Articles about Microsoft

Microsoft might want you to wait until October 18 before upgrading to Windows 8.1, but the ever-impatient Internet has other ideas. The RTM versions of the OS refresh are now available to download and install if you know where to look (i.e. the usual torrent sites).

The leaks began on Tuesday with a Chinese version, and then there was a WIMs (Windows Imaging Format) release in English that had less technically minded would-be installers scratching their heads and begging for help.

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I am a very heavy Excel user. I organize my life and finances in spreadsheets for easy calculations and sorting. Quite frankly I enjoy the software very much for such nerdy reasons -- it is my favorite. However, not all people are excited by pivot-tables like me.

Yesterday, on Microsoft's official Excel blog, the software giant highlighted some creative ways that the software can be used. "One of the things that is incredibly satisfying about working on the Excel team is seeing how people use Excel in unbelievably cool and unexpected ways for work and for fun. There have been a few great examples of this floating around the internet and the news recently, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorites", says Excel Program Manager Carlos Otero.

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2003 was a good year. The UK experienced its highest recorded temperature ever, the final Lord of the Rings film was released, and iTunes was launched. It was also the birth year of Skype, the VoIP tool that is still going strong ten years down the line. Not long after having been acquired by Microsoft, Skype is celebrating its tenth anniversary by handing out free Wi-Fi to its users -- oh, and there’s a good old fashioned infographic to show what’s happened in the past decade.

One of the most impressive figure highlights in the charts is just how quickly Skype has been adopted. In just ten years, the service went from no users to 300 million. This equates to an uptake rate ten times faster than the telephone and two and a half times as fast as the cell phone. But it is not just the numbers that are impressive, the scale of Skype’s reach is mind-blowing.

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Microsoft has been busy beefing up SkyDrive this week, first with added storage for Pro accounts, bumping them to 25 GB free, and now with optical character recognition. OCR is generally a desktop software associated with scanners and used to translate copied documents into editable pages.

Now Microsoft wishes to bring that same functionality to the web, built right into its cloud storage service. "Today, in partnership with the Bing team, we’re excited to release the first of several features that will make your SkyDrive photos smarter by using OCR  to extract the text from photos in your camera roll when you view them on SkyDrive.com", says company representative Mona Akmal.

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Microsoft needs better Windows 8 apps, and in greater numbers, but, at times, it seems at a loss on how to get them. The company has introduced various initiatives, but then for reasons that are hard to fathom, does its best to hamper developers.

In a blog post yesterday, following the announcement of Windows 8.1 hitting the RTM milestone, the Windows Apps Team put out a call to developers to get their apps ready for the Windows 8.1 launch. It went down like a lead balloon with app makers asking exactly how they're supposed to do this without early access to Windows 8.1 RTM.

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When Microsoft first launched SkyDrive, the company offered 25 GB of storage to everyone willing to sign up. As the service grew and was increasingly integrated into more places, like Windows 8 and Office 2013, that free ride came partially to an end. Free storage was downgraded to seven gigabytes, but those who met certain criteria were grandfathered in.

Now that 25 GB threshold breaths new life, though not quite for everyone. This time around the extra cloud space goes to Pro users -- business customers. "Today, we're pleased to announce three new significant improvements to SkyDrive Pro for Office 365 business subscribers - to help you be more productive", the Office 365 team announces.

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Ten months after Microsoft launched the polarizing Windows 8, comes the news that the software giant has now reached RTM on Windows 8.1, and started to roll out the OS refresh to its hardware partners.

I’m using Windows 8.1 as my primary operating system, and frankly can’t wait to install the finished OS, but will have to wait a while yet -- that’s not set to be made available to consumers until October 18. I was never a fan of Windows 8, but 8.1 is a huge improvement.

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Just two years ago, before the Surface RT was even on the horizon, another alternative entrant in the computing market was posting miserable (Surface RT-esque) sales after launching. The suspect in question, Chromebook, was only able to post about 5000 units sold for Acer in the two months after its launch in June 2011. Samsung supposedly fared even worse. Analysts across the industry were taking bets on when Google would throw in the towel on Chromebook. They all but called the device destined to fail.

Fast forward just two years, and Chromebooks now represent the fastest growing PC segment already. In fact, as of July 2013, they officially snagged 20-25 percent of the sub-$300 laptop market. And the warm feelings for Chromebook are anywhere but over. The radical alternative to Windows and Apple laptops is poised to grow another 10 percent in just 2013 alone. The burning question still stands: how did the analysts get it so wrong?

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While every armchair tech pundit and analyst pontificates on Steve Ballmer’s retirement bombshell and speculates on who Microsoft’s next CEO might be and what the future holds for the tech giant, I’d like to take a moment to just enjoy this video of Steve selling Windows 1.0.

Sure, there are many amusing videos of the departing CEO on the web -- including his famous monkey boy dance, this one where he disses the iPhone, and of course developers, developers, developers etc.  But it’s Steve in full used car salesman mode that I really like.

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Google shocked the tech world back in December of 2012 when, out of nowhere, it announced that Google Apps Free Edition was going bye-bye. I was also a bit disappointed to hear about this, as it provided a free way for clubs and small businesses of 10 users or less to leverage the power of Google Apps for their email, calendaring, contacts, etc.

Yet as a consultant to numerous clients supporting clients on the Free edition, who knows the unreasonable expectations they sometimes hold the (free) service to, I can see Google's justification for pruning the bushes here. We can all agree: it was good while it lasted.

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Like many, I was caught off guard by the news of Steve Ballmer's early retirement. Until the crash of Surface and Windows 8, I had assumed he would be there until at least 2017/18. But with Microsoft's recent stumbles in its transition to mobile devices I had a sneaky suspicion he might not make it to 2017.

Before Microsoft's unveiling of Windows 8 and the company's new consumer strategy I was not a big fan of Ballmer as CEO. I was among the many who felt Microsoft needed to make a change at the top. However, once I began to see the consumer strategy come together I started to have a change of heart about him, although I was never quite 100 percent in his camp because of the obvious missteps in recent months.

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In today's search market, simply having the audacity to take on Google seems somewhat absurd, but Bing, despite the long odds, continues to plug away at it. Sometimes it is with innovation, sometimes with mud-slinging. Today, thankfully, it is the former. The Microsoft search engine, in the midst of the Steve Ballmer news, is announcing another improvement to its offerings.

The latest change comes in the form of a new product search experience. "Harnessing the depths of our index encompassing tens of millions of individual products and trained by advanced machine learning, Bing will now show you relevant products directly in the main results page. You no longer need to waste time navigating to a dedicated 'shopping' experience to find what you’re looking for. Based on your intent, we'll serve the best results", promises the Bing team.

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So Steve Ballmer is leaving Microsoft a year from now: what kind of schedule is that? It’s one thing, I suppose, for a company to point out that it has a retirement policy or a succession plan, or even to just give the universe of potential Microsoft CEOs a heads-up that the job is coming open, but I don’t think that’s what this is about at all. It’s about the stock.

Like in baseball, when all else fails to get the team out of a slump, fire the manager. And sure enough, Microsoft shares are up eight percent as I write. Ballmer himself is $1 billion richer than he was yesterday. I wonder if he had cleaned out his desk this afternoon whether it would have been $2 billion?

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Emergency surgery is the appropriate analogy for the firing of the iconic CEO. Yes firing. Microsoft announced Steve Ballmer's departure today, quite unexpectedly, and in his own words "within the next 12 months, after a successor is chosen". Meaning: Soon as there is a replacement, he is gone. Vamoose. Adios. We'll send Christmas cards. Not!

Unless Ballmer is in ill-health, or something bad happened to someone he loves, he wouldn't just walk away whistling to the wind. The man is too passionate about Microsoft. There is but one interpretation: The board of directors gave Ballmer his pink slip.

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There will be plenty of people thrilled by the news that Microsoft’s long-term CEO is planning on standing down. After all, Microsoft hasn’t exactly had the greatest success with Windows 8 and Surface in recent months, and maybe it is time for a new hand on the tiller as the tech giant continues to head off into new and at times uncharted waters as a devices and services company.

Even so, the news is a shock. In a press release Microsoft says "Steve Ballmer has decided to retire as CEO within the next 12 months, upon the completion of a process to choose his successor". That doesn't mean he'll be around for another year, it simply means he'll be in charge until a successor is found, which could be a matter of months.

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