Microsoft plans to drop all of its Zune models except for a new high-definition version that is due out in two weeks, the company confirmed Wednesday.
Microsoft said it will continue to offer the flash Zune 4GB, 8GB and 16GB devices and the 80GB and 120GB hard-drive devices until they are sold out. However, the Zune HD device -- which will be available Sept. 15 and features a touch screen, HD radio, HD video-out capabilities and an Internet browser -- will be the sole Zune device the company manufactures going forward.
As the clock ticks closer to the official launch of Windows 7, Microsoft continues to bang the gong about the new system, hoping to pre-sell more copies before the sales race really begins in earnest.
This week, it's talking up volume upgrade discounts and free trial copies for enterprise users.
Microsoft said that as of Tuesday, Sept. 1, it had made the final release bits available to customers that don't already have a Software Assurance contract via its Volume License Resellers channel.
Microsoft today said phones powered by the latest version of Windows Mobile, version 6.5, are debuting worldwide on Oct. 6.
Carriers and handset makers listed for Microsoft releases in North America include AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, Telus and Verizon Wireless, and phone manufacturers HP, HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba.
The software giant said the new 6.5 handsets will be "Windows phones," with clear branding to appeal to users familiar with the company.
"We discovered that most people who carry a Windows phone don't realize it's running Windows Mobile," Stephanie Ferguson, general manager for Windows Mobile product management, wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft Tuesday said that a community technology preview of the next embedded version of Windows is now available for download.
Based on Windows 7, the CTP of Windows Embedded Standard 2011 is available to OEMs as well as developers of devices that use Windows Embedded, Microsoft said. The product was previously codenamed Quebec.
"We encourage the embedded community to take full advantage of the CTP's availability and join in our excitement as we look ahead to the future availability of Windows Embedded platforms incorporating Windows 7 technologies," Kevin Dallas, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Embedded Business, said in a statement.
With just a day left until September arrives, Microsoft confirmed Monday it will not hit an August deadline to begin the technical preview of its upcoming Office 2010 Web applications, but said the test releases are pending.
At its Worldwide Partner Conference in mid-July, Microsoft began a technical preview of the PC-based Office 2010 suite involving tens of thousands of invitation-only participants.
At the time, company officials said that the Web-based versions, which will run in Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox browsers, would begin technical previews in August.
Microsoft on Monday refuted a post by a prominent blogger that said the company designed the first iteration of Bing specifically to help people find items to purchase online.In a statement through its public relations firm, Microsoft said that while helping people shop online is a major focus of Bing, it is only one of four the company had in mind in June when it released the search engine, a revamped and rebranded version of its Live Search.
"In June's release, we focused on four key areas where people are spending their time when searching," Microsoft said in the e-mailed statement.
Microsoft gained some help this week from its two largest PC partners who asked the court to let them join in the company's Word lawsuit as so-called "friends of the court."
Dell and Hewlett-Packard both filed what are known as "amicus curiae" briefs with the appeals court asking to have their positions considered when the court examines the software giant's request for a stay of the lower court's permanent injunction on selling Word. The injunction is currently set to go into effect on October 10.
Intel plans to release its sixth generation of the popular mobile platform known as Centrino just in time for the October release of Windows 7.
The platform, codenamed "Calpella," will be the launch of Intel's Nehalem architecture on laptops.
An Intel spokesperson declined to comment, but a source familiar with the plans confirmed that Intel will have Calpella-based products in stores for Windows 7's launch on Oct. 22.
Intel tends to update the Centrino line about once a year. It introduced the previous generation, Montevina, last July.
Microsoft is seeking to patent a method for using a popular human-verification technology on the Web to deliver advertising to a captive audience.
However, Microsoft may run into some resistance along the way, as it's not the first time someone has thought about the ideas it's trying to patent.
Many Web sites and online services use what are called CAPTCHAs -- short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. They require a user to prove that he or she is not an online "bot" by interpreting distorted text and numbers in a display box and typing those characters into a text input box.
"Where's the beef?" That's the idiom that jumps to mind as I work my way through Galen Gruman's "The 7 best features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard." I knew the features list would be lean -- Apple has deliberately undersold Snow Leopard by pitching it as a relatively minor release -- but please! Gruman's article reads like a laundry list of borrowed features and derivative works. It's as if someone at Apple grabbed a copy of the Windows 7 beta and simply Xeroxed the release notes.
For example:
64-bitness: Yippee,! Apple finally goes 64-bit -- BFD! As a Windows user, I've been livin' la vida 64-bit for more than three years. Vista was the first mainstream desktop OS to deliver a viable 64-bit experience, and Windows 7 has taken this migration further by making it the preferred flavor for business users.