We have said that Windows 8 is a complete reimagination of the Windows operating system. Nothing has been left unexplored, including the Windows logo, to evaluate how it held up to modern PC sensibilities. The Windows logo is a strong and widely recognized mark but when we stepped back and analyzed it, we realized an evolution of our logo would better reflect our Metro style design principles and we also felt there was an opportunity to reconnect with some of the powerful characteristics of prev

For all intents and purposes, this is only a minor change, and were this any other operating system or graphical environment, it would never warrant an entire news item. However, we're talking Windows, the most popular desktop operating system of all time, here. After 17 years of trusty service, Microsoft has removed the Start button from the taskbar in the upcoming Consumer Preview release of Windows 8. When Windows 95 was launched, one of its most important changes over Windows 3.11 and earli

For those not familiar with the Security Compliance Manager, SCM is a free tool from the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team that enables you to quickly configure and manage your computers, traditional data center, and private cloud using Group Policy and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. In addition to Windows 7 SP1, Windows Vista SP2, Windows XP SP3, Office 2010 SP1, and Internet Explorer 8, SCM 2.5 now offer additional baselines for Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010.

Summary: The coming Windows 8 beta is looking more and more like it will be called the “consumer preview.” Why the change in nomenclature?   Is Microsoft going to position the coming Windows 8 beta as a “consumer preview”? And if so, why? Microsoft officials have repeated recently that the Windows 8 beta release is on track for late February 2012. But one public relations official with the Windows team provided a slightly different message — and one that escaped notice by most of those who re

This sounded interesting so thought I’d share. Microsoft has announced (via a post on its Building Windows 8 blog) that Windows 8 will introduce a new file system known as Resilient File System (ReFS) which will include a next generation on-disk storage engine. I should assure you upfront that this will not cause major compatibility issues with NTFS although it is a re-plumbing of the FS not just an upgrade to NTFS. The blog says that it’s “a newly engineered file system…built on the foundat

In a blog post a couple of days ago on the Windows Team blog Roger Capriotti, Director, Internet Explorer Marketing wrote on the Internet Explorer side about "The US Says Goodbye to IE6".     That’s great, good news! Very nice work with The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown.     Here in Sweden we are down to 0.4%.   But why do 7.33% (acording to Netmarketshare) of all people on the Internet use Internet Explorer 6 in 2012? In December 2011 the number was 7.7%, so after all we are on th

Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC. This is an important step in helping to move the Web forward. We will start in January for customers in Australia and Brazil who have turned on automatic updating via Windows Update. Similar to our release of IE9 earlier this year, we will take a measured approach, scaling up over time. As always, when upgrading from one version of Internet Explorer to the

Installing Windows is a complex operation that provides an incredibly unique capability—the ability to run a new version of Windows on a vast array of hardware configurations and combinations that were designed with no knowledge of a future Windows, even a version with substantial re-architecture of the Kernel. While most people do not experience the full code path of setup/upgrade (because they buy new PCs and choose to get a new version of Windows that way), even orchestrating the new PC “out