Articles about Microsoft

Next week’s Patch Tuesday will see a number of security patches for Windows 8.1 including three that get the top Critical rating. According to Microsoft’s advanced notification on TechNet the three critical updates address remote code execution issues in Windows and Internet Explorer.

There are also five more updates flagged as Important, three for Windows and two for Office. The three Critical bulletins also apply to Windows XP and will be among the last for the 12-year-old operating system before support ends in April next year.

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Microsoft has announced the new Nokia Lumia 1520 is available for preorder through the Microsoft Store and at all US Microsoft retail store locations from today. The device officially goes on sale on 22 November.

As an incentive, customers who preorder the product will receive a $50 Microsoft Store app card, a $20 app card provided by Nokia, a free flip cover valued at $39.99 (while stocks last), and a free download of Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows Phone. It’s a US-only offer.

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Microsoft shows no signs of slowing down. After unveiling a major update to Office Web Apps, today the software giant releases the stable version of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. The latest iteration of the popular browser debuted alongside Windows 8.1 in mid-October and like its predecessor it forgoes supporting older versions of the operating system.

And because Windows 8.1 is being offered as a free upgrade to Windows 8 users, and Microsoft expects everyone to take this step, Internet Explorer 11 is not officially available for the latter OS either. It is a Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 affair only, which speaks volumes of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to drastically reduce Windows XP's market share and push the two Internet Explorer 11-supported operating systems to the forefront.

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Microsoft has introduced a major update for Office Web Apps, meant to improve collaboration on documents. At the same time, the latest update also allows the service to better compete against its arch-rival, Google Docs.

The Excel, PowerPoint and Word cloud apps are getting real-time co-authoring, a feature that has been available for quite some time in Google Docs. Put simply, this means that users can perform simultaneous edits, with the said cloud apps also informing folks whenever someone else is altering a certain part of the document. The real-time co-authoring is augmented by the ability to see text and formatting changes in files as they are being made.

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The Internet Bug Bounty program is the latest initiative that can be used by hackers, security experts and anyone with time on their hands to reap rewards by uncovering security problems.

This time, however, it is not an individual app or website that's the subject of the program, but the entire Internet. It is a wide-reaching program which has the backing of Facebook and Microsoft; both companies with a vested interested in making the Internet safer.

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Inori Aizawa, the official mascot for Internet Explorer (in Singapore at least) is an Anime heroine who spends her time fighting against the dark side of the web.

On her official Facebook page she describes herself as a personification of Internet Explorer, and the parallels between her life and the browser are clear. "When I was younger", she says, "I used to be a clumsy, slow and awkward girl. However, just like the story of ugly duckling, people told me that I have really matured and changed over the years. I feel confident in my abilities now, and I'm eager to show you what I can do. Why don't you get to know me a little better?"

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One of the (many) complaints people had about Windows 8, was how unnecessarily awkward it was to shut it down. Windows 8.1 makes that aspect of things much easier. You can still go through the Charms bar, but you can also now right-click the new Start button and shut down, or sign out there.

There is another method though, and that’s to use the "Slide to shut down your PC" option. This isn’t activated by default, but it’s easy to summon, and you can create shortcuts for it.

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It's becoming a familiar story. A big name company decides to reveal figures about the number of requests for data that have been received from the government, apologizing straight away for the lack of detail it can provide. Microsoft has already done it, as has LinkedIn and Google. The latest figures come from Apple, and they make for interesting reading.

The report starts off by stating that Apple is revealing as much information as it is legally allowed to, and then immediately goes on the defensive:

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Microsoft is no stranger to trying to stick the knife into the competition, and the company's latest campaign, Keep Your Email Private, is no different. This is not just an ad campaign, but rather an entire microsite that has been set up to demonstrate how much better Outlook.com is than Gmail. The reason? There is only really one put forward for consideration -- Google's scanning of emails.

This in itself is nothing new. We have known for a long time that Google scans the content of emails with a view to delivering targeted ads. It’s not something that everyone is happy with, but we know all about it, and if you don’t like it, you're free to move away from Gmail. But Microsoft is now exploiting this fact in a bid to attract people to Outlook.com.

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Although Microsoft made upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 easy and free, the process has to be done through the Microsoft Store. If you want an ISO version of the OS, and don’t have a TechNet or MSDN subscription, you need to engage in a little trickery, which is straightforward enough, but not ideal.

As someone who once bought a brand new Advent laptop with Vista on it, but without any discs I could use to reinstall or repair the OS in the event of trouble, I know how frustrating not having a physical (or digital) copy can be. Newegg is currently offering a "Windows 8.1 Back-up Media disc" for pre-order that could potentially save the day.

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In late-July 2012, Microsoft launched Outlook.com, a new consumer-oriented email service set to replace the cluttered and dated Hotmail. Its long-term mission would be to take on Google's prevalent Gmail and establish itself as a product with widespread appeal. By grandfathering-in those who used Hotmail, Microsoft announced, in early-May 2013, Outlook.com had reached 400 million users.

I delivered my review of Outlook.com two days after its launch. My impressions were positive for a product that, at the time, was still undergoing testing (the official public launch happened in late-February 2013). Still, I concluded that the service was not up to par with Gmail, because it was missing key functionality. But lots of things have changed in the meantime, which is why I decided to write this long-term review of Outlook.com, outlining the most important changes and detailing the positives and negatives of the service, now that it has reached maturity.

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NetMarketShare's monthly operating system statistics always make for interesting reading and analysis. For example, a month ago they showed Windows 7's growth was outpacing that of Windows 8. That was, naturally, just a blip, but in October -- the month that Windows 8.1 launched -- Windows 7 managed to make further market share gains.

There are other interesting things about last month's share statistics. Windows 8.1 -- which NetMarketShare has included since the Preview version launched -- is up, as you'd expect, while Windows 8 drops. Combined, the two operating systems see an overall rise, but the growth is slight.

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While Google is known for its "doodles", Bing remains more stately, opting for beautiful photography, but Halloween is about, not just treats, but also tricks. It's a time for scary movies, ghost stories and children working the neighborhood streets in search of candy hand-outs.

Today, Microsoft's search engine goes the extra mile, opting for an interactive background image, as opposed to the usual high-resolution image that appears each day.

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When you install an app or desktop program in Windows 8.1 it gets added to the Apps screen. From here you can add it to the Start screen by right-clicking to summon the Customize menu, and then selecting "Pin to Start". You can also "Pin to Taskbar" if you want regular quick access to it while working in the desktop.

The Apps screen, which you can set as your default view, can be ordered by Name, Date Installed, Most Used, or Category -- to make it easier to find the apps and desktop programs you want. You can also have desktop programs show up first when the Apps screen is sorted by Category. To do this, right-click the taskbar and select Properties. Click the Navigation tab and tick “List desktop apps first in the Apps view when it’s sorted by category”.

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In the mid-2000s, walking into a college classroom holding a laptop that came with a stylus for the purpose of note-taking was without a doubt out of place. The smartphone craze was still years away, and for all intents and purposes, touchscreens were relegated to two platforms: the Nintendo DS, and the last hurrah of Palm devices like the Treo. So when I sat in my undergrad classes taking notes in OneNote 2003 on my Thinkpad X41, people looked at me like I was an alien. Professors even asked from time to time whether I brought my paper notebook to class, so I wasn't playing with my "toy" the whole time.

Tablet PCs had a real personality dilemma way back then. Aside from OneNote, they were a sort of a pariah in the PC industry. Cool, sleek, powerful, and usually fairly light -- but they were held back in one major way: the operating system. I bless Microsoft for taking chances in areas where no one else dared, which undoubtedly led us to the current revolution being driven by Windows 8.1, but the first wave of Tablet PCs had real potential. The hardware was there, but the operating system was the large bottleneck by far.

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