Peter Galli

Microsoft may be looking to acquire Swiss-based computer peripherals maker Logitech International so it can better compete with Apple and other competitors of the Zune and Xbox, according to some analysts. Rumors about a possible deal between the two companies surfaced the week of Jan. 7, which helped boost Logitech’s share price, but neither firm […]

KIRKLAND, Wash.-Microsoft is planning an open-source translator project that will read a binary and then write this out in the Open XML format, bypassing the need for users to have Microsoft Office installed. This new open-source project will start on SourceForge.net on Feb. 15 and will fall under the BSD license, Brian Jones, the senior […]

KIRKLAND , Wash. — No format or standard is perfect. They are evolving things that morph, change and improve over time, said Tom Robertson, the general manager for Microsoft’s corporate responsibility and standards group, at a media event here Jan. 16. Microsoft’s own Office Open XML file format is itself evolving through the international ISO/IEC […]

Just when Microsoft thought the bulk of its antitrust woes were behind it, regulators in the European Union announced that they have opened two new such investigations against the software maker. The investigations will examine whether Microsoft abused its dominant position in the market to unfairly tie its Web browser to the Windows operating system, […]

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac hits the streets January 15 after close to four years under development and a year after Microsoft released Office 2007 for the PC. “What we tried to achieve with Office 2008 for the Mac is to help users get their work done more simply, and compatibility was a big driver […]

Unemployment among business-technology professionals has fallen to a decade low as the size of the IT workforce has risen to a record level in 2007, according to CIO Insight analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Joblessness among American IT workers averaged 2.1 percent last year, down from 2.5 percent in 2006. That’s the […]

The executive brain-drain at Microsoft is picking up pace, with Jeff Raikes, a 27-year company veteran and president of the Microsoft Business Division, announcing his retirement Jan. 10. And, in an unusual move, Microsoft has decided to replace Raikes with an outsider, rather than promote from within its ranks, giving Stephen Elop, the former chief […]

A core group of 15,000 people testing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 have received the latest pre-release build of SP1, known as Windows Vista SP1 RC Refresh. This group of beta testers includes corporate customers, consumer enthusiasts, software and hardware vendors, and others, Microsoft said in a statement released January 9. The “Refresh” code is […]

While analysts agree that Microsoft could have better handled the issue of Office 2003 Service Pack 3’s blocking of a number of file formats, they say the software maker had no ill intent with the move. “Microsoft has been getting hammered by attacks on Office, so shutting down import/export filters by default was a cheap […]

Microsoft will provide a new and easy way for customers to unblock the files that were shut off by default when they installed Office 2003 Service Pack 3. The software maker also confirmed to eWEEK Jan. 4 that all the same files are blocked by Office 2007, which was released a year ago, and that […]

Enterprise customers are using open-source software more and more, but issues of interoperability are still a stumbling block to widespread adoption, say customers and open-source software vendors. Enterprise customers need assurance that open-source solutions will continue to work together over update cycles before they will expand the adoption of open-source components across their IT environments, […]

Microsoft is facing criticism from a competitor and some customers for its decision to block some older file formats with Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which it released last September. The only non-Microsoft file format that was blocked by Service Pack 3 was CorelDraw .CDR files. “CorelDraw users can rest assured that they can still […]