Microsoft officials are acknowledging that they are planning to add ActiveSync support to Hotmail on August 30.   The new capability will let Hotmail users get push e-mail on cell phones and other devices (even if they aren’t trying to sync with an Exchange Server on the back-end), company execs told News.com on August 26. The ActiveSync addition also will allow Hotmail users to sync contacts and calendars across their iPhones, iPod Touch devices, Android phones and (once they are available) t

Companies waiting too long to organise the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 face a shortage of skilled professionals to manage the migration, according to research from analyst firm Gartner.       The company says demand for properly qualified personnel will push up migration costs as professionals will be able to name their price for undertaking contracts.   "Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years," said Charles Smulders, managing vice president at Gartner. "With most

Microsoft announced general availability of the final version of Exchange 2010 Service Pack (SP) 1 on August 25.   Included in SP1 are the usual fixes and updates made to Exchange 2010 since Microsoft shipped that product in October 2009. But SP1 also includes new features and functionality, including archiving and discovery updates, Outlook Web App improvements, mobile user and management improvements and “some highly sought after additional UI for management tasks,” officials said earlier th

Summary: "Microsoft Russia’s press site, on August 25, posted information and a photo that seem to be connected to the coming IE 9 beta. (The site has since pulled their post, but I grabbed the information and screen shot in the nick of time.)"     Microsoft has delivered four developer previews of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 so far, but has yet to show off the new interface for its next-generation browser. That is expected to happen on September 15, during Microsoft’s beta launch event in Sa

Windows 95 launched 15 years ago today, Mary Jo Foley reminds us.     Today, after 15 years of additional technology evolution--and after memories of the event have been obliterated by semi-annual blockbuster launches of Apple products--it's hard to believe that the Windows 95 launch was a big deal.   But it WAS.   In fact, it was a monstrous deal.   Windows 95 catapulted Microsoft into the mainstream consumer consciousness, in a way that no other Microsoft product ever had. It cappe

As Microsoft approaches its fall Windows Phone 7 launch, its evangelists are working overtime to try to build momentum for the platform.   Microsoft officials are announcing on August 23 that there have been 300,000-plus downloads of the beta of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools to date. They said the final version of the tools will be out September 16, but stressed that those interested in writing games and applications using the XNA Framework and Silverlight don’t need to wait for the fina

Metasploit’s HD Moore has released technical details on a severe application DLL load hijacking problem that haunts more than 40 Windows software programs.     Moore (above), who stumbled on the issue while researching the recent LNK zero-day flaw, has released an audit kit that can be used to identify affected applications on a particular system.     Moore said in a blog post.   follow Ryan Naraine on twitterEssentially, if you open a file type associated with [a vulnerable app] from

At Hot Chips today, Microsoft's Xbox team unveiled details of the system-on-a-chip (SoC) that powers the newer, slimmer Xbox 360 250GB model. Produced on the IBM/GlobalFoundries 45nm process, it's fair to say that the new SoC (pictured above) is the first mass-market, desktop-class processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon. The goal of the consolidation was, of course, to lower the cost of making the console by reducing the number of different chips ne