You don't often hear Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gushing about Apple, but he was sure being nice to his Cupertino, Calif., rival last week. Microsoft and Apple are reportedly close to adding Bing search to the iPhone, and Ballmer's praise of Apple's App Store may be another sign that the companies' frosty relationship is thawing.

More details on the much-vaunted Microsoft Courier have arrived, with firm rumours that it is a Tegra 2 powered dual-screen device running Windows CE 6.

Microsoft told Windows XP users today not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of its reaction to an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE).

Microsoft is to ask millions of users across Europe if they want to use a web browser other than its own. Windows users will be offered the choice as part of a deal Microsoft struck with the European Commission.

A federal judge has dismissed a year-old lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged antitrust violations for the "downgrade" rules it set for Windows Vista and XP.

Microsoft announced this week, that together with industry partners, it has executed a major botnet takedown of Waledac, a large and well-known “spambot.” For the general Internet user hopefully this will result in less offers of Viagra, Nigerian lottery winnings and penis enlargement services. Wishful thinking?

Microsoft has finally managed to overtake Google, albeit only in a brand recognition survey. The annual survey lists 500 of the top business brands in the UK and those sampled put Microsoft ahead of its search rival Google. For Google, which was at the top of the pile in 2009, the fall from its perch to fifth place wasn't nearly as large as that of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which fell out of the top 500 altogether.

On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.

Windows 8, the theoretical next version of Microsoft's ubiquitous OS, will be different from what has been expected of the platform, according to a cached version of a Microsoft blog post.

Poor battery readings and stability fixes that break stability. Here come the Win7 user complaints. Are they worth the shouting?

A former Microsoft employee, Chris Green has leaked Microsoft's roadmap for launching key software products over the period of 1 to 2 years, which include Windows 8 operating system, Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft Office 2012.

I got a tip that Bill Gates' new site, The Gates Notes, was running on a Linux-powered server. This would be ironic since Gates is of course the founder of Microsoft, which is Linux's biggest competitor in the server market. It would be the equivalent of catching Gates or CEO Steve Ballmer being caught using (and not just signing) a MacBook at a conference. So is it true?

Microsoft has been pursuing the notion of a tablet PC for a decade now, but its efforts have yet to produce a device most consumers want to carry.

According to the December Steam hardware survey, Windows 7 accounts for nearly 23% of all Steam users when you add up both the 32 & 64 bit varieties. Vista by comparison sits at around 31%, but that gap is pretty small when you consider that it has a three year head start over Windows 7.

When zealots debate the old "Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux" argument, it's a widely held belief within the Mac and Linux camp that it is one of these platforms that represent the greatest threat to Microsoft's dominance. Utter nonsense.

Apple must be patting themselves on the back, as the Hewlett-Packard tablet unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday night failed to wow those expecting a true competitor to the mythical Apple tablet.

Calling 2010 “the biggest year in Xbox history” Robbie Bach, President of Entertainment and Devices at Microsoft, announced that Natal would definitely be ready for this Christmas – though he didn't say how much it would cost despite talking up the new technology in the extreme.

Check out this Microsoft Research video that shows the concepts discussed in the patent filing -- including a demonstration of how to use muscle movement to play Guitar Hero, air-guitar style

Companies finally agreed a search partnership this year.

A security firm that's developed a fix for the so-called "black screen of death" affecting Windows PCs said more than 50,000 users have downloaded the utility in just five days—an indication that the problem is widespread.