Microsoft Talks Innovation

Microsoft is no stranger to criticism, whether justified or not, but it has responded to a recent piece from a former employee, Dick Brass, who essentially alleges that the company’s best work is behind it.

Gloves off, gauntlet thrown down, metaphores mixed

Brass was once Microsoft’s vice president in charge of ClearType and responsible for its ebook and tablet efforts back in the day when Microsoft was one of the very few companies that seemed to be taking the whole affair seriously. In a recent editorial piece for the New York Times, Brass paints a fairly sad picture of Microsoft, describing it by saying that,

“Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosectution of the 1990s.”

Office 2010 RC Isn’t for Everyone

It seems that Microsoft’s beta testing of its upcoming update to its office suite, the appropriately named Microsoft Office 2010, is nearing readiness, with word emerging that there’s a Release Candidate (RC) build in the wild… but not everyone’s getting it.

Microsoft’s open beta programs have been working out very well indeed for it lately, with the company’s move to offer Windows 7 to everyone and anyone who wanted to download it resulting in a widely-tested and incredibly well publicised launch for the OS when it did release. Moreover, it meant that many who might otherwise have been hesitant to update had already been running Windows 7 for a while when it launched.

Windows 7 RC has Less than a Month Left

The free ride that users who opted in to the beta testing of Windows 7 has been a fairly long one, but it’s important to remember that it won’t last forever, and time is running out.

You've had your free ride, now cough up... please 😉

Of course, as we reported back in August of last year, those running with Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) won’t just wake up on March 1st to a machine that doesn’t boot up. Instead, those of you still running the Windows 7 RC will find that your PC decides to restart it once every two hours… whether you want it to or not. It’s not going to be a killer for everyone, but it should be enough of a headache that people will feel the need to move to a retail copy of Windows 7.

Windows 7 Causes Battery Issues

It seems as though the upgrade to Windows 7 has been wreaking havoc on some users’ notebook batteries, dropping the running time by as much as 70%.

Word comes via TheRegister of the reasonably widespread complaints, with many users holding the upgrade to Windows 7 responsible for their sudden and noticeable drop in overall battery life. Moreover, the piece points to the forums over at Microsoft’s own TechNet that sees hordes of users with roughly the same complaint – that their battery life has been greatly diminished since the upgrade to Windows 7. Indeed, there’s been so widespread an outcry that Microsoft has responded directly to address the issue.

17 Year-Old Bug Leaves Microsoft Red Faced

Here’s an odd one, Microsoft have confirmed that a 17-year-old bug in the kernel of all 32-bit versions of Windows could be used by hackers to hijack PCs. ComputerWorld reports that the wholly un-reassuring news came to light when Google engineer, Tavis Ormandy discovered the vulnerability in the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) subsystem.

More 17 year-old pests...

The VDM subsystem was added to Windows with the July 1993 release of Windows NT, Microsoft’s first fully 32-bit operating system. VDM allows Windows NT and later to run DOS and 16-bit Windows software. An advisory from Microsoft earlier this week spelled out the affected software – all 32-bit editions of Windows, including Windows 7 – and told users how to disable VDM as a workaround. Windows’ 64-bit versions are not vulnerable to attack.

Boot Camp Gets Win7 Support

Apple has update its Boot Camp arrangement for users looking to get Windows on to their Macs so that it now officially supports Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7.

When Apple first announced that it would be updating Boot Camp so that it supported Windows 7, it had guaranteed that the update would be available by the end of 2009. While it might not seem as though three weeks is too far over the mark for those anxious to get an officially supported install going, it was enough to provoke some fairly dire speculation about the state of Windows 7 on Mac and how it interacted with Mac OS.

Zune Phones on the Way?

Not content to be the brains behind the guts of Google’s Nexus One, it seems that HTC could have a hand in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 release, alongside LG.

HTC does have a bit of a flair for design 🙂

While this is all purest rumour and speculation for the moment, the folks at Engadget have pointed to LG’s Apollo and HTC’s Obsession to be the flagship devices for Microsoft’s upcoming addition to the mobile space, Windows Mobile 7. While we’re very curious to see some more official details about Windows Mobile 7, the current rumour is that we’ll see two different flavours of the devices, aimed at business and media use respectively.

Microsoft Downplays Google’s China Stance

Microsoft and Hewlett Packard’s executives have both admitted that they won’t be backing Google’s stance in China, after it revealed this week that it had been the target of a major attack.

Despite Google having received word of support from both Yahoo and the White House when it announced that it would no longer be censoring content on its Chinese services, Microsoft and HP have both gone in the opposite direction. Indeed, according to the Financial Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer essentially admitted that China was a big enough market to be worth the headaches.

Google Docs Cloud Getting Bigger

Google has announced that over the next few weeks they’re expanding the capabilities of Google Docs to give you the ability to upload all file types to the cloud. As Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB, the great unwashed have been told have been told that it’s now possible to backup “large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud”.

Google Docs may have increased capabilities but also increased competition

One of the offshoots of this move may be some damage to the USB drive market as many out there may see Google Docs as a more convenient, and cheaper, option for accessing your files on different computers. For any Google Apps Premier Edition customers (anyone?… anyone?… Bueller?) they have been told that they will now also be able to “seamlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications”. Look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs over the next few weeks to confirm that these features have arrived.

Xbox Live to be Windows Mobile Exclusive

Rumours circulating about Xbox Live making the jump to mobile platforms have now been confirmed, but it seems that the service will be made available only to those using Windows Mobile-based devices.

Word comes from Kotaku of a snap taken from Microsoft’s own marketing material, which indicates that the service, once it’s made available on mobile devices, will be known as Xbox Live Games. This move would see Microsoft expanding Xbox Live in the same general manner as it’s indicated it’d like to extend the Zune brand, making the service available on a variety of different devices.