WinInsider

Mid-afternoon today, I asked Betanews readers: "Will you buy an Apple iPad?" The responses are in, and the majority of readers say: "No!" I'm with you. Apple's iPad does absolutely nothing to advance the tablet category. The category is part of the problem. Twenty-five days ago I asserted that the "world doesn't need an Apple tablet, or any other." The iPad, like other tablets, suffers the middle child syndrome. The device overlaps features of smartphone below and laptop above.

Looking for a new or better job? Maybe you should delete those old pictures from your Facebook page first. You remember, from that long-ago spring break that show you dressed in a lamp shade and little else.

A new Microsoft-funded survey of 2,500 recruiting professionals and consumers in four major developed nations found that online reputation is important -- very important.

The survey, conducted in December by Cross-tab Marketing Services, found that 70 percent of human resources and recruiting professionals in the U.S. had rejected job candidates due to what they found regarding those individuals online.

Microsoft hasn't said yet when it plans to release the first service pack for Windows 7, but more pieces of what are likely to be bundled into that release seem to be surfacing.

That momentum picked up speed on Monday evening when Microsoft released several non-security patches for Windows 7 and its counterpart Windows Server 2008 R2.

The batch of patches mostly consists of "reliability updates." This is not the first set of reliability updates, which are meant to make the system more stable. Microsoft actually released the first of those in October just before Windows 7's consumer launch.

On Tuesday, Microsoft quietly unveiled a minor upgrade to its little-used Zune PC software, which provides media player functionality and synchronization capabilities for the company's Zune portable players. But after a blogger uncovered references to three unnamed "Phone" devices in the PC software's installer files, speculation aroseagainthat Microsoft would soon start offering Zune-branded smart phones.However, once again, Microsoft has strongly denied these rumors.

"As far as a 'Zune phone,' we have no plans to create a Zune phone," a Microsoft representative told Neowin's Tom Warren yesterday. "It makes sense that someday Zune could be part of a phone experience, but there have been no announcements about how or if that will happen.

Microsoft may deliver a tardy but welcome holiday present when the company reports revenues and earnings for its second quarter of fiscal 2010 on Thursday.

A consensus survey of financial analysts by Thomson Financial found the average figures they believe Microsoft will report will be earnings per share of $0.59 for the quarter, a significant jump from a year ago, when the company brought in EPS of $0.47.

That figure is based on analysts' average revenue predictions of $17.8 billion for the quarter, up from $16.6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Late on Friday, Microsoft published the first Windows Mobile 6.5 software development kit, albeit with no announcement or fanfare. Since the operating system was released last October, the only toolkit for Windows Mobile 6.5 development was released as an add-on component to the Windows Mobile 6 SDK.

The SDK came with images for both "Professional" and "Standard" versions of Windows Mobile 6.5, also known as touch enabled, and non-touch enabled, and it reportedly also included support for the 6.5.3 update and widget development.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Monday said the Internet needs to thrive in China as an engine of free speech and described official online censorship by Beijing as "very limited."

Asked in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America about Google's dispute with China, Gates said the Internet is subject to different kinds of censorship around the world but has proved a consistent success at promoting openness and the exchange of ideas.

"You've got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in, or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there," Gates, the world's richest man, said without mentioning Google by name.

Microsoft last week quietly made some organizational changes to its Entertainment and Devices (E&D) business unit, which is responsible for such lackluster performers as Windows Mobile, Windows Media Center, Zune, and MediaRoom, as well as the Xbox 360. This reorg isn't terribly dramatic, but it does position the software giant to consolidate its consumer-oriented online services, as previously promised.

Before this past week, Microsoft maintained an Interactive Entertainment Business group within the E&D unit that focused on the Xbox and Windows gaming product lines. And there was a TV, video, and music group that focused on Windows Media Center, Zune, and MediaRoom.

There's one perk that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer likes to exercise, as much as the CEO's handlers might like him to stifle some of his out-of-the-blue statements. The head of Microsoft can announce anything he wants, even unrealistic ship dates for important products.

Last week, in a speech to the Nashville Technology Council at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tenn., Ballmer pulled a classic. The outspoken CEO either got a little ahead of his developers or he pre-announced early availability of Office 2010. It wouldn't be the first time for either scenario.

"You'll see the new version of Office [2010], which comes out here in just a couple of months," Ballmer told the audience. He didn't elaborate, however.

Microsoft is still keeping the industry guessing as to what it will actually show and promise at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain next month.

In the interim, however, Taiwan-based news site, DigiTimes, claims its sources at several of Microsoft's mobile hardware partners have provided it with inside information.

The site said in an article Friday that the software giant will not only announce a September ship date to OEMs for Windows Phone 7, but will also debut an intermediate version, called Windows Phone 6.6, at the show. (Last summer, Microsoft quietly renamed the various versions of Windows Mobile, or WM, to Windows Phone, or WP.)