Source: Microsoft relea...

Nearing its first birthday, Microsoft's Windows 7 is starting to grab more customers than its predecessor, Vista, according to new stats released Wednesday by Net Applications.

Microsoft plans to again sell a 'family pack' of Windows 7 that includes three copies of the Home Premium edition of the operating system.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

Microsoft offered such a bundle when Windows 7 launched, but billed it as a limited-time offer. In less than two months, supplies had largely run out. The Windows 7 Family pack will go back on sale on Oct. 3 for a suggested price of $149.99. As before, the licenses are upgrade copies, meaning each computer already needs to be properly licensed for Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Once again, Microsoft is choosing to sell only a limited number of family packs.

Microsoft and Yahoo say they are moving forward with their effort to transition search advertisers to Redmond's set of search ad tools.

Beginning Tuesday, Yahoo advertisers can begin migrating their campaigns to Microsoft's AdCenter, though users will still need to use both Yahoo and Microsoft tools for a while longer. The companies hope to start the shift of Yahoo ads to AdCenter in mid-October and complete the shift by the end of that month.

However, the two companies continue to give themselves wiggle room on the date.

'Microsoft and Yahoo will continue to seek input from advertisers as we work to complete the transition,' Microsoft general manager David Pann said in a blog post. 'While we expect the paid search transition to be complete by the end of October, and we are on track to reach that goal, we still may consider holding off on the full integration of paid search until 2011 if we feel that the transition will in any way impact the holiday season.'

After more than a month of living with Windows Phone 7, I have to say, Microsoft's new phone operating system is starting to grow on me.

Although I liked the general look of the operating system, I suspected its simplicity was only skin deep and that over time I would uncover both annoying glitches and places where the phone was all too much like a little computer.

Instead, there are hidden delights. In the past week I've found the cursor, voice recognition, and other things that I missed in my first days playing with the phone. Here are just a few examples of features that I only recently noticed: if you are in an e-mail or other place where one might want a cursor, hold a finger down in one place and a cursor pops up that you can then drag to the place you want to go. Click to the left of an e-mail and it brings up the check boxes that can be used to delete multiple e-mails--one of the most common tasks people do on their phones.

As VMWare prepares for this week's annual conference, Microsoft is looking to steal both the company's thunder and its customers.

In an advertisement in Tuesday's USA Today, Microsoft urges VMware customers to think twice before signing a new long-term contract with the virtualization company.

'VMware is asking many of you to sign three-year license agreements for your virtualization projects,' Microsoft vice president Brad Anderson writes in an open letter to VMware customers. 'But with the arrival of cloud computing, signing up for a three-year virtualization commitment may lock you into a vendor that cannot provide you with the breadth of technology, flexibility or scale, that you'll need to build a complete cloud computing environment.'

Microsoft's open letter to VMware customers, to be published in USA Today on Aug. 31. (Click to see larger version)

Microsoft has confirmed plans to build a large new data center in Mecklenburg County, Va., as the company is once again expanding its data center operations.

In a press release from the Virginia governor's office, Microsoft said it will spend up to $499 million to open the facility, which will use its latest modular, fourth-generation approach and will be located near the town of Boydton. The governor's office touted the plant as 'the largest economic investment in Southern Virginia history.'

Microsoft was quite vague in its description of the center, saying only that it would use the company's latest modular design, which can be almost entirely pre-outfitted with computers, networking, and power connections. 'This new data center will enable the best possible delivery of services to our current and future customers,' General Manager Kevin Timmons said in a statement. Microsoft declined to offer any further details.

Bill Mitchell, a corporate vice president who led some of Microsoft's early forays into tablet computing, has left the company in recent months, CNET has learned.

Bill Mitchell

(Credit: Microsoft)

Although Mitchell has been gone from Redmond for a bit, according to sources, his biography had remained on the company's Web site until earlier this month. Microsoft confirmed his departure, but did not offer further details.

Mitchell's listed title was 'Corporate Vice President, PC3 - Platform, Components, Creation & Collaboration' and his biography (as cached by Google) stated that he was 'responsible for strategy, planning and project incubation for the new Windows hardware ecosystem.'

Microsoft has decided to make a series of changes to its Live Sync service including changing the name to the Windows Live Mesh before it is released in final form this fall.

Live Sync, as the product being tested is currently known, is actually a combination of two existing sync services, Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh. Though both services were aimed at making files and settings available across multiple devices, each took a somewhat different approach.

In merging the two services, Microsoft is hoping to make things simpler, though naming has been a challenge. With either name, Microsoft has a challenge to educate users about what the service does, says Dharmesh Mehta, a director in the Windows Live group.

REDMOND, Wash.--One of the features promised as part of the latest update to Hotmail will arrive next week, CNET has learned.

In an interview here on Thursday, Microsoft's Dharmesh Mehta told CNET that Exchange ActiveSync, which will let Hotmail users get push e-mail on cell phones and other devices, will become available on Monday.

A look at the new Hotmail (images)

While many phones support ActiveSync for connecting to an Exchange server, the feature will be most useful on a relatively small number of phones that support dual ActiveSync accounts, including the Palm Pre, the latest iPhone, and the forthcoming Windows Phone 7-based devices. Phone users who don't connect to an Exchange Server but have a device with ActiveSync support will also be able to use the new Hotmail feature.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft plans to offer gamers the opportunity to play with each other in real time from either a console or a Windows Phone 7 device, a manager revealed at Microsoft's X10 conference in Toronto this week.

'We are working on real-time phone-to-console, likely initially through Wi-Fi,' Microsoft Canada mobility solutions manager Greg Milligan said in an interview with Toronto-based tech site RGBfilter.

'That's not on day one,' he said. 'Day one will be turn-by-turn as well as companion-type gaming where you play a level on the phone and it may unlock a level or a weapon or some special achievement on the console game. But yeah, absolutely working on phone-to-console real-time. That's something we're working on and expect to have in the near future.'

(Credit: Bungie Studios)

Those who have downloaded the recently leaked Halo: Reach and plan to play it on Xbox Live should beware: Microsoft will act swiftly to remove you from the online gaming service.

According to Stephen Toulouse, Microsoft's director of Policy Enforcement for Xbox Live, Microsoft will permanently ban anyone who plays the leaked game on Xbox Live.

'As with all unauthorized play on Xbox Live, anyone playing any unauthorized title runs the risk of account 'permaban,'' Toulouse posted on his Twitter feed. 'Remember, legit store-bought copies run no risk of ban. Keyword: unauthorized. We have ways of knowing.'

A week after it began shifting to Bing for its search results, Yahoo says it has finished the transition--at least for its main search results in the U.S. and Canada.

The move comes more than a year after Microsoft and Yahoo reached a deal to partner on search. There is still plenty of work to do as the companies work to shift the more-complicated paid search part of the business and to continue the move internationally.

In a blog post, Yahoo noted that Bing is now powering Web, image, and video search for both desktop and mobile searches.

'The speed in which this was completed is a testament to the great work and partnership between a number of Yahoo and Microsoft employees, the ranks of which are numerous,' Yahoo senior vice president Shashi Seth said in a blog post. 'With this week's milestone behind us, Yahoo will continue to drive technology innovation in the search experience to bring more value to users and advertisers alike.'

Microsoft issued an advisory on Monday about a security issue that could leave many Windows applications vulnerable to attack.

The advisory deals with a type of attack mechanism known as DLL preloading, or binary planting. Although the attack mechanism is not new or entirely unique to Windows, Microsoft acknowledged that there appears to be a new remote-attack vector that could allow more systems to be attacked quickly.

Two researchers at the University of California at Davis published a paper earlier this year on how programs that were vulnerable could be automatically detected. In recent days, security expert and Metasploit creator HD Moore published more information about this issue and is adding the vulnerability to his Metasploit program.

LG has gotten approval from the FCC to start selling this Windows Phone model.

(Credit: CNET)

Although none of the handset makers has officially released details about the devices that will accompany the launch of Windows Phone 7 this fall, we're starting to get a pretty good idea of what's coming.

Photos, videos or details on a handful of models have leaked to the Web including LG's keyboard-enabled c900, the touchscreen-only e900, HTC's Mozart, and Samsung's i917.

With Microsoft keeping pretty tight specifications on screen resolutions, components, and other details, all of the phones bear a strong resemblance to one another, with things like the camera, keyboard (or lack thereof), and screen type being among the key differences for the various hardware designs.