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Microsoft reported its first loss in more than two decades Thursday as an accounting adjustment and low PC sales hurt the software maker's numbers. However, the company remained optimistic that consumer demand will regain momentum when various upcoming products hit the market later this year. Before...

The burgeoning market for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is not only affecting consumer use of information technology, but also having an impact on the private sector workplace. The mobile IT market is clearly hot. Worldwide shipments of major brand smartphones increased by 50 percen...

A technical error that affected 28 million Windows users in Europe could cost Microsoft billions in penalties. The glitch, which disabled the display of a browser choice screen in Windows, violates an agreement between Microsoft and European Union regulators. The maximum penalty for such a violation...

Microsoft unveiled the new versions of its Office suite and and Office 365 subscription-based service on Monday. The updated Office has an intuitive design that makes it touch- and stylus-compatible, and usable across a variety of devices running Windows, including tablets and smartphones. It's also...

To listen to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer talk, you'd think he was the prime minister of a besieged nation, rather than the captain of one of the largest software companies in the world. In an interview Tuesday with CRN, a website for VARs and technology integrators, the flamboyant head of Microsoft pl...

Dell's announcement of its planned Quest Software acquisition seemed more inevitable than surprising. Quest had been in play since March, when it said investment firm Insight Venture Partners offered $23 per share, or about $2 billion, for the company. The price jumped when an unidentified player en...

Microsoft's rollout of Windows 8 represents a new era for operating systems and for Microsoft in general. It also represents the probable end of the Windows desktop OS that most consumers now know, according to a report from Gartner, although the firm expects its demise to be long-unfolding. "The re...

Research In Motion is issuing pink slips as part of a massive cost-cutting effort that could save the company $1 billion in expenses. RIM is reportedly laying workers off in small batches, starting with the quality control, operations and parts departments. The company is also looking to cut costs b...

Microsoft recently announced a new line of tablets dubbed "Surface." However, instead of partnering with any of its traditional hardware friends, Microsoft is going it alone when it comes to Surface manufacturing -- Redmond will make the hardware on its own and load it with its Windows 8 operating ...

E-Commerce buzz words sound great in theory, but innovation often founders on the shoals of "getting there from here" as IT managers slog through the details of converting to new systems and programs. Federal agencies have been turning to shared services, data consolidation, commodity IT and, especi...

President Obama initiated an Open Government program on his second day in office, pledging to make government information more accessible to the public. Three years later, that program has achieved significant success in many forums. However, the effort of making more federal information even more a...

Microsoft reported higher than expected earnings Thursday, with Windows 7 license sales up despite the company's plan to release a new version of its desktop operating system later this year. The company's PC division gained 4 percent from a year ago, earning $4.6 billion in revenue. The gain was i...

It's still too early for official sales figures, but it seems Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T just might have something of a hit on their hands with the Lumia 900 smartphone. A check at press time of Amazon's bestseller list for cellphones with service plans showed two versions of the Lumia 900 -- cya...

Research In Motion has been accused of infringing six patents owned by Dutch semiconductor company NXP. NXP claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Florida that the BlackBerry maker has infringed on patents pertaining to data transmission, GPS receivers on mobile phones, and circuit desig...

Oracle released its fiscal third-quarter earnings Tuesday, coming out ahead of Wall Street expectations in regard to profits and new license sales. The database software maker saw revenue rise 2.2 percent from a year ago, going from $8.81 billion to $9.04 billion. It posted adjusted earnings at 62 ...