Windows

Staples in dangling a $400 trade-in deal to steer customers toward Windows 8 devices.

How does it work? The retailer's "Trade up to touch" Web page explains the process.

You first have to buy a Windows 8 touch device from Staples. It can be an all-in-one PC, a notebook, or a tablet, but it must be one of the qualifying items on the retailer's list. The list includes all-in-ones from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, laptops from Lenovo and Asus, and the various flavors of Microsoft's Surface RT and Pro tablets.

You then identify the device that … Read more

Windows 8 is winning over more users, but it's doing so at a snail's pace.

Microsoft's latest OS took home 2.67 percent of all global traffic seen by Web tracker NetApplications last month. That put it in fourth place among all operating system versions, just ahead of Mac OS X 10.8 and behind Windows Vista.

But that was only a slight rise from January's figure of 2.26 percent, which itself jumped from 1.72 percent in December and 1.09 percent in November.

Windows 7 remained in first place though its share was … Read more

Those of you who recently bought a Windows 7 PC can score Windows 8 for just $15, but you'll have to register by the end of the day Thursday.

To drum up interest in its latest OS, Microsoft cooked up a couple of upgrade deals last year.

The first one allowed any user of Windows 7, Vista, or XP to upgrade to Windows 8 for $40. That deal ended January 31.

The second one lets people who bought a Windows 7 PC between June 2 of last year and January 31 of this year get Windows 8 Pro for … Read more

More rumors about Microsoft's next Windows release, codenamed Blue, are trickling out from Win8China.com, a site known for leaking information about new Windows releases.

Though I cannot corroborate all Win8China's specifics, I'd say based on previous Windows Blue tidbits I've heard, the site's latest Blue information seems largely believable.

In August 2012, I blogged about Microsoft's Windows Blue work, noting that a summer 2013 debut was the internal Microsoft delivery target. Win8China claimed today that the release-to-manufacturing phase for Windows Blue is supposedly June 7, with retail availability planned for August 2013.

Looking … Read more

Sales of Microsoft's Surface may not set the tablet world on fire, but CEO Steve Ballmer still sees a key role for the device.

In an interview published today by MIT Technology Review, Ballmer snuck past the initial question of whether he was pleased with Surface sales.

"I'm super-glad we did Surface," Ballmer said in response. "I think it is important -- and not just for Microsoft but for the entire Windows ecosystem -- to see integrated hardware and software."

But the CEO did concede that Surface isn't likely to dominate the PC … Read more

It is nearly impossible to hear the acronym "IE" in a workplace setting without somebody appending to it the word "sucks." To be more genteel about it, older versions of Internet Explorer on corporate computers simply do not reflect the quality of modern browsers. So why does that massive corporation you work for make you use IE 8 or older in the first place?

A complicated problem Why you're forced to do at least some work in slow, standards noncompliant, security risk-prone legacy versions of Internet Explorer comes down to your employer's need to … Read more

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is doing his first-ever Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit today.

Gates started posting answers to questions promptly at 10:45 a.m. PT, as planned. From the introduction, it seemed clear Gates intended to focus the AMA on his job heading the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. ("Many of you know me from my Microsoft days. The company remains very important to me and I'm still chairman. But today my full time work is with the foundation.")

But one of the first questions Gates answered was about Microsoft. Here's the exchange:… Read more

Microsoft is deploying a larger bunch of bug fixes this month than usual.

Next week's Patch Tuesday will address 57 different security vulnerabilities through 12 separate updates.

The bugs stretch across a range of programs, including Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft's .Net Framework.

Five of the 12 patches are rated critical, so they're designed to patch holes that could allow someone to execute malicious code on an unprotected PC. Two of the critical patches are aimed at all versions of Internet Explorer from 6 through 10. That means all current versions of Windows … Read more

As we've known for a few months, the Windows client team at Microsoft is working on its first "feature pack" update for Windows 8, supposedly due this summer/fall, which is code-named Blue.

But it turns out Blue isn't a Windows thing only, according to one very accurate tipster of mine who doesn't want to be identified.

Blue also is the way Microsoft is referring to the next substantial platform update for Windows Phone, the Windows Services (like SkyDrive, Hotmail, etc.), and Windows Server, according to my source. In other words, Blue is a wave … Read more