More in Microsoft Products

Modeled after the Windows Phone lock screen, the Windows 8 lock screen is a full-screen, Metro-style experience that appears when you boot your PC, lock it (WINKEY + L), or resume from sleep. And as with its smartphone-based counterpart, the Windows 8 lock screen is designed to provide basic glance-and-go information and status notifications for key Metro-style apps and the services behind them....More

In previous versions of Windows, application shortcuts were represented by icons, which were simple graphical objects that offered almost no form of dynamic or expressive content. With Windows 8, however, Microsoft is adopting the live tile interface pioneered in Windows Phone, offering users glanceable, dynamic information from your favorite apps, even when they’re not running. If you’re not yet familiar with it, the expressive nature of this user interface element may surprise you....More

After a disastrous experience trying to perform clean installs of Windows 7 with Upgrade media, it’s time to look at how this process works in Windows 8. And while this is still early days, my preliminary look at this process suggests that Microsoft has finally done the right thing and made it easy for legitimate Windows customers to install Windows 8 however they want....More

The new reliability, security, and networking features in Windows 8 are interesting examples of technologies that straddle both the Metro and desktop sides of the OS. And the sheer number of improvements here suggest that Windows 8 is indeed a major upgrade....More

While Microsoft had controversially ripped Windows Media Center out of Windows 8 and announced it would then charge extra for it, the firm is now trying to set things right for fans. It will make Media Center available for free for a limited time....More

Microsoft’s recently completed Office Professional Plus 2013 suite is now available for download to TechNet and MSDN subscribers. SharePoint Server 2013, Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013 are also available....More

If there’s an app less well-understood than Xbox SmartGlass, I’m not aware of it. This app is not complicated: It’s just the next version of the Xbox Companion app, and provides a way to link your device—Windows Phone, Windows 8 or RT tablet—with Xbox media experiences (movies, TV shows, and games) on the Xbox 360 console. Here’s what’s new in the Xbox SmartGlass app....More

Microsoft recently confirmed that it would be updating many of the built-in apps in Windows 8 between the release to manufacturing (RTM) of the OS and its general availability on October 26. Here’s a peek at the changes the firm just made to its Xbox Video app....More

If you’ve spent a lot of time at both the Microsoft campus and at Microsoft trade shows, you may have been wondering, as I have, how Microsoft could possibly host an event as big as BUILD at its corporate headquarters. After all, there are no buildings there big enough for such a thing. Turns out they’re erecting a big a#$ tent!...More

While it’s clear that the new Metro environment in Windows 8 and RT is a new mobile platform, many users still don’t understand the implications of this distinction. Key among the confusions is SkyDrive, which is available in both Metro app and desktop application forms on Windows 8. These two programs offer completely different but complementary capabilities....More