Tag Archives: microsoft

One German state has told schools it’s now illegal to use Microsoft Office 365 under data protection laws. The Hesse Office for Data Protection and Information Freedom ruled that using the cloud platform could expose student and teacher personal information to access by US officials. The decision follows several years of debate in Germany over …

When Microsoft released its Surface Headphones last year, I thought it might have trouble selling its first noise-canceling headphones for the same price — $350 — as highly regarded competing products from Bose and Sony. Most stores are now selling them for $250, but for Prime Day, Amazon has them for $190. You can read my full Surface Headphones review here. Note that …

Farewell, Microsoft Internet Games. The tech giant is shutting down the internet games Hearts, Spades, Checkers, Backgammon and Reversi, as well as MSN Go on various versions of Windows including XP, ME and 7. The games will disappear from Windows XP and Windows ME on July 31 but won’t fade from Windows 7 until Jan. 22, as reported earlier by …

A day after the Trump administration announced plans to investigate whether France’s planned digital tax amounts to unfair trade practices by discriminating against US companies, the French government has passed the laws. On July 11, the Senate passed the bill creating a 3% tax on big tech companies providing services to French users. It could affect US giants Apple, Facebook, …

Some of the computing industry’s biggest innovations have come from research labs. The  transistor was created at AT&T’s Bell Labs, the hard drive by IBM Research and the graphical user interface at Xerox’s PARC.  NTT, one of Japan’s telecommunications giants, wants similar success. It’s already got thousands of researchers in Japan working on projects with near-term potential, but now it’s …

Microsoft has denied that it’ll be moving production of its tech products out of China, following a report that the rising US-China trade tensions had spurred the potential move. Last week, the Nikkei Asian Review said Microsoft, along with Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sony, Nintendo, Asus and Lenovo, would start manufacturing products in other Asian countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia …

When Apple announced on Thursday that Jony Ive was leaving the company, I immediately thought back to when David Letterman retired from his Late Show in May 2015. After walking away to spend more time with his family, Letterman launched another talk show three and a half years later called My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman. It …

Microsoft tweeted about the release of Windows 1.0 last week, leaving many to wonder why exactly the software company was promoting its original operating system from 34 years ago. As predicted and hinted, this blast from the ’80s past is a crossover with Stranger Things season 3.  Microsoft released its Windows 1.11 app on Monday. It’s a Stranger Things-inspired “fan experience” that looks like …

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had a long, complicated relationship and a rivalry that sometimes veered toward vicious. On Sunday, though, 63-year-old Gates had plenty of praise for the late Apple CEO, who died in 2011 of pancreatic cancer. Gates appeared Sunday’s episode of Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show, which focused on leadership. Zakaria, a CNN host, asked Gates about Jobs’ management …

In late June, Donald Trump said he’d ease the restrictions that forbade US companies from doing business with Huawei, a Chinese tech giant. When exactly that will happen remains unclear, as Huawei appears to still be blacklisted by the Department of Commerce. Most damagingly, the ban means Huawei can’t use Google‘s Android software. But it looks like Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s founder …