Microsoft's hardware and software strategies for Windows 8 have been miserable failures so far. A rumored 7-inch Surface is one avenue for them to turn the tide. Read More >>

"Bugging" in the context of politics raises images of burglars messing with telephones and clunky tape recorders in the Oval Office. Now you'd just use malware. Read More >>

For those of you expecting a major new version of Windows already, that's not the way the world works. Windows Blue, likely to be released as Windows 8.1, will focus on incremental improvements in the new Modern UI. Read More >>

The new Calendar and Contacts apps in Windows 8 will not synchronize with Google at all, and Google email is limited to IMAP from now on. Google users will probably have to use the browser versions because Google has no plans to write Windows 8 apps. Read More >>

Microsoft has allowed that something called "Windows Blue" exists. Too bad the company seems hell-bent on taking Windows in the wrong direction. Read More >>

A leak of an allegedly major revision of Windows 8 hit the web last week. Microsoft's focus seems to be on developing the Metro interface, but will they ever actually remove the desktop? Absurd!The desktop is a major strength of Windows! Read More >>

Until today — March 12, 2013 — Internet Explorer 10 in the new Windows UI allowed Adobe Flash content only when the site was on a special Microsoft-controlled whitelist. Now all sites are allowed except those on a special Microsoft-controlled blacklist. It's probably a concession to usability problems. Read More >>

25 years from today, January 19, 2038, at 03:14:08 UTC, a lot of software will fail if it's not fixed, and some has already begun to fail. It's not worthy of Y2K-level panic, at least not yet, but there are still many examples of programs that won't work, and the ensuing problems are beginning to crop up on us. As with Y2K, nobody really knows the extent of the problem and we will learn as time goes by, but with any luck, it will be as big a disaster. Read More >>

For a detailed look at how the Microsoft Surface compares to other hybrids on the market, here is a review of the features in these combination laptop-tablets. We look at 4 Windows 8 hybrids — the Microsoft Surface, Dell XPS 10, Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx K3011 and HP Envy — and one Android hybrid, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Read More >>

Internet Explorer has made great strides in recent years and is now an excellent, very fast browser. Yet it still gets second-rate treatment from developers for whom IE has the taint of "uncool," and it has a small presence on mobile devices. Perhaps the best thing would be for Microsoft to throw in the towel on their Trident browser layout engine and adopt WebKit, the emerging de facto standard. There are also plenty of reasons not to switch browser layout engines. Read More >>

Microsoft has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses since the product's launch and users have downloaded 100 million apps from the Windows Store, according to a top Microsoft officer speaking at CES 2013 today. Read More >>

You would probably assume that volume purchasers get discounts from Apple, as they do from any other company. But how much? We have the numbers. And you don't have to be a real business to take advantage of the discounts — just use the products for business. Read More >>

[2 UPDATES] Google must actually be afraid of Windows Phone, Windows 8 and the Microsoft services associated with them. The threat these pose to Google is serious enough that it doesn't just ignore Windows 8/Phone, but take active measures to make them less usable. The market will speak on this before the FTC gets a chance to deal with it. Read More >>

Google says development dollars are wasted on Microsoft's mobile and tablet platforms. Read More >>

HTML5 video and Apple's refusal to allow Adobe Flash Player on iOS didn't kill Flash, it just changed the way people use it. Flash still offers so many features unavailable in HTML5 -- such as a variety of streaming modes, multicasting, DRM and closed captioning -- that it's still widely used, both on mobile through AIR apps and on the desktop through the browser plugin. Read More >>