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Windows 7 promises better performance with NAND SSDs
Microsoft’s plans for improving performance of SSD drives in Windows 7 are starting to emerge concrete with some solutions.
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Manufacturers like Seagate or Sandisk are working to finish their cut of the work as much as possible, and Microsoft is trying to make the Windows 7 fit as best as it can to the new storage [...] -
Microsoft promises new search ‘instant answers’
Microsoft’s Live Search engine can provide what the company calls “instant answers” to various questions, and the company said on Wednesday it plans to expand the feature in the next month.
Current instant answers show up for some queries for encyclopedia facts, traffic, and horoscopes, according to a blog post from Live Search Product Manager Theo [...]
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The Short List for U.S. Chief Technology Officer
Barack Obama says that the U.S. is not doing nearly enough to create jobs through technology. Shortly after he launched his campaign, the Illinois Senator promised that if elected, he would create the first-ever Cabinet-level post of chief technology officer. The economic crisis has since made it certain that a White House CTO would become [...]
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Microsoft’s PDC event: The most important ever?
The PDC (Professional Developers Conference) is ground zero for Microsoft’s big new ideas. This year’s event, which kicks off on October 27, promises to be the most momentous since 2003, when Microsoft began talking up the technologies underlying Longhorn — which eventually spawned Vista, Windows Server 2008, and a bunch of important Web services protocols.
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The [...] -
How Microsoft will compete with ‘free’
How do you compete with free? That’s the question Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, is trying to answer every morning when he goes to work. On the server software side, Windows Server is doing well, especially with the Exchange e-mail server and the unheralded but very good collaboration server, SharePoint. These products have matured, they’re relatively [...]
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Microsoft promises huge patch day next week
Microsoft Corp. said it will issue 11 security updates next week — the same number it shipped in August when it pushed out the most patches in 18 months — to fix bugs in Windows, Active Directory, Internet Explorer (IE), Office and Host Integration Server.
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Four of the 11 updates will be labeled "critical," Microsoft’s highest [...] -
Microsoft Launches PC Advisor Repair Utility. Going After Apple Next?
This weekend, Microsoft quietly rolled out a preview release of the Microsoft PC Advisor to select members of the Windows Feedback Program. (Members of the Windows Feedback Program agree to let Microsoft monitor their machines closely, and Microsoft uses that data to determine what types of problems real users experience.) The invitation to try out [...]
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New Visualizations at Work
Microsoft’s tools for building rich Internet applications (RIAs)-ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight 2-promise to help take the "developer ugly" out of line-of-business software.
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The catch? Training your developers to know when and how to use this mix of tooling to render high-performance business apps that advance the user experience.
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Several sessions at last month’s technology conference VSLive! New [...]