Remember that time Microsoft teased what most sane humans thought were new logos? That was right around two years ago, but the branding you see above is no mistake — that’s the new Microsoft logo, landing just months after Windows 8′s new flag and merely weeks before the aforesaid operating system takes the planet by storm. Astoundingly, it has been a full quarter-century since Microsoft gave itself a new logo, and while we’re sure pundits will jump all over it just because “dealing with change is hard,” there’s no doubt that the outfit’s new face [...]

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Surfaces. Turns out, the plural form of Microsoft’s new tablet range rolls off of the tongue with ease, but understanding the differences between the first two models may not be quite as easy — particularly for the everyman, or folks intimately familiar with Microsoft’s other Surface. Two editions — Surface for Windows RT and Surface for Windows 8 Pro — were unveiled today in Los Angeles, and while the exterior of each one looks nearly identical, the innards expose major differences in architecture. Let’s break it all down after the break, shall we? Surface [...]

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Microsoft is serious about Windows 8, and if you’re serious about submitting Metro-style apps then there’s now a healthily long and detailed blog post (at the source link) explaining how. The post suggests that Redmond’s app police are looking at a roughly a six-day turnaround for signing off and publishing the average title, with content compliance taking the longest time because it involves “real people.” As the real person in the video after the break makes clear, your first goal should be to reserve your app’s name so no one else can take it. (You do have [...]

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Today is the day fine folks — Kinect for Windows is here. The official, and commercial, version 1.0 of the SDK just hit the interwebs along with the accompanying hardware for a price of $250, or $150 for qualified educational customers. The tool has picked up a number of new features since the last beta, including support for up to four Kinects being used simultaneously and near mode for monitoring motion from just 40cm away. For more info and a complete list of improvements hit up the source link. Download from Microsoft

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Reinstall Windows: Introduction The process of reinstalling Windows on your computer is simpler than you might think. The very idea can often induce a mild sense of panic, but the benefits of reinstalling Windows far outweigh any perceived risks, particularly as you can eliminate those dangers simply by making sure you back things up as you go. Reinstalling Windows offers a number of benefits. It can revive a sluggish system by clearing out all the clutter and letting you start from scratch. You’ll be amazed at how quick your PC suddenly feels, and it’ll be more stable too, with corrupt [...]

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Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Arfa Kareem, 16 years old lost the battle of her life while she was admitted at Lahore, CMH hospital on Saturday. Arfa’s funeral will be held at 10 a.m, Sunday in Cavalary Ground, Lahore Cantt. Arfa Karim was born in 1995, and when she was 9 years old got the honor of World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional and Bill Gates invited her to visit Microsoft HQ, in USA. In 2005, Arfa Kareem received Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology by the Government of Pakistan, afterwards she was also awarded Salaam Pakistan [...]

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Microsoft has released final version of Silverlight 5, its web browser plug-in for multimedia programs. Silverlight 5 supports for four web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari over Windows and Mac. According to official blog: “New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain [...]

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Still tempted by the fruit of another? If you’re looking Microsoft’s way, but aren’t quite ready to toss your adoration for iOS or Android aside, the coders in Redmond are giving you an alternative to quitting cold turkey. By visiting http://aka.ms/wpdemo on one’s iOS or Android browser, you’ll be immediately tunneled into a emulation of Windows Phone 7. We gave it a test run here at Engadget HQ, and it seems that every tile and swipe save for Apps runs properly. Can’t say the fonts and such looked as smooth on our Galaxy S II as they do on the Radar, but it’s [...]

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Hello there, everyone! It’s time to do another post in our series of comparison posts in which, well, we compare stuff. In this comparison post, ‘stuff’ is the three major mobile operating systems – iOS 5, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango – and it is their feature-list which is compared. Although, yes, it is a bit unfair to compare two already-released OSes – iOS 5 and WP7 Mango – against an OS that is still somewhat in the making (Ice Cream Sandwich); please keep in mind that this is more of a comparison of features (which, we believe, are final) rather [...]

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Like Zune’s own Business Development Manager once said, all consumer electronics products have a lifespan, and today the (not so long) lineage of dedicated Zune hardware expires not with a roar, but with a promise to honor its warranties. Tucked away in the inner chambers of the Zune support site lies a page spelling out Microsoft’s final words on the device, “Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy,” it says, “we will no longer be producing Zune players.” The Zune HD is survived by the Zune music service, which will continue [...]

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