Microsoft Corp. today raised the style stakes with the unveiling of a revolutionary crescent-moon-shaped mouse designed to be just as fashionable as it is functional - the Arc Mouse. With its unique foldable design, Arc reduces by almost half for portability when it is snapped shut, but provides complete comfort when opened to its full size. Microsoft today also introduced the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000, a notebook mouse with stunning color offerings at an affordable price, based on the design of the No. 1 best-selling notebook mouse in the U.S.

Microsoft Corp. today announced two new desktop sets - the Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 and Wireless Media Desktop 1000 - with stylish designs and high-end productivity features at affordable prices, giving consumers more quality options for their workspaces. A Comfort Curve design complements the sleek lines of the Wireless Laser Desktop 6000, making for hardware that looks and feels good at the same time. Slick design features also grab attention on the Wireless Media Desktop 1000, a keyboard-and-mouse combination created for digital media enthusiasts.

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled the world's most advanced tracking technology, Microsoft BlueTrack Technology, which allows consumers to take their mice anywhere and work with confidence on more surfaces than before. Microsoft's new proprietary tracking technology combines the width and power of optical technology with the precision of laser tracking to allow consumers to mouse on virtually any surface - from a granite kitchen countertop to the living room carpet. BlueTrack Technology will debut in two new top-of-the-line mice, Microsoft Explorer Mouse and Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse, available this fall at BestBuy.com and in Best Buy stores.

AMD today announced the availability of robust new virtualization solutions powered by a combination of technologies from AMD and Microsoft Corp. This new deployment model uses AMD Opteron processors with AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology together with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to deliver significant efficiencies to enterprises large and small. Mid-market companies in particular, which have traditionally been slower to implement virtualization, can take advantage of the combined AMD and Microsoft product offering to help reduce cost, complexity and energy consumption.

"AMD has taken a leading role in driving virtualization innovation into the x86 processor, helping to meet a compelling need in the commercial market for cost reduction, increased performance and energy efficiency," said Kevin Knox, vice president of Worldwide Commercial Business, AMD. "Now, through our continued partnership with Microsoft, AMD is expanding virtualization's reach and the benefits of resource consolidation to companies that might not have taken advantage of virtualization in the past."

In the US, very soon at a computer store or the computers section of your mall, chances are you could come across "Gurus" to assist your software related purchases. Simply put, these are liaisons deployed by Microsoft to assist shoppers with "choosing the right software" for the PC. They will be in place to help customers with buying PCs with Windows installed or simply to learn more about Windows and related products.

Microsoft has plans to deploy 155 "Microsoft Gurus" across the United States within this year to begin with, and plans to expand the program depending on its success. According to Microsoft general manager of corporate communications, Tom Pilla, the customer reps would be responsible for helping answer questions regarding Microsoft and PCs offered in the stores. This has something in common with the recent Gates-Seinfeld commercial in which Gates is assisted by Seinfeld when shopping for shoes at a mall.

Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies from Netflix, live out their musical fantasies through Rock Band 2 and Lips, star in their own Hollywood classics with You're in the Movies, or have the power to never miss the latest episode of Heroes-all from one device, starting at $199.

That device is Xbox 360, and today Microsoft announced lower retail prices for the gaming and entertainment console in the United States, which offers the leading Xbox LIVE service. Beginning September 5, Xbox 360 Arcade retails for the estimated price of $199.99, the Xbox 360 console for $299.99, and Xbox 360 Elite for $399.99.

The latest beta of Microsoft's next web browser has been released today. This time it is a public beta, unlike Beta 1, which was aimed at developers, this version has many of its new features enabled. Some of these include, tab groups, accelerators and compatibility view, which enables Internet Explorer 8 to better display web pages designed for older browers.

You can find out more information and download the beta here.

Microsoft has confirmed that it will be releasing a revised Xbox 360 controller on October 24th. It will be available in Europe, Asia and Latin America only, and feature a revised d-pad.

The new limited edition green wireless controller offers enhancements to d-pad functionality, which will add to the experience of playing games where the d-pad is the primary control mechanism,

We're always looking to improve products and we made these changes based on feedback from gamers.

Microsoft has told Eurogamer.net. There's also a bad news, the revised Xbox 360 controller will be a promotional item produced in limited quantities, so getting one won't be an easy task.

Today at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, Microsoft Hardware debuted the SideWinder X6 Keyboard - the most versatile gaming keyboard on the market with the first-ever switchable key pad that can be attached to the left or right side of the keyboard for ultimate flexibility. To round out the SideWinder line, the Hardware team is also announcing the SideWinder X5 Mouse, a fast, powerful gaming mouse designed to give mainstream gamers a competitive edge.

Microsoft has launched an MSDN Blog for the Engineering of Windows 7, dubbed E7 for short. The blog, hosted by two Windows 7 senior engineering managers, is aimed to inform "...enthusiasts, bloggers, and those that are the most passionate about Windows... what's in store for the next major release of Windows."

You can check out the blog here

We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog.

We, as a team, definitely learned some lessons about "disclosure" and how we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves in talking about features before our understanding of them is solid. Our intent with Windows 7 and the pre-release communication is to make sure that we have a reasonable degree of confidence in what we talk about when we do talk. Again, top of mind for us is the responsibility we feel to make sure we are not stressing priorities, churning resource allocations, or causing strategic confusion among the tens of thousands of partners and customers who care deeply and have much invested in the evolution of Windows.

Windows 7 is currently scheduled for release in 2010 based on information which we covered here

Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd will launch the PC-XB01 chassis for the Xbox 360 today. The XB01 is a chassis replacement for the XBox 360 chassis, which alleviates heating issues from hot components and reduces noise from vibrating optical drives in the original case design. The PC-XB01 requires DIY knowledge for the transfer of components, but once completed, heat will no longer be a factor in dampening your XBox 360 gaming experience.

Last week, Microsoft conducted an experiment in San Francisco, USA where 120 users with a negative opinion on Windows Vista were introduced to a new OS to which a majority of them gave positive feedback, only to discover it was Windows Vista under the covers (covered here). Microsoft now wants to publish its results in a new website presumably with promotional tones over its so-far-flop Windows Vista operating system. Results come out in the form of videos, text and presentations. The website titled "The Mojave Experiment" can be reached here.

Choice is a wonderful thing. Informed Choice is even better, where you choose something after knowing its inside-outs. The very opposite of informed choice is dogma, where you rigidly oppose something and stick to your beliefs. Incidentally, dogma seems to be one of the significant factors keeping users away from embracing Windows Vista OS, of what can be inferred from an experiment by Microsoft in San Fransisco, United States. A group of Windows XP users having negative impressions on Windows Vista were introduced to a "new" operating system they referred to as "Mojave". User experiences on using this operating system were noted and feedback taken. A surprising 90 percent of these users gave positive feedback on this new OS. They were later told that the new OS was nothing else but Windows Vista.

Despite Microsoft releasing numerous updates and fixes to the Vista OS making it a fairly stable, reliable OS close to expectations if not exactly on par, it seems to be mass dogma that's keeping users away from adopting this new OS. Going back to that experiment, a user is reported to have exclaimed "Oh wow", something Microsoft expected users to do with the new OS originally, as portrayed in those numerous television and print commercials going with the tag line "wow". Following the recent announcement of a huge budget allocation towards propagating Vista (covered here) for home and enterprise segments, the message being sent out is that Microsoft is not only being aggressive but also proactive.

Microsoft has released a handful of details about DirectX 11, the latest version of the company's API.

• Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
• Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
• New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
• Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
• Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close

This fall, Xbox 360 gaming console could be given capabilities to stream content from providers such as Netflix. Microsoft announced a tech partnership with the popular movie rental company Netflix at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles, United States. That gives you access to the thousands of movies and TV shows Netfilx has in store for rental viewing. It's a good deal for Netflix as it adds to its market media, even more so for Microsoft since its squeezing in all the value-added-services it can for the Xbox 360 which already seems to be threatened by the Japanese Nintendo Wii on home-turf, and the Sony Playstation 3 which comes with capabilities to play Blu-Ray discs, the next big physical content medium.

Microsoft is working on a new keyboard design that features modularity of key-clusters, the model Sidewinder X6 features a modular num-cluster that can be positioned for convenience of both left and right oriented users. Additionally, A row of programmable keys for binding game macros and a "cruise control" feature that will repeat keystrokes without the need for holding down a key (like the Turbo buttons on some SNES gamepads).Expect an official announcement from Microsoft in the near future as the Sidewinder X6 is expected to launch in September at a US $80 price-point.

Based on the feedback received from the beginning of the Xbox LIVE entertainment dashboard, Microsoft said today it will be enhancing the service soon with a new update. Among the new features that will be included, one deserves special attention. Called "play from hard drive" it will allow Xbox 360 owners to copy their games from the game disc to their hard drive and also start the game from there for faster load times. The game disc is still required for piracy reasons though, but it won't be spinning after the game is started. A quick look at some of the other features you might find interesting follows below.

Microsoft's hardware division has released details on its upcoming peripherals for the summer of 2008. Among the new devices, two make a good impression. First is the new Arc Mouse, a wireless mouse that's all about fashion, style and portability. The Arc Mouse is a collapsible peripheral that will hit the market this Holiday Season, with an affordable price tag of $59.95. The mouse will be available in two colors - red and black. Microsoft has also announced that a new revamped Sidewinder gaming mouse will be out soon. The X5 Sidewinder will look much like its predecessor, but it will no longer feature custom weights and the current sensitivity information LCD that was presented in the original Sidewinder mouse. The X5 will come with nine programmable buttons, hardware DPI switching, and a quicklaunch shortcut. Because some of the features of the mouse are missing, the price will also be lowered to $59.95. Technical specifications of both pointing devices remain unknown until their official launch.

Now we all know that Windows 3.11 is long gone, but after that you read this strange title again and start wondering? Yes, although you know that retail distribution of Windows 3.11 has been out for very long, it had been around for a good 15 years selling through the so called Embedded Channel. Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 is still used in a countless number of low-horsepower platforms such as cash registers and train schedule displays. That's until today, when Microsoft is officially ending all sales of Windows 3.11 for good. Microsoft's John Coyne announced:

for those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEM's will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. Now we all know that it's been long gone in the standard (retail/OEM) channel, but one of the unique things in the embedded business is that we allow the classic OS products to be sold longer than the other channels. it's *finally the end of an era!

If you have watched the TNT Original movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley or read the book Fire in the Valley, you would know Steve Ballmer to be quite a character although both the book and the movie are unauthorised documentaries. Under the leadership of Ballmer, Microsoft plans to start a US $300 million-worth campaign aimed to demystify Windows Vista and encourage users to adopt the new operating system.

These are good times for Apple. The lack of success for Windows Vista means growth in the sales of Apple Mac for first-time buyers. And it is true- numerous reports and surveys point out to the fact that Apple Mac is seeing a growth in sales of late. Add to that, Apple won't spare any chance to take pot-shots at the software giant, its 'bloated' operating system (as if Apple OS X isn't) in its series of TV and web-cast commercials around the 'cool Mac guy and uncool PC guy'.

Microsoft said on Monday that it was willing to reopen talks on a "major transaction" with Yahoo if the Internet giant replaces its board of directors. Microsoft confirmed comments from corporate raider Carl Icahn about talks that could lead to a new takeover bid if Yahoo replaces its board of directors next month.

"We confirm ... that after the shareholder election Microsoft would be interested in discussing with a new board a major transaction with Yahoo, such as either a transaction to purchase the 'Search' function with large financial guarantees or, in the alternative, purchasing the whole company," Microsoft said in a statement. The software giant said "it would be premature to discuss at this time important details such as the price or other terms of a possible transaction." They added: "We respect the right of Yahoo's shareholders to determine the destiny of their company, and we do not intend to engage in ongoing commentary on these issues in advance of Yahoo's shareholder meeting."

Some reports said Yahoo is seeking other alliances to fend of a bid from Microsoft, including a tie-up with AOL, a unit of Time Warner.

Packard Bell, one of Europe's top consumer PC brands in Europe, will reveal the next generation of its ipower gaming desktop PC to the gaming community at the Electronic Sports World Cup, which is being held on 4-6 July 2008 in Paris. The new gaming PC is christened: ipower X2.0.

Selected as the official ESWC gaming system in 2007 and 2008, the ipower range had to be up to the task of meeting the demanding requirements of amateur and professional PC gamers. Packard Bell confirms its engagement to the PC gaming community by unveiling the ipower X2.0, a stunning combination of power, graphics performance, state-of-the-art cooling and ergonomics.

A sound mind in a sound body goes the saying. The magnificent chassis of the ipower X2.0 shows off its inner secrets including its components and build quality through a translucent siding with red LED trim lights. To satisfy the 30 per cent of PC gamers who say that design is one of the top selection criteria1, the Packard Bell design studio developed a sexy tower case that unites a black colour scheme with metal trim, transparent housing, gloss finish, bevelled angles and harmonious dimensions
(510 H x 217 l X 530 L).

Soon, among your usual utility bills of electricity, water, gas, telecom, could be a new addition, software. Microsoft has come up with a new subscription model, where instead of outright buying a license to use the software, consumers can subscribe to use it. A monthly or annual subscription charge has to be paid by the user (subscriber) to continue using the product.

This scheme for now covers products such as Microsoft Office and One Care security software. Analysts are already beginning to predict this will be Microsoft's next big business model which will fuel its growth in the years to come. There's much in store for both consumers and the company.

Industry sources confirm that Microsoft will be cutting the prices of its popular Xbox 360 gaming console variant, the 20GB Pro by US $50, bringing it down to US $299. A major retailer said that this move would come in before E3 which runs July 15-17 in Los Angeles.

The previous price-cut to this console was during the launch period of Halo 3, where the price cut from $399 ro $349. This slash is more of a ploy to increase the product's competitiveness against the Nintendo Wii while also making it a good deal over the Blu-ray-equipped PlayStation 3 in terms of market share, even so with the holiday season around the corner. While Sony could be pondering its own price cut, the consumer electronics giant did note recently in an annual report that the PlayStation 3 has cost the company $3.3 billion since its late 2006 launch because of a strategic decision to sell the system for less than it costs to make.

Now that Microsoft officially confirmed support for Windows XP until year 2014, Intel has decided to skip upgrading to Windows Vista. The chip giant won't upgrade the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft's Vista operating system, according to a person close to Intel's IT department. "This isn't a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista," the person said. There's no official reason for this decision, but it's quite obvious that Vista is still not mature enough to succeed Windows XP. Sad but true. Meanwhile, the next version of Windows codenamed Windows 7 is scheduled to go on sale in January 2010. By skipping Vista, Intel dooms its workers to Windows XP for at least two more years.