Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's blog covers the products, people and strategies that make Microsoft tick.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Microsoft has yet to post a beta build of Visual Studio "Orcas." But the product is still slated to ship in 2007, according to Scott Guthrie, General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Division.
It's almost exactly one month until Daylight Savings Time (DST) changes take effect in the U.S. and a growing number of other countries. The week of February 12, Microsoft will start pushing out to Windows users updates that they will need in order to keep their computer system clocks running on time.
Just when you were getting used to Microsoft's new "Windows Live Mail" branding, Microsoft goes back to Hotmail.
officelabs, sources say, is a new kind of incubator that is taking shape inside the Microsoft Business Division. It's a fledgling group that is going to operate more like the Windows Live team than the Office one, by tossing a bunch of new products over the transom in beta form and watching to see what sticks.
Standards battles tend to be all about politics and politicking, as the increasingly heated Open Document Format (ODF) vs. Open Office XML (OOXL) file-format contest proves.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that Apple allegedly is planning an anti-Vista campaign that will be waged from within Apple's 170 retail stores?
"Quattro," a k a Windows Home Server, has been a puzzle to me, in terms of its codename. It didn't seem to fit with the other members of the Windows Server family: Longhorn Server, Cougar, Centro, etc. Here's the story behind the Quattro codename.
One of the most surprising features of Windows Home Server, the product formerly codenamed "Quattro" (and later, "Q") is how Microsoft managed to keep it a secret until it was officially unveiled in early January.
On January 29, Microsoft posted on the Office Live blog a status update on its plan to transition nearly 200,000 beta testers to the final version of Office Live. The news isn't good
Microsoft quietly raised last week its per-incident support prices across the board for Windows and Office. Officials are attributing the changes to a desire "to provide more personalized support options based on customers’ technology usage."