The Xbox 360 is the most advanced video game console on the market right now. But apparently, high-def graphics and stereo surround sound aren't enough for everyone.
Microsoft recently began a promotion to showcase a "new" retro game each Wednesday on its Xbox Live Arcade casual games service. A subscription to Xbox Live, the company's online service, is required to download and play.
I checked out several titles available such as the recently added "Frogger," as well as a few classics that have been available on Xbox Live Arcade for a while now like "Robotron: 2084" and "Joust."
For the most part, these arcade games capture the look, sound and feel of the originals, sans a quarter slot.
California consumers and businesses will soon receive $1.1 billion in delayed payouts from Microsoft to settle antitrust claims against the world's biggest software maker, lawyers in the case said on Wednesday.
Beginning in August, Californians who have filed claims will receive vouchers that can be redeemed for cash during the next four years, said Richard Grossman, whose law firm represented plaintiffs in the class-action case.
A California court had approved the settlement in July 2004, but a single class member had held up distribution of the money over his objection that the agreement called for unclaimed benefits to go to the state's public schools.
Samsung is planning to sell a flash memory-based drive that would help boost the performance of desktops and notebooks running Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system.
The drive's data-storage chips hold 4GB of flash memory that's used to launch applications faster than hard-disk drives. The new technology takes advantage of a Vista feature called ReadyBoost, which uses a flash drive to augment RAM. The Samsung drive holds data even when the power is off.
"By caching hard-drive data using Samsung's flash SSD (solid-state disk) and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, a typical user will see performance gains that will make working with their PC lightning fast," Don Barnetson, director of flash marketing for Samsung, said in a statement released Tuesday.
When Microsoft unveils an update to the beta of its Office 2007 later this summer, it will modify parts of the user interface that have attracted criticism, the product's UI lead program manager said this week.
The Ribbon, a new top-of-the-window feature in most of the suite's applications -- including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- takes up too much space, say many beta users and reviewers . In response, the next Office 2007 update, a so-called Technical Refresh, will include changes to the Ribbon.
Microsoft will host a crowd of financial analysts on campus Thursday for its annual financial analyst meeting. In attendance, analysts whose opinions help make or break the company's stock price. And this year's event, dubbed the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2006, promises to be the most important in recent years.
Much has changed for Microsoft in the past year. The company has restructured -- twice. Chairman Bill Gates announced he will leave in two years. An outsider -- Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes -- has already succeeded to Gates' position as corporate visionary and chief software architect.
Microsoft closed its acquisition of VPN vendor Whale Communications on Wednesday, and outlined
a road map for how it would integrate Whale's products into its own security portfolio.
Microsoft will continue to sell existing Whale products, the Whale Intelligent Application Gateway and Whale's application
optimizers, and is offering a 25 percent discount on them until Dec. 31, 2006, said Steve Brown, a director of product management
for Microsoft.
Pricing for the Whale Intelligent Application Gateway starts at $18,000, while pricing for the application optimizers varies
based on the number of concurrent users and applications accessed, Microsoft said.
Microsoft on Wednesday released a tool that will let enterprises indefinitely postpone upgrading to the new Internet Explorer 7 browser when it debuts later this year.
Although IE 7 for Windows XP remains in beta testing, the company wanted to offer the blocker now, said Gary Schare, director of product management for IE, because of lessons learned.
"We issued a blocker for Windows XP SP2 after the fact, but it was late in the game," Schare said, talking about a tool that Microsoft rushed into customer's hands in 2004. "With IE 7 we want to give enterprises ample time to deploy the blocker toolkit so that they can test IE 7 on their timeline."
A blocker was also issued in 2005 for Windows Server 2003 SP1 that let enterprises fend off the update until March of this year.
In a May 2006 report, John R. Rymer, vice president of Application Development and Infrastructure at Forrester Research, and his team characterize the Office 2007 system as a "serious" application platform that offers enterprise developers another option for building customized Windows clients and collaboration applications. Microsoft's goal, according to Forrester Research, is to make Office part of a broader application platform, along with its Windows servers -- BizTalk, SQL, SharePoint -- and the .NET Framework. Senior Editor of our sister publication Application Development Trends Kathleen Richards talked with John Rymer to find out how developers can benefit from re-evaluating Office as a development platform.
Microsoft announced it has begun shipping Beta 1 of Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 edition. However, the beta is billed as "private."
The service pack focuses on the "fundamentals of improving security, reliability, performance, compatibility, interoperability, management and deployment," the company said in a statement.
SP2 includes all current security updates for Windows Server 2003, as well as all previously released hotfixes aimed at addressing issues uncovered by specific customers after SP1 shipped.
Microsoft is thought to be readying a Windows Live Healthcare service, as well as other new health-focused portal and content wares. Will the Redmond software maker beat Google Health out of the gate?
The next Microsoft-Google battleground could end up being the healthcare space.
Microsoft is set to announce a number of new healthcare products and initiatives on July 26 during a press event in Washington, D.C. Microsoft officials declined to specify exactly what Peter Neupert, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Health Solutions, will unveil at next week's event. But the company may opt to roll out plans for a Windows Live Healthcare service, the existence of which has been the subject of rumors for the past few months.