A federal district judge in Rhode Island Tuesday overturned a jury verdict and its huge damages award, thus nullifying a patent infringement case that went against Microsoft last spring.
The case had pitted the software titan's legal eagles against tiny Uniloc USA, a California software firm owned by an Australian company, which claimed that Microsoft had infringed its patent for activating software.
Uniloc sued Microsoft in October 2003 in regard to 13 of its patented software activation technologies. It claimed that Microsoft had used Uniloc's technologies in four Microsoft products -- Office XP, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and a discontinued product called Digital Media Plus.
During a Microsoft event in San Francisco today, Sept. 29, Steve Ballmer seemed to suggest that those businesses determined to stick with Windows XP as "good enough" may find themselves outpaced sooner rather than later.
In response to a question about whether "good enough" had become the dominant discussion point in business, "You will get pushed to be efficient," Ballmer said. "You'll need to take costs out of what you're doing today to do innovative things tomorrow," he added. "The business isn't going to stop; you're going to have to innovate."
The flood of new notebooks due to crest in retail outlets on October 22, the day Windows 7 launches, got just a little bigger today with the announcement of two new affordable, ultra-thin notebooks from Toshiba.
Both laptops are part of a new line, the T100 series. They are modest in screen size ? just 11.6 inches for the T115 and 13.3 inches for the T135, and very thin. Both are under one inch in thickness, thanks to the use of Intel ultra-low voltage processors.
The T100 Series of laptops are designed to be ready at a moment's notice by offering a fast resume from hibernation. Thanks to battery efficiency and power saving enhancements, Toshiba claims it can deliver up to 9 hours of battery life. They meet both Energy Star 5 and EPEAT Gold compliance for power efficiency.
A little over three weeks until global availability (GA) day for Windows 7, major software retailers have heavily discounted pre-orders for the OEM full-installation editions (minimal packaging), with Newegg offering the Home Premium SKU at $99.99. That's half the price of the MSRP for the full retail edition, and four cents more than a retail upgrade package.
But that's still not the least expensive option. For an indeterminate period of time, Newegg has slashed $20 off the OEM price of the Vista Home Premium SKU, marking it down to $89.99 and leaving the free Windows 7 Tech Guarantee upgrade coupon attached. It's a little less convenient, you're stuck with a copy of Vista you may never use, and your Windows 7 version is an upgrade rather than a full install, but you save ten bucks. In fact, the version without the Tech Guarantee coupon is $10 more; you would actually spend more money not to get the Win7 upgrade coupon.
Look for a way to fix your credit or transfer money on Microsoft's Bing these days and you'll get some friendly advice from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC has teamed up with Microsoft to place public service announcements in search results, every time someone searches for one of these terms.The idea is to lend a helping hand to consumers who get targeted with mortgage foreclosure or credit scams and turn to Bing for more information. A search for "fix my credit," for example, generates about a dozen ads, but one of them is an FTC public service announcement entitled "Avoid Credit Repair Scams."
Microsoft Tuesday began shipping its free Security Essentials package, with time to spare before its year-end deadline.
The new package replaces Microsoft's ill-fated Live OneCare package, which never quite caught on.
Executives decided to cut Live OneCare -- part of its Windows Live online services bundle -- last fall.
OneCare, which offered maintenance, backup and performance tuning in addition to security, was discontinued at the end of June. Originally codenamed "Morro" and now renamed Microsoft Security Essentials, the new anti-malware engine is meant to at least partially replace OneCare.
Microsoft has given small system builders the green light to start selling new Windows 7 PCs more than a week before the general launch date of October 22, a Seattle-area computer maker said today.
According to Jon Bach, the president of Puget Systems, several Microsoft representatives have told him that his company, which sells custom PCs nationally out of its Auburn, Wash. facility, can install Windows 7 on new machines, then sell and ship them to customers on October 13.
That date is nine days before the worldwide October 22 launch Microsoft has touted, when Windows 7 upgrades are to go on sale at retail -- and when large computer manufacturers, such as HP and Dell, will start selling systems.
Perhaps you've read an article this week purporting to offer new details on "Windows 8," or whatever Microsoft's next client operating system will be called, only to be perturbed at discovering at the end that you were the one being asked to supply the details. The expectation among many observers is that Windows 8 will be a lot like Windows 7, maybe something less than the great leap forward that a "point-oh" release typically implies.
But that doesn't mean there aren't folks at Microsoft (or at least, folks being funded by Microsoft) who are unaware that such a significant advance may be necessary within the next few years. Granted, simply because a project is being undertaken at Microsoft Research is no guarantee that anything that culminates from it will ever be put to use (case in point: HTTP-NG). On the other hand, to paraphrase a slogan formerly used by PBS, if Microsoft doesn't do it, who will?
The man jumping around and wildly waving his arms and kicking his legs on the Microsoft booth at the Tokyo Game Show isn't crazy. He's gaming.
Kudo Tsunoda, creative director for Microsoft's immersive gaming system, Project Natal, brought the latest prototype of the system to Japan and on Friday I had a chance to try it out.
Microsoft is developing Natal to be launched in 2010. A camera tracks gamers and matches their real-life movements to those of an on-screen character. It works in the infrared range so is quite accurate and doesn't require a complicated set-up, special lighting or backdrop. The system also includes a microphone for audio feedback into games, though that wasn't demonstrated in Tokyo.
Microsoft on Thursday said it has discontinued the mobile versions of its Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) products. The first mobile Dynamics product, Dynamics AX Mobile Sales, was introduced in 2007 and let sales people remotely place and track orders, query sales histories and manage advertising campaigns from Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft also offered development tools for businesses to build their own mobile offerings based on Dynamics.