Redmond-based Microsoft is today launching its Office 2013 and new Office 365 subscriptions, bringing an end to the speculation of exactly when the new Office was going to land. Having taken to Twitter yesterday to tease an event in Bryant Park, NYC occurring today, a banner plastered across the Office website, which read: "Coming January 29th. More time to do the things you want," left us in no doubt. The big launch is a significant date in the Windows maker's calendar, especially with the Surface Pro just around the corner, it also spells the beginning of the end of the preview grace period, which will expire 60 days from now.
The news is perhaps about as predictable as when Call of Duty: Black Ops II swept past Halo 4 to take its usual position is market leader, but Windows 8 has - just three months after its initial release - surpassed Apple's OS X Mountain Lion in terms of market share. The Redmond company has seen a positive, if not overwhelming public response to its new operating system, and with many opting to upgrade online as opposed to purchasing a more expensive physical copy, the entire Windows process looks to be headed towards Apple's download-only direction.
Microsoft announced on Tuesday record revenue numbers for the quarter ending on December 31, 2012. The full amount totaled at $21.46 billion, an increase from $20.89 billion in the same quarter in the previous year.
With the Surface Pro almost upon us, Microsoft has naturally offered consumers a subtle nudge as to why the tablet + ultrabook is the right device for them. Since consumers and commentators have doubted the Surface RT's credentials as a true PC (for obvious reasons), the Redmond company has felt inclined to remind the market of the Surface Pro's PC prowess. While the RT has come under fire for not running legacy apps, lacking power, and generally failing in many of the key areas one would expect a PC to deliver, the Surface Pro is a different animal. And boy, do Steve Ballmer and Co. want to emphasize that point.
If you have been hoping to pick up a Microsoft Surface Pro this month as your late Christmas present, you may be disappointed, since the shipping date has been pushed back slightly, to February 9th, in both the United States and Canada, along with several accessories to please anybody’s ‘wants’ and ‘needs’.
Despite being a paid service in a sea of free alternatives, Microsoft's Xbox LIVE remains the most popular online hub of all the high-end consoles. At $60 for a year's service, it offers fairly good value for money, and for a very limited time, you can get a twelve-month subscription for just $35.
The next few months are shaping up to be extremely important in the console gaming space. And although we are yet to hear any official word from Microsoft or Sony regarding the intricacies of their next-generation consoles, that doesn't always mean we can't get the inside scoop. Following hot on the heels of yesterday's news that Sony's PlayStation 4 is likely to have 50% more raw computational power than the Xbox 720, we are now seeing some additional leaked information that claims to give us an insight into how the new Xbox and PlayStation will perform.
Microsoft is set to replace Xbox Chat with a new Skype-powered offering, at least in the new Xbox, according to reports.
With Windows 8, Microsoft took some rather bold and unprecedented steps. The RT version of the operating system, found on the company’s Surface tablet (and perhaps, soon to land of similar offerings from a plethora of other manufacturers), enabled the software giant to enter a market that was previously dominated by Apple’s iPad and various-manufacturers’ Android-based tablets. Judging by the response that Surface has received from the consumer population, Microsoft’s entry in this niche seems to be playing out well as of yet. The good thing is that the RT version of Windows doesn’t suffer from a serious lack of apps, considering as how a lot of legacy apps are becoming available in their Modern UI versions for the platform. Things do seem to be headed in the right direction.
A few months back, Microsoft announced the Surface, an ultra-mobile laptop/tablet hybrid running Windows, taking advantage of Windows 8 and Windows RT’s new touch-screen user-interface. Since then, many have been hoping for a Surface smartphone: while no announcements have been made, several artists have created concepts depicting what they expect a Surface Phone to look like.
