The software giant will unveil the SDK at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles next week. Microsoft’s latest Surface SDK will now run on WPF 4.0, XNA 4.0 and Windows 7. Surface developers will now be able to target physical Surface hardware and Windows 7 touch PCs with a single SDK. The Microsoft Surface team call this “write once – touch anywhere” and it may explain the company’s plans for Windows 8.     Developers will be able to query the hardware capabilities of eac

After the end of business on Monday I received the following in an email from Microsoft: "We appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm throughout the Windows Thin PC Community Technology Preview. Today, we are happy to announce that Windows Thin PC has been released to manufacturing (RTM), and will be available for our SA customers to download starting July 1, 2011." Anandtech published a brief but concise review of Windows Thin PC but here's a quick summary of my experience of this 32-bit only OS

REDMOND, Wash. – June 1, 2011 – Today, at the D9 Conference, we demonstrated the next generation of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8,” for the first time. Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. A Windows 8-based PC is really a new kind of device, one that scales from touch-only small screens through to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse.   The demo showed some of the ways we’ve reimagined the interface for a new generation of touch-cent

Bloomberg is adding fuel to the rumor fires claiming that Microsoft may show off the tablet version of Windows 8 next week at the AllThingsD conference. If and when that happens, here’s what to watch for.     Steven Sinofsky, the President of Microsoft’s Windows client division, is slated to take the stage during the three-day confab, which kicks off on May 29. Ever since Sinofsky’s appearance at the show was confirmed earlier this week, there’s been talk that he’d show off an updated versi

The rumors were right. Microsoft announced on May 10 that it bought Skype, an Internet communications maker, for $8.5 billion.   Instead of trying to mash Skype into an existing Microsoft business division, the company has decided to create a new, separate Skype business division, with Skype CEO Tony Bates as the newly minted President. Bates will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.   In its press release announcing the deal, Microsoft played up the potential synergies between Sk

Microsoft plans to have a quiet Patch Tuesday this month: Just two bulletins covering security vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system and Office productivity suite.   According to an advance notice from Redmond, the Windows update will be rated “critical” because of the risk of remote code execution attacks. This patch only affects Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.     The Microsoft Office patch will carry an “important” rating and will also c

Microsoft has revealed some additional Windows Phone 7.5 features over the weekend.   Ryan and Travis Lowdermilk from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast revealed some new features from “Mango” on Sunday. Mango, known to be Windows Phone 7.5, will include Bing Audio/Video, SMS dictation, podcast support and turn-by-turn navigation. Paul Thurrott has detailed all the new features after listening to the podcast.   Bing Audio/Vision   Bing Audio will allow Windows Phone 7.5 owners to search for mus

On May 2, Microsoft made the Release Candidate (RC) test build of its Windows Thin PC available for download by testers.   Windows Thin PC (Win TPC) is the successor to Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (WinFLP). It is a version of Windows 7 that allows customers to repurpose existing PCs as thin clients. Win TPC doesn’t require the VDA (Virtual Desktop Access) license to access VDI desktops. The product is built on top of Windows Embedded Standard 7 Service Pack 1, and supports RemoteFX and