If you’ve become fed up of looking at themes with backgrounds and wallpapers from planet earth, why not expand your horizons with this latest theme from Microsoft. The NASA Spacescapes theme brings you a whole new experience from out of this world. Back in April I brought you the which you were fairly impressed by, so I thought you’d be inte.. more »

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, is making his case for the rejuvenation ofMicrosoft‘s consumer products at the company’s financial analystmeeting. Among the many topics covered by Ballmer, a few may be of interest to us especially: tablet PC’s, XBox and Bing. When talking about Microsoft’s answer to the iPad, Ballmer does seem to acknowledge Microsof.. more »

Microsoft today released the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), a new tool to help IT administrators send anti-exploit mitigations like ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) to older versions of Windows. Older Windows Systems, open to vulnerabilities technique which works by randomly re-arranging .. more »

In the past two parts of this series I’ve written about what it’s like to try and get a in the first place, an just how difficult it can be (sometimes taking several years), and then what the is like. But with those out of the way the actual process of writing the book begins, and this is where it gets really difficult! My new book for Micr.. more »

One of the cool little features that arose from the ashes of the disaster known as Windows Vista was the Reliability Monitor. A little-known tool which is almost hidden within the action center, the Reliability tool is great for tracking your computers reliability. I remember using it when I was running Vista and nearly forgot about it until I was .. more »

Microsoft, and a number of other people, andblogshave been touting the success of Windows 7. Part of theeffecthas been that many computers are selling as a result of Windows 7. However,severalsites have reported that this may not be the case. windows 7 hp Do the Microsoft Windows 7 Sold Numbers Really Add Up? Onesurveycame from Fiberlink .. more »

Microsoft recently revealed that handset manufacturers would not be able toreskinWindows Phone 7 devices wholesale.However, as it turns out, there is at least onemajorOEM that is still looking towards software to help differentiate its phones. 2HTC Making Sense of UISense HTC, formerly known as, High Tech Computer Corporation, is a Taiwanese-based .. more »

For a detailed look at the announcement and arrangement between ARM and Microsoft, you can read Mike Halsey’s article “What does the new Microsoft/ARM arrangement mean?”. What I’m doing is trying to figure out what this means, if anything, for Windows. Microsoft announced on Friday that is has acquired a license for ARM processors. For anyone f.. more »

Yesterday, July 19, a variety of technical news sources began reviewing the pre-pre-release of the Windows Phone 7. Considering Microsoft’s recent decision to kill the Kin mobile phone last month, and which only had a commercial lifetime of about three months, many techies turned their attention to what would be Microsoft’s newest mobile phone rele.. more »

With the help of the SmartScreen filter, IE 8, Microsoft’s standard Internet browser prevented 1 billion malware attacks or downloads. In a Microsoft on Friday, Microsoft noted that the growing number of socially engineering attacks like malware are posing a greater threat on the Internet. They are one of the most common risks to people’s onli.. more »

Ok, I’ll be honest, when your giving a sales pitch for Windows 7, you’d have some pretty convincing figures to back you up. For instance, under a month ago, Microsoft had shipped 150 million licenses for the OS. That worked out at an impressive in the 8 months it had been released. Now speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2010, .. more »

Have you ever wanted to rip a DVD movie but eventually got tied up in knots when trying to choose a suitable video codec or understand what “VBV buffer rate” even meant? What about that day you were anxious to watch a video on your brand new iPhone, only just to find out that it doesn’t work because it’s of the wrong format?! You might have faced.. more »

A couple of weeks back I the first part of my series about what it’s like to write a Windows 7for Microsoft Press. My new book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out Getting the book deal in the first place was complicated, as I wrote, and was the culmination of a few years work that saw me having to self-publish my own book first, but then cam.. more »

There is a new malware that has been spreading through USB devices. It affects all versions of Windows. Itis programmedtostealdatafrom systems thatrunspecific software created by Siemens used in industrial manufacturing plants, utilities and even nuclear powered aircraft carriers.It is a worm that exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in .. more »

Microsoft have already confirmed with us that Windows 7 SP1 won’t be made available to customers until the first half of 2011 at least. Initially we thought that maybe SP1 would arrive sometime towards the end of 2010, but it doesn’t look like that’s on the cards anymore. However a who appears to have been correct with previous Microsoft predic.. more »

What do Xbox, Microsoft Office, Zune, Bing, WinMo, Windows Live, Hotmail and Exchange all have in common? If you guessed Windows Phone 7, then you are correct. Finally, in a move that many Microsoft fans have been waitingyears, nay, decades for–the collaboration of many of Microsoft’s products into one device. Microsoft is a hugely diverse comp.. more »

microsoft security essentials icon New Microsoft Security Essentials Beta now AvailableMicrosoft have released the beta of a new version of Microsoft Security Essentials, their free anti-virus package for Windows. Microsoft Security essentials, also known as MSE, was first released in September last year and uses the same award-winning anti-virus .. more »

The War of the Browsers is on full steam. This involves Internet Explorer v9, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. While IE has been the dominant browser for the last few years, it has had its market share compromised by the growth of Chrome, and Firefox. At the heart of this is speed. While IE 8 was an average performing browser, Chrome and Firefox .. more »

In the latest twist in the Will they / Won’t they, HP Tablet / Windows 7 story, the company has now filed a trademark application for “PalmPad”, as reported by The company has previously stated quiet categorically that it had no plans to release tablets running the WebOS operating system that HP acquired when they bought Palm recently. It seems .. more »

Liveside.net has reported that a user in the UK has been able to access a screen for the Zune Pass subscription service. Thisis important because Zune Pass has only been available to US consumers and maybe some in Canada, I’ll have to double check that last one though. For those unaware of the service, Zune Pass is essentially a subscription mu.. more »