Mary Jo

eWEEK columnist David Morgenstern makes a case for why Apple is well positioned to sell even more Macs to a power-hungry premium audience. With Windows Vista, Microsoft also is looking for ways to sell more premium SKUs (at premium prices) to the same kinds of users who’ve been at Apple’s core. Microsoft has identified 14 […]

Users have been asking how, when and if they will be able to upgrade directly from older versions of Windows to Vista. The official – and confusing – word on Vista upgrades is in. Inside Microsoft blogger Nathan Weinberg summarizes: “If you have Windows 2000 or a 64-bit version of XP, you’ll be installing from […]

During the Black Hat security confab this week, a security researcher is set to demo a new technique for defeating the device-driver-signing feature that Microsoft is adding to Vista. Rather than improve user security by allowing only signed drivers to load, the exploit loads a rootkit on Vista.

Microsoft has started to provide sneak peeks of the first technology to be hatched by its LiveLabs organization. Officials showed off the technology, code-named “PhotoSynth,” at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting this week. They also are set to provide a preview next week at SIGGRAPH. PhotoSynth “takes a large collection of photos of a place […]

The tester count for Office 2007 Beta 2 is now at more than three million. Given “how dramatically the beta 2 downloads have exceeded (Microsoft’s) goals,” the company has decided to start charging $1.50 per download for Office Server 2007 to help the company recover costs, officials said on July 28. Microsoft will continue to […]

Microsoft is recalling — primarily from its OEM and system builder partners – the Windows Small Business Server R2 bits the company released in mid-July, Microsoft officials said on July 28. Microsoft is recalling approximately 3,000 SKUs that included old code modules. As a result, general availability of SBS 2003 R2 will now be September […]

From Microsoft Watch: Microsoft has made it to prototype stage with a technology that it is calling FonePlus. FonePlus is WebTV running on a cell phone. Microsoft is investigating whether this kind of a product might be more useful to potential customers in developing nations than, say, a stripped-down version of Windows or some kind […]

REDMOND – Add to Microsoft’s lower -cost computing alternatives designed for the developing world a new cell phone operating system, known as FonePlus. Microsoft officials showed a prototype of the platform at the company’s day-long Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) here on July 27. Microsoft has been dabbling with a number of different platforms with which […]

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie provided Wall Street analysts attending Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting with a high-level, theoretical look at Microsoft’s online services business. Bottom line: Microsoft doesn’t see Live as just a bunch of disconnected online services. Windows Live is also a development platform. Windows Live will be the hub for all of […]

From Microsoft Watch: Microsoft shared on Thursday at its Financial Analyst Meeting more details of its hopes and plans for Zune, its portable media player, that is due out this fall. The big-picture game plan is to try to recreate with Zune the online service/community success that it has built with Xbox Live. In fact, […]