European retailers HMV, Play and GAME are taking pre-orders for Xbox 360 Elite at the price of £330. Xbox 360 Elite, which features a black casing, 120GB hard disk and HDMI output is due to launch in Europe on August 24 although Microsoft denied to comment on the price-tag these 3 retailers have. The Xbox 360 Elite is already on sale in the US for the price of $479 while the lesser equipped Xbox 360 Premium sells for $399 in the US and £279 in the UK.

A few days back Microsoft's Peter Moore attacked Sony's PS3...Today Sony's marketing VP Peter Dille does the same about Microsoft's console the Xbox 360.

I don't want to be argumentative, but I take issue with Microsoft either having a long tail, or being profitable, because they've never done either. They've never made a dime in this business. With the Xbox 360 you've got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don't, and none of them have Blu-ray, and the HD DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product? And by the way it doesn't even work. Do they want to be selling it for 10 years and refurbishing them all for 10 more years? I don't think that's a 10 year product. You could disagree with me, or they could disagree with me, but I'd put that up against the PS3 any day

Microsoft today made an official announcement regarding the upcoming Windows Vista Sp1. Main reason was a typo mistake in a email send out by the Windows Driver Kit team who stated that their beta software version would be released the same time as the Windows Vista Sp1 Beta.

There will be a Windows Vista service pack and our current expectation is that a beta will be made available sometime this year. Service packs are part of the traditional software lifecycle - they're something we do for all Microsoft products as part of our commitment to continuous improvement, and providing early test builds is a standard practice that helps us incorporate customer feedback and improve the overall quality of the product. Service packs are just one example of the work we do to constantly improve the Windows experience. We also deliver improvements to Windows via Windows Update, which is an excellent channel for providing our customers with the most significant updates as they happen. And, since Windows Vista launched, we have continued working with partners to improve overall device coverage and application compatibility. There are now more than 2.1 million supported devices and more than 2,000 logoed applications for Windows Vista. We think customers will have a great experience using Windows Vista today.

Xbox 360 Hacked

A Hacker under the nickname SeventhSon has discovered a method to alter both the DVD key and game region code on Microsoft's Xbox 360, at least for the Hypervisor exploitable 4532 and 4548 kernels. A great part of this hack also involves desoldering your Xbox flash chip something that only the technologically handy will try.

Microsoft's Xbox chief Peter Moore has abruptly resigned from Microsoft just a few hours after passing judgement to SONY about its failure with PS3 in the Japanese market. Moore will become president of EA's Sports division. Moore's replacement at Microsoft will be Don Mattrick, who was a former president of game development Electronic Arts. Mattrick will become senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, which includes the Xbox and Games for Windows.
Microsoft stated that Moore was about to leave the company because of personal reasons although industry watchers speculate that Microsoft struggles in the gaming market and the incredible pressure facing Moore specifically were partly to blame for his departure.

It seems that Microsoft is on a patent spree lately..After already filing two patents in the past month another patent filed by Microsoft just surfaced , this one however is for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your computer's hard drive to pop up advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time.
"Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements. The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier."

The European Court of First Instance will give its long-awaited verdict in Microsoft's antitrust appeal on Sept. 17, people involved in the matter said Tuesday.
It is by far the biggest antitrust case ever referred to the European Union's second highest court. The outcome of the appeal, which will have taken more than three years, will influence the future shape of the software industry and be a reference point for future antitrust cases, especially those in the fast-changing world of information technology.
The European Commission ruled in 2004 that Microsoft had abused the dominant position of its Windows OS to muscle in on other sectors of the software market.

Seems that some people who have signed up about the WDK ( Windows Driver Kit ) Beta received the following email stating that there will infact be a Windows Vista SP1 Beta really soon. Yes this was more or less expected but we didnt have confirmation up until now. Email :

Microsoft announced the release of its latest home software to manufacturers. Windows Home Server is a stripped down version of Windows Server 2008 that will allow users to share and organize music and movies with up to 10 XP or Vista based computers, as well as game consoles and other digital devices. Six hardware vendors have signed on to create products for the OS. Most notably Iomega, which is developing a user-expandable product for consumers with up to four hot-swappable drives.

Looks like Vista's SP1 is coming a lot sooner than expected since Mary Jo Foley's reports that a Vista SP1 beta may already be tested among Microsoft's beta testing members around the globe thus we may be seeing SP1 at around November, or as vaguely described by Microsoft PR "sometime this year".
Chances are that we may get an even earlier gaze at SP1 on August 8th at Microsoft Australia's TechEd conference on the Gold Coast this year.

Microsoft has been voted the UK's number one brand for the second year running, according to a survey out today.
Brand monitoring group Superbrands surveyed 3,000 consumers for its annual rankings, which put Microsoft top, followed by Coca-Cola, Google, the BBC, BP, British Airways, Lego, Guinness, Mercedes-Benz and Cadbury. Brands falling out of the top 10 this year included Porsche, Marks & Spencer, Heinz and Duracell.

Via an update of the Individualized Blackbox component (IBX), FairUse4WM can now remove DRM for Microsoft IBX versions 11.0.6000.6324 and earlier, on both XP and Vista.
This is another drawback for Microsoft since for the past year hackers have managed to defeat DRM in more than one occasion.
This release was first announced on Doom9 forums where a user nicknamed 'Divine Tao' managed to update FairUse4WM to support new keys (v1.3 Fix2). In any case so far 'Divine Tao' does not seem to be working with the same hacker(s) who broke the Windows Media DRM code a year ago, as the user says that he could not access the FairUse4WM source code.

Editors note: It is a federal crime to remove the copy protection from any song in the United States. If you are caught, you can be fined $25,000 and put in jail for 5 years. TechPowerUp! does not support piracy.

If rumors are to be believed, which they sometimes should be (Google DID buy YouTube, after all), then Microsoft is about to spend $6 billion on the acquisition of Facebook. From a business standpoint, buying one of the largest social networking sites in America would bring Microsoft ahead in the game of internet business. This makes sense, especially considering the last profitable thing Microsoft did involving the internet was the acquisition of Hotmail.

V2 of Windows Mobile Search has been released.
Along with a major update to the browser interface we see Improved Navigation, Cache, Movie Searching, GPS, Traffic reporting and more!
Whether your phone works with J2ME (Java) , Windows Mobile, or any other device with a browser, Live Search has you covered with maps, directions and business search.
There's also a beta version of the app for Blackberry devices.

Windows Mobile / J2ME / BlackBerry
Other Devices

If both IE and Firefox version 2.0, or later are loaded on a persons computer a zero day security hole may occur.

Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim, said in an interview that the company needs to lower the $299 - $479 price tag to increase sales among those who are not typically interested in traditional combat and racing video games. No word on how much the price will be cut or when it will happen but Mr. Kim's comments come a day after Sony cut the price on it's Playstation 3. Microsoft has sold 5.5 million XBOX 360 units in the United States and 11.6 million worldwide.

Microsoft announced on Thursday an extension to the Xbox 360 warranty. While the official warranty at the present time is one year (two years in some countries), Microsoft announced a three-year warranty that covers any console that displays a three flashing red lights error message or also known as "the red ring of death." If a customer has an issue indicated by the three flashing red lights, Microsoft will repair the console free of charge-including shipping-for three years from the console's purchase date. Microsoft has also made some improvements to the Xbox 360 console that will reduce hardware lockups. This may refer to reports of Xbox 360s being outfitted with extra heat sinks to prevent console failure. The whole repair-extended warranty thing will cost Microsoft at least $1 billion, according to the company.

A Mexican online financial Web site estimates that tycoon Carlos Slim has a net worth of $67 billion, which would place his fortune above that of the Microsoft chairman, according to various media reports. Slim is known for a wide swath of holdings including banking interests, CompUSA and telecommunications firms.

The Mexican site, Sentido Comun, noted Slim's rising wealth in April, saying that they believed he had passed both then No. 2 Warren Buffet and Gates, Britain's The Guardian said in its report. But with a recent rise in shares of mobile phone carrier America Movil, Sentido Comun founder Eduardo Garcia said, there is no doubt that Slim has surpassed Gates.

Back in February, a blogger who went by the alias "DigDuality" got fed up with Microsoft's accusations of the open source community. And so, from work, he started a website that challenged Microsoft to find any IP violations *nix was making. May came, May went, and the website became about as active as an exhausted gold mine. Now, a few days into July, "DigDuality" has returned to his blog. He claims that Microsoft traced the website to DD's company, and that Microsoft threatened his company. The company, according to DD, then proceeded to give DD a choice: he could either keep the website running, or keep his job. DD preferred the latter, and so, the website has remained inactive for quite some time. DD refused to name the company that told DD to hold his tongue.

Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced the 1,000 HD DVD Indies Project, designed to lower the barriers to entry for filmmakers to produce and distribute movies in the HD DVD format through the innovative manufacturing-on-demand technology of CustomFlix, a part of an Amazon group of companies. Jointly sponsored by Amazon and Microsoft, the project will provide free authoring and setup services for up to 1,000 selected indie titles.

Anyone who's ever had the Red Ring Of Death (the Xbox 360's way of saying it's dead) knows what an unfortunate position they are in. There are various ways to fix the RROD, but most of them indicate that it's time to get a new Xbox 360. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. In a classic RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization), a customer says they got a broken product, want a new one, ship the broken one to the manufacturer, and get a new one for their troubles.

However, what happens when this keeps happening? A certain Justin Lowe has done this classic RMA procedure with his Xbox 360 eleven times over, and still isn't sure whether or not he'll have to do it again. And with the wide range of problems he's had, why should he be sure? He's lost three Xbox 360s to the infamous red ring of death, two to disc read errors, two were dead on arrival, several had random audio and video-related issues, and one actually exploded. Customer support was at first friendly and fast, but now, it seems to Justin as if they are slow and unhelpful.

Nintendo has continued its recent console success throughout May, with the DS taking top spot and the Wii in a comfortable second in terms of sales. The Nintendo DS sold an impressive 423,000 units and the Wii 338,000 units, with the PSP next in line with 221,000 units, ahead of the PlayStation 2's 188,000 units. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are continuing to lag behind, with Sony's latest console on just 82,000 and the Xbox 360 on 155,000 units - the PS3 only beat Game Boy Advance figures by a mere one thousand units. Sales in May totalled $815.5 million, up 49% compared to figures from last year - a strong month for the games industry.

In an effort to better reflect the capabilities of IPTV, Microsoft has decided to rename it "Mediaroom." The name change comes along with an upgrade which allows users to share media content with other computers on the network. Users of Mediaroom will also be able to view multiple channels and programs on one screen. Currently more than 18 of the world's largest providers have agreed to offer Mediaroom as part of their digital TV package.

Microsoft has posted its latest security bulletin, offering patches for 15 vulnerabilities in its operating system, Internet Explorer browser (both IE6 and IE7), and other software products. Nine of the 15 flaws are labeled critical. To get the Windows updates and Microsoft Office updates for your home computer or laptop go to the Microsoft Update webpage or click here for direct download link.

Internet search giant Google filed a 49 page document with the U.S. Justice Department and state attorney general charging that Microsoft's Windows Vista impairs the performance of "desktop search" programs that finds data stored on a computer's hard drive. Google believes that Microsoft is not complying with the 2002 antitrust ruling because "The search boxes built throughout Vista are hard-wired to Microsoft's own desktop search product, with no way for users to choose an alternate provider." Microsoft says it has already made more than a dozen changes to address regulators' concerns.