and provided free on new iPads), Microsoft will likely tie access into Office 365.

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After announcing the upcoming rebranding of Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure, the software giant has revealed its cloud platform is now broadly available in China. 21Vianet is responsible for the operation in the local Asian market.

"This significant milestone makes us the first global company to make onshore public cloud services available to customers in China", says Microsoft corporate vice president of Cloud & Enterprise Marketing Takeshi Numoto. Microsoft Azure has been available to local customers since June 6, last year, but only as a public preview.

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Peanut butter and jelly. Fish and chips. Salt and pepper. Dell and Microsoft. These are all things that go great together. Sure, Dell has strayed a bit, offering things like laptops with Ubuntu and tablets with Android. However, Windows has been and will likely continue to be the manufacturer's bread and butter.

In the technology world, Dell and Microsoft are "BFF" -- best friends forever. If the companies were teen girls, they'd be braiding each other's hair and gossiping about boys. Today, Dell and Microsoft have signed a monumental patent agreement -- tantamount to BFF's exchanging friendship bracelets.

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Microsoft has teamed up with the Computer History Museum (CHM) to make the original source code for two of its most historic programs publicly available for the first time. MS-DOS, the 1982 Disk Operating System for IBM-compatible personal computers, and Word for Windows, the 1990 Windows-based version of popular word processor.

“The museum has done an excellent job of curating some of the most significant historical software programs in computing history", Roy Levin, distinguished engineer and managing director, Microsoft Research says. “As part of this ongoing project, the museum will make available two of the most widely used software programs of the 1980’s, MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing”.

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It's fun to remember. When old friends get together, nostalgia often takes over, and conversations turn to "remember when". Recalling years past can bring back feelings of yore -- old girlfriends, your first car, your first kiss -- all that jazz.

However, do people look back on old software with the same fondness? Microsoft seems to think so, as it looks back at Office 2003. The Office Suite will die the same day as Windows XP -- April 8th, 2014. You see, on that date, Office 2003 will still work, but the company will end support for the popular software. Microsoft would like Office 2003 users to switch to 365, but should they?

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The life of a Windows Phone user is a lonely one. With such a low market share, the odds of meeting a fellow user in public is quite rare. This is in contrast to Android and iPhone, where it seems like you can see those users everywhere you look.

However, some of these users may be lonely in another regards too -- dating and mating. In today's fast-paced world, it can be hard to find a date in person, so online dating has become all the rage. Unfortunately for Windows Phone users, there was no app for eHarmony; one of the most popular and successful dating sites. Today, however, that changes as eHarmony is available for Windows Phone. Get your online dating on y'all!

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When the sale of Nokia's Devices & Services, the company's phone-making arm, to Microsoft was announced in September last year, the process was expected to complete by the end of Q1 2014. As the initial deadline is rapidly approaching, the Finnish manufacturer reveals the software giant will have to wait a little more to get control of the business.

"Nokia today announced that it now expects the transaction whereby the company will sell substantially all of its Devices & Services business and license its patents to Microsoft to close in April 2014", says Nokia. "This compares with Nokia's previous expectation on the transaction closing in the first quarter of 2014, which Nokia communicated when the company first announced the transaction on September 3, 2013. Nokia and Microsoft remain committed to the transaction".

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The antivirus industry is getting steamed up about the forthcoming end of XP support. Last week we saw Avast warning of the vulnerabilities users might face.

Today anti-virus specialist Malwarebytes announces its new Anti-Malware Premium product and at the same time is pledging that it will continue to support XP users for life.

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It's no secret that my company had its own internal usage relationship with Google Apps go sour in the last half year. As our mobility, security, and feature needs continued to grow, at least in my eyes, Google seemed too focused on appeasing education and other niche sectors. As such, they've been leaving healthcare and other business verticals behind.

Is Google Apps necessarily a bad product? Not by a long shot. I just see Office 365 as a slightly better shoe: one that fits snug like a glove for our needs. And it's not just our company that has made the move from Google Apps to Office 365. To be honest, we get about 1-2 inquiries each week with customers who are looking to move in a similar direction.

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I have no idea what 12-year old kids are interested in -- I am guessing Justin Bieber and Instagram; lord only knows. However, as a tech-guy, I always have my eye on what smartphones and tablets people are using in public. From my observations, iPhones and iPads still reign supreme for tweens. And so, it is not surprising that 12 year old Victoria asked her dad for an iPad Mini.

While many kids are whiny brats nowadays, she took a more responsible approach and created a presentation as to why buying it is a good idea. Her father, rather than simply giving in and buying it, instead tweeted Microsoft to give it a chance for rebuttal. Microsoft responded to her presentation in epic fashion.

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Not a good week for Microsoft this week. Things kicked off as Mozilla shunned the Windows Store by opting to stop development of a modern version of Firefox and then things got a little awkward following the investigation of an employee involved in leaking information about Windows. The company then came under fire for accessing the email account of an individual, despite its claims that "Outlook and Hotmail email are and should be private".

There was better news as an LTE version of Surface 2 went on sale opening up a new income stream for the company and new mobile computing opportunities for customers. More good news for users came when OneNote was not only released for Mac, but also made free for all platforms. Mihaita wasn't overly impressed with the Mac version, though.

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