The new Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 is now available for download!   MAP 5.0 is an agentless tool designed to simplify and streamline the IT infrastructure planning process across multiple scenarios through network-wide automated discovery and assessments. This Solution Accelerator performs an inventory of heterogeneous server environments and provides you with usage information for servers in the Core CAL Suite and SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 discovery and assessment

Microsoft's beta release of its Windows Phone 7 Development Training Kit offers several new labs designed to let developers get their feet wet in the new platform.       Described Tuesday in a Microsoft blog, the new beta of the training kit keeps up with the changes found in the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools, which also hit beta status this week.   Microsoft has revamped the existing labs in the training kit and added a few new ones.   The lab dubbed "Using Windows Phone Launcher and

Please Note: This early release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta is not available for home users. The SP1 Beta does not provide new end-user features, and installation is not supported by Microsoft.   Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta helps keep your PCs and servers on the latest support level, provides ongoing improvements to the Windows Operating System (OS), by including previous updates delivered over Windows Update as well as continuing incremental updates to t

Just a day before Microsoft drops support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company has announced that people running some versions of Windows 7 can "downgrade" to the aged operating system for up to 10 years.   The move is highly unusual. In the past, Microsoft has terminated downgrade rights - which let customers replace a newer version of Windows with an older edition without paying for two copies - within months of introducing a new OS.   While few consumers may want to downgrad

Are you running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7? There is a high likelihood you are. As of June 2010, we see that 46% of all PCs worldwide running Windows 7 are running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7. That is, nearly half of all PCs running Windows 7 are running 64-bit. Compared to Windows Vista at 3 and a half years after launch, only 11% of PCs running Windows Vista worldwide are running 64-bit. With Windows 7, running a 64-bit OS is becoming the norm.     A primary benefit of 64-bit Windows

IE increased usage from 59.8 per cent to 60.3 per cent, according to new statistics from Net Applications, an analytics company that monitors browser usage across a large network of websites. It was buoyed by increasing usage of IE8 that offset the decline in IE7 — and by what web developers no doubt hope will be only a temporary pause in the decline of the despised IE6.     The change in fortunes was significant enough that Microsoft couldn't resist crowing about IE's progress in a blog p

Hi-tech criminals are "escalating" attacks on an unpatched bug in the Windows XP help and support system.     Microsoft said it had seen more than 10,000 machines hit by the attack that, so far, it has not found a fix for.   Windows PCs falling victim will have control of that machine handed over to attackers.   Microsoft said the attacks had gone from theoretical to real very quickly and urged users to take steps to protect themselves. 'Nightmare' attack   Microsoft revealed the upt

An Italian Windows site called "Windowsette" has published some purported secret Microsoft documents outlining some design and strategy plans for Windows 8. The Microsoft Kitchen blog has provided some analysis of the documents. The documents appear genuine, and there's lots of interesting information there.     In a big surprise, Microsoft is looking to Apple for inspiration, and these documents contain high praise for Apple's "virtuous cycle" of UI quality and user productivity. They even