Microsoft news stories on Newser

Germany Bans Xbox, Windows 7

Evann Gastaldo — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:07:56 CDT

If you live in Germany and you like Microsoft products, you may want to stock up: A court ordered today that Microsoft remove Xbox 360 and Windows 7 from shelves, after ruling that Microsoft had infringed on Motorola Mobility's patents. But nothing will be pulled yet, Microsoft says, because it...

Microsoft Joins Barnes & Noble in E-Book War

Matt Cantor — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:37:47 CDT

There's a new major player in the battle for the e-book market. Microsoft is investing $300 million in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary devoted to the bookseller's Nook e-reader plus its College division. Microsoft will have a 17.6% stake in the company (currently dubbed "Newco"), valued at $1....

Working at Microsoft Is Hell

Evann Gastaldo — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:58:05 CDT

Max Zografos was once called the "Microsoft man" by lecturers at his university as he hawked evaluation copies of Windows 2000 and bragged about his Microsoft summer internship. He drank "as much of the Microsoft Kool-Aid" as he could, he writes on TechCrunch , but once he became a full-time employee...

Facebook to Buy $550M in Patents From Microsoft

Matt Cantor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:37:55 CDT

Earlier this month, AOL agreed to sell Microsoft 925 patents and patent applications for just north of $1 billion; now another tech giant is getting a piece of the action. Facebook has pledged to buy some 650 of those patents, or $550 million worth. In the deal, Facebook also gets...

'iPad Mini' Coming for Less Than $300

Neal Colgrass — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:36:44 CDT

Cue the agonizing groans at Microsoft: Apple is planning a new entry-level iPad for later this year designed to fend off the coming barrage of Windows 8 tablets , reports Fox Business . According to a Chinese-language news site, some 6 million "iPad minis" will come out in the third quarter at...

Big Shareholder to AOL: That $1B Sale? Not Cutting It

Evann Gastaldo — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:23:37 CDT

AOL's $1 billion deal to sell patents to Microsoft is a good first step, but major shareholder Starboard Value still has "serious concerns" about AOL's "poor operating performance," the activist hedge fund says in a letter to the AOL board. For that reason, Starboard Value has filed with US regulators...

AOL Sells Microsoft 800 Patents

Kevin Spak — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:05:06 CDT

AOL has struck a mammoth deal to sell Microsoft more than 800 patents for $1.06 billion in cash, the companies announced today. That will leave AOL with a little more than 300 patents of its own related to search, advertising, and social networking, among other things, but it will...

Man Steals Identity of ... One of World's Richest Men

Kate Schwartz — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:59:20 CDT

Ways to land in trouble: Go AWOL. Fund your AWOL lifestyle via identity theft. Snatch the identity of one of the world's richest men. So goes the case against Brandon Lee Price, who now faces bank fraud charges for allegedly swiping the identity of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, reports the...

Windows 8: Bold, Risky, Revolutionary

Kevin Spak — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:53:15 CST

Microsoft unleashed Windows 8 on the world today, in the form of a "Consumer Preview" (read: Open Beta), and it's definitely not business as usual. The OS is designed to work on both tablets and PCs, and that means that, while it still has a familiar Windows "Desktop" mode tucked...