Microsoft buys used iPhones in latest attempt to get consumers to switch to Windows

September 28, 2013 10:41 AM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday launched yet another trade-in program to convince consumers to switch to a Windows device, this time aimed at iPhone owners.

On its Microsoft Store website, Microsoft outlined the new deal: It will accept "gently used" iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 smartphones -- the 2011 and 2012 editions, respectively -- and pay a minimum of $200 for each. The Redmond, Wash. technology company will issue the funds as a gift card good for purchases at the Microsoft Store.

As in the iPad buyback program that debuted two weeks ago, customers must bring their used iPhones to a retail outlet in the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico -- trade-ins are not supported online -- where a sales representative will evaluate the device and decide on the dollar amount. Microsoft has 77 stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

"Microsoft Store gift-card value ... is subject to Microsoft's discretion and manager approval," the website said. "All trade-ins are final. Cannot be redeemed for cash. Limit 1 per customer."

The gift cards that result from an iPhone trade-in can be used for anything Microsoft sells in its stores, including its Surface tablets and third-party PCs, but the deal is clearly intended to tempt Apple's current customers into switching to a Windows Phone like the Nokia Lumia 1020.

That may be a very tough pitch.

According to market research company ChangeWave, 70% of iPhone owners polled said they were "very satisfied" with their purchase, the top-ranked percentage in the survey, which also noted that the second-most satisfied customers were ones who had a Samsung smartphone: 54% of those people said they were "very satisfied" with their device.

Like the earlier iPad deal, Microsoft's iPhone buyback program isn't available online so it's impossible to tell what the company's salespeople will pay for an iPhone before getting in the car. Re-commerce vendors such as Gazelle and NextWorth, which do operate online, pay between $190 and $210 for a working 16GB iPhone 4S on AT&T's network, and between $290 and $304 for a 16GB AT&T iPhone 5. The lower prices for both devices were quoted by Gazelle, the higher prices by NextWorth.

Microsoft also has a broader buyback program in place that operates online, and that accepts a wide variety of rivals' devices, including the iPhone. That program produced trade-in quotes for the same 16GB AT&T iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 of $160 and $250, respectively, or between 16% and 24% less for the iPhone 4S, between 14% and 18% less for the iPhone 5, than Gazelle and NextWorth.

Not surprisingly, the new buyback program does not accept Microsoft's own Surface tablets as trade-ins; none of Microsoft's current deals do. That's triggered complaints by owners of the company's first-generation tablets, who last week urged Microsoft to offer cash for their Surface RT and Surface Pro devices so that they could trade up to the second-generation Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 when they go on sale Oct. 22.

Microsoft's iPhone buyback program expires Nov. 3. Apple has already launched new smartphones -- the flagship iPhone 5S and the lower-priced iPhone 5C -- but the former is in very short supply, with current orders slated to ship at an unspecified date next month.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.

Read more about Smartphones in Computerworld's Smartphones Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft gets 37,000 requests for user data in first half of year

September 27, 2013 07:25 PM ETIDG News Service - Judges and police investigators are on track to submit about the same number of requests to Microsoft for end user data this year as they did in 2012, according to figures released Friday.

Microsoft received 37,196 such requests worldwide in the first six months of the year, meaning it's on track to field about the same number of requests as last year, when just over 75,000 were submitted.

Microsoft disclosed the figures in its Law Enforcement Requests Report for the first half of 2013.

Five countries accounted for almost three-quarters of the requests: the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Turkey.

Microsoft said the report, which breaks down the requests by country and shows how Microsoft responded, is "valuable and useful to the community" in debating the balance between privacy and law enforcement needs.

The report doesn't include information about national security-related requests from the U.S. government, such as those made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It's illegal for Microsoft and other online firms to report detailed information about the type and volume of national security orders they receive.

Microsoft and other companies are suing the U.S. for permission to reveal that data, which is in the spotlight after disclosures that the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and reviewed massive amounts of information about law-abiding citizens.

The requests potentially impacted about 66,500 Microsoft online accounts altogether, the company said. Microsoft provided "non-content data" in response to 77% of the requests. This can include people's names, billing addresses and IP connection data.

The company disclosed actual customer content in response to 2.2%, or just over 800, of the requests. That may have included photos, email messages and other documents. Most of these instances were in response to U.S. agencies, it said.

The requests affected "less than 0.01%" of accounts across all its services, Microsoft said. In 21% of the cases it did not hand over any data, the company said.

Most requests were for consumer accounts. Microsoft received 19 requests for enterprise email accounts. In four of those cases it disclosed customer data, and in one case it disclosed non-customer data. All those enterprise requests originated in the U.S.

To disclose non-content data, Microsoft requires a subpoena or equivalent order, and it must have a court order or warrant before handing over user content.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Microsoft OS chief: One API to rule them all

Microsoft is pursuing the ideal of OS platforms: a unified code base that runs from smartphones to servers, giving users a consistent experience across devices at home and at work, and developers a common tool set for building applications.

"We really should have one silicon interface for all of our devices. We should have one set of developer APIs on all of our devices," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft's Operating Systems Engineering Group, during the company's meeting with financial analysts on Thursday.

[ Windows 8 left you blue? Then check out Windows Red, InfoWorld's plan to fix Microsoft's contested OS. | Microsoft's new direction, the touch interface for tablet and desktop apps, the transition from Windows 7 -- InfoWorld covers all this and more in the Windows 8 Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay atop key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]

"And all of the apps we bring to end users should be available on all of our devices," he added.

This is the ambitious goal Myerson's team has been chasing since the Operating Systems Engineering Group was formed two months ago as part of a broad reorganization of the company.

At the time, CEO Steve Ballmer said that group would be in charge of "all our OS work for console, to mobile device, to PC, to back-end systems," as well as of the OS "core cloud services."

Myerson's remarks on Thursday made it clear how challenging his group's mission is.

In addition to the single developer tool set and application parity across devices, his team is working on "one core [cloud] service which is enabling all of our devices," while at the same time providing a "tailored" experience for each device, from 3-inch phones to 60-inch TV sets.

"We want to facilitate the creation of a common, familiar experience across all of those devices, but fundamentally tailored and unique for each device," Myerson said.

His team's vision is "very clear" and they're pursuing it with a sense of urgency, he added.

While the potential benefits to customers and developers sound compelling, the undertaking is technologically daunting and, according to some critics, conceptually flawed.

For example, Apple has a dual-OS strategy that has worked very well for it so far: the Mac OS for desktops and laptops, and iOS for phones and tablets.

Google also has gone down this route with ChromeOS for the Chromebook laptops and desktops and Android for tablets and smartphones, although some question if the line between the two OSes will blur in the future.

In addition, Microsoft currently has a mess on its hands with Windows 8. The tile-based, touch-optimized OS was supposed to propel Microsoft into a competitive position against Apple and Android vendors in the tablet market. Instead it stumbled out of the gate, hobbled by a general dislike for some of its key features by many consumers and IT pros. An update that addresses the main complaints, Windows 8.1, is due in mid-October.

And as Myerson's team aims for the moon, down here on Earth Microsoft still has two main versions of Windows 8, a situation that has caused confusion among customers as well. There's Windows 8 for x86 devices, an OS that can run legacy Windows 7 applications, and then there's Windows RT, which can't run those apps because it's for devices that run on ARM chips.

Then there's Windows Phone 8, which has also suffered from low adoption primarily because, as in the tablet market, Microsoft has a small share in smartphones. Its acquisition of Nokia's smartphone business, which hasn't closed, is part of its effort to turn that tide.

Also not helping matters is the lukewarm reception that the Microsoft-built and branded Surface tablets have received -- both the Windows 8 and Windows RT models.

As would be expected, many developers have adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward Windows 8 while Microsoft sorts out the problems and starts concretely delivering on its unified OS plan.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

View the original article here

Patch Monday: A way to avoid more Microsoft Automatic Update fiascos

This month's Black Tuesday -- Sept. 10, 2013 -- enters the record books as Microsoft's most patch-botching month in history. That's quite an accomplishment, frankly. Having followed Microsoft's bungled patch efforts since long before the ascendancy of Patch Tuesday, I think there's a better -- if rather unorthodox -- way to manage patching.

The release dilemma is quite straightforward: Microsoft has to test the patches without letting them leak to the bad guys. Conventional wisdom dictates that if the bad guys can reverse engineer the patches before they roll down the Automatic Update chute, Windows as we know it will cease to exist. However, given the recent revelations of governmental stockpiling of zero-days, the ascendancy of companies that specialize in selling such zero-days to governments and corporate spies alike, and the fascinating proposal that the U.S. government share its zero-day trove with private companies (for a fee, of course), I think the day-and-date exposure threat is way overblown.

Here's my proposal: Instead of rolling all the patches out via Automatic Update on Black Tuesday, engulfing an unsuspecting public and creating all sorts of buggy havoc, I think Microsoft should let volunteers test the patches one day earlier. Call it Patch Monday. That would give software manufacturers, corporate customers with patch testing capabilities, enthusiasts and, yes, hackers, a one-day head start on the pandemonium that invariably ensues upon unleashing Automatic Updates.

Microsoft would put together all of the patches as it now does for Black Tuesday. But instead of keeping the security patches under wraps until the fateful moment on Tuesday when millions and millions of machines get hit almost simultaneously, it should let volunteers take a swing at them 24 hours earlier.

That would've given Kaspersky Antivirus, for example, a chance to test KB 2823324 a day before its release and to discover that older versions of Kaspersky would freeze. It would've given ambitious Outlook 2013 users a chance to see before KB 2817630 hit that their folders disappeared. It would've offered Office Starter Edition users a chance before KB 2589275 got rammed down the Automatic Update chute to scream about the fact that they're being told to buy Office 2010. The Brazilian manufacturer of the banking security plugin "G-Buster" might've avoided the massive meltdown of PCs in Brazil after KB 2823324 hit. And on and on.

Of course, the immediate argument is that, by opening up an all-volunteer Patch Monday, you're giving the bad guys a head start -- an extra day to reverse-engineer the patches and wipe out the Internet. To which I say, "baloney," or something less printable.

The really bad guys already have hundreds of zero days at their disposal. Chances are very good that the most tied-in government-sponsored crackers already know about the holes that Microsoft is going to patch. The real vulnerability lies with bad guys who aren't working for the government. They  don't have enough money to buy a zero day, but they're capable of reverse engineering and distributing a massive malicious attack in 24 hours. Yes, such people do exist.

Microsoft already has a rating system that can pinpoint patches vulnerable to those kinds of attackers. Every security bulletin these days has three key components, described in a TechNet article, which you can see readily on the SANS Internet Storm Center listing for each Black Tuesday. Each security bulletin (and presumably each individual patch) gets rated with a severity level, an exploitability level, and a description of whether the hole has already been publicly disclosed.

My proposal for Patch Monday has some wiggle room for Microsoft: If a particular patch (not a security bulletin, but an individual patch) has a severity rating of critical, an exploitability rating of 1, and it has not yet been publicly disclosed, Microsoft may (that's the operative word) choose to withhold the patch from Patch Monday volunteer testing.

View the original article here

Microsoft inches toward Office on iPad, Android tablets

September 22, 2013 06:33 AM ETComputerworld - Microsoft executives last week came the closest yet to saying that the company will release Office on iPads and Android tablets, but stopped short of promising anything specific or setting a timetable.

"We are working on touch-first versions for our core apps in the Office suite, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and we will bring these apps to Windows devices, and also to other devices in ways that meets our customers' needs, and the customer value of those experiences, and in ways that economically make sense for Microsoft, and at a proper timetable," said Qi Lu on Thursday in a heavily-qualified answer during the company's financial analysts meeting, a half-day event where Microsoft spoke to Wall Street analysts.

Lu heads Microsoft's new Applications and Services Group, which is responsible for Office.

Others chimed in, too, including CEO Steve Ballmer, who recently announced he would retire once the company selects a new chief executive.

After a Wells Fargo analyst questioned Microsoft's current strategy -- which is to favor Windows by offering Office only on tablets running that OS -- and encouraged the company to "let your apps free and run cross-platform," Ballmer visibly bristled.

"You said something that was actually the opposite of what I said," Ballmer told the analyst. "What I'm telling you is we're going to integrate our services with our devices, [but] we'll also make our services available on other people's devices, both to the consumer and to the enterprise."

Office, though not strictly a service -- at least in the way that, say, Bing search is -- has been touted by Microsoft as just that because of its software-as-a-service (SasS) Office 365.

Later in the same answer, Ballmer seemed to get more specific about Microsoft's plans for Office. "Now, how do we get our services to be popular on non-Windows devices? With the enterprise we kind of know how to do that. You walk into the enterprise, you say sign up for Office 365, you say we're going to embrace your iPads and your iPhones, and blah-de, blah-de, blah," Ballmer said. "We know how to do that. We know how to get paid. Life feels pretty straightforward."

No one on Microsoft's executive team, however, said straight out that Office will be available on iPads and Android tablets, or when that would happen.

But some pundits interpreted the remarks as confirmation, more or less, of a long-rumored -- but not yet realized -- move by Microsoft to offer its leading money maker, Office, on rivals' hardware.

So, what exactly did Microsoft say?

One analyst said it was a trial balloon, and little more. "Microsoft likes to test ideas and messages to see what people think," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. "Actually, that's pretty smart. But I do feel like that they were just testing the boundaries of what people think [about such a move]."

Moorhead interpreted the Microsoft executives' comments as less a commitment, more as a let's-see-what-the-Street-thinks moment because he believes the company has not yet made up its mind whether to offer Office on iOS and Android.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Box joins crew of companies trying to disrupt Microsoft Office

You knew it had to happen.

A year ago, file storage and collaboration service Box hired Sam Schillace, the creator of cloud-based document creation tool Writely, which later became Google Docs, the cornerstone of Google Apps. At first, Apps was considered a joke, way behind on features and suitable only for individuals and small businesses. Eventually, it made enough inroads into enough enterprises that Microsoft targeted Apps in its sales process and created its own cloud-based competitors, Office Web Apps and Office 365. It's a classic tale of disruption.

Today, Box announced that it's starting down the same road as Google, adding document creation to its cloud-based file storage and collaboration service. The new Box Notes feature is just entering private beta, and it's Web-only at this phase -- a major drawback given Box's stated intention to become the collaboration tool of choice for the cloud-plus-mobile world -- but it's a clear statement of intention.

[ Also on CITEworld: Salesforce realizes nobody wants to store their files in Salesforce ]

Way behind Word -- on purpose
In terms of features, Box Notes will launch leagues behind Microsoft Word. It's really more of a note-taking app -- akin to OneNote -- than a full word processor, although it does have basic formatting features.

Rather, the most important aspects are real-time concurrent editing, annotations, and a strong social element -- for instance, small visual avatars tell you exactly who's working on which parts of a file at a given time.

Schillace said that Box is trying to think of document creation the way Apple thought about smartphones when it began designing the iPhone -- by thinking hard about what to leave out. "Everybody was trying to squeeze the desktop into a mobile device, like PalmOS or Danger... It was funky and weird, and didn't quite work right. Apple started making choices about what to put in and what to leave out, and it worked much better for that form factor."

Box Notes contains basic formatting tools (top), annotations (bottom), and a feature called Note Heads (left) that tells you who's working in a particular part of an app.

He believes document creation is now in the same phase as mobile phones were seven years ago. Traditional word processing was invented for a world when information workers wrote business letters and mailed them back and forth. That started to become a niche scenario with the advent of email and other forms of online communication. It's become completely ridiculous with the mobile web.

"It would be really miserable if you had to write up every email you wrote as a formal business letter," said Schillace. "Think about doing that with all your texts, it would be ridiculous. That artifact is actively getting in the way where documents are just carriers for the business intent, the social intent, the communications."

Others are thinking along the same lines, particularly Quip, a social-mobile word processing app that launched last month under the leadership of former Facebook CTO (and former Googler) Bret Taylor. Schillace admitted he was "a little annoyed" when he heard about Quip because Box had been working on Notes for many months by that time.

But Shillace believes there's room for multiple players, saying several times that document creation is "not a zero sum game."

As far as Google goes, he believes Box's enterprise focus will help it stand apart. "If I wanted to compete with Google Docs I'd do Google Docs again," he said. "We're deeper into the platform end and enterprise support than Google Docs. Enterprise is a bit of a messy game, and Google doesn't like things that don't scale that well, they like things to be more automated. There are lots of ways we can add value and be part of their ecosystem to solve real problems. We partner with them and want to be integrated with them."

So once Box Notes is done, will Box turn its attention to disrupting other parts of the Office suite? Schillace says no to Excel -- it's too specialized and well-entrenched as a platform for financial workers, although there are particular use cases (like using Excel as a simple ad hoc database) that might be interesting.

And although Schillace personally believes that "PowerPoint should die in a fire," Box has no plans to go after it any time soon.

Expect Box Notes to be a big focus at this year's BoxWorks conference, which kicks off later today in San Francisco. I'll be on hand to cover any more news from the show and talk to some Box customers.

Matt Rosoff is the editorial director of CITEworld. Read Matt's bio

This story was originally published at CITEworld.

View the original article here

Microsoft kicks off iPad buyback deal in latest effort to juice Surface sales

Microsoft will pay at least $200 for used iPads made by rival Apple, and in return issue credit that customers can use to buy one of the company's Surface tablets.

On its Microsoft Store website, Microsoft outlined the buyback deal: It will accept "gently used" iPad 2, and third- and fourth-generation iPads -- the latter two models launched in 2012 -- pay a minimum of $200 for each tablet, and issue the funds as a gift card good for purchases at the Microsoft Store.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Surface 2 leaked details paint lackluster picture. | Get expert advice about planning and implementing your BYOD strategy with InfoWorld's 29-page "Mobile and BYOD Deep Dive" PDF special report. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobilize newsletter. ]

Customers must bring their used iPads to a Canadian or U.S. Microsoft retail outlet -- the program's not supported online -- where a sales person will evaluate the tablet and decide on the dollar amount. Microsoft has approximately 70 stores in the U.S.

Apple's 7.9-in. iPad Mini is not eligible for trade-in.

"Microsoft Store gift-card value ... is subject to Microsoft's discretion and manager approval," the website said. "All trade-ins are final. Limit 1 per customer."

Because the buyback program isn't available online, it's impossible to tell what Microsoft will pay for an iPad before going to a store. Re-commerce vendors such as Gazelle and NextWorth pay between $150 and $240 for a working 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad, with the lower value for the 2011 iPad 2 and the upper-end for the newest fourth-generation "Retina"-equipped device.

Buyback companies pay more for iPads with more storage space or those equipped for accessing the Internet over a mobile carrier data network.

They also pay cash for the Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets made by Microsoft. NextWorth quoted $187 for a 32GB Surface RT and $338 for the entry-level 64GB Surface Pro, or 54% and 43% of the list price, respectively. Microsoft's tablets start at $349 for the Surface RT, the struggling model powered by Windows RT, a subset of the more powerful Windows 8 that can run only so-called "Metro" apps. The Surface Pro, which relies on Windows 8 and can run legacy software like the desktop version of Office 2013, starts at $799.

The Redmond, Wash. company has cut prices of both models in the last two months to account for over-optimistic inventory plans and to clear the decks before Sept. 23, when it will unveil new models for the holiday selling season.

The resulting gift cards from an iPad trade-in do not have to be used for the purchase of a Microsoft Surface, but can be redeemed for anything Microsoft sells in its stores, including third-party PCs.

The deal also offers a call for action to iPad owners who have been swayed by Microsoft's television campaign that compare various features of the Surface RT with the 9.7-in. iPad, which starts at $499 with 16GB of storage space.

Microsoft's iPad buyback program expires Oct. 27. Apple is expected to roll out new tablets this year, and if it follows last year's practice -- when it also unveiled a new iPhone in September, as it did earlier this week -- the most likely introduction date is Tuesday Oct. 22.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.

Read more about mobile/wireless in Computerworld's Mobile/Wireless Topic Center.

View the original article here

Microsoft updates display 'worrisome' decline in quality

September 15, 2013 03:27 PM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday acknowledged it had rewritten four of its security updates issued just three days earlier after customers reported never-ending demands that they be installed, even though they had been.

The flawed updates were just the latest in a disturbing trend of quality problems in Microsoft's security and stability updates. The repeated installation requests followed Microsoft's yanking of a non-security update last week, as well as buggy fixes shipped in August and April that blocked access to server-based email mailboxes and crippled Windows 7 PCs.

"Worrisome," is how Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at San Francisco-based cloud-oriented security vendor CloudPassage, put it when asked about the trend in an interview conducted via instant messaging Friday. "Are we starting to see a shift back to when people called Microsoft the necessary PITA [pain in the ass]?"

According to Microsoft, it's already fixed the four updates that were dunning customers with installment demands. "We have received reports of updates being offered for installation multiple times, or certain cases where updates were not offered via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)," the company said on an Office engineering blog. "We have investigated the issue, established the cause, and we have released new updates that will cease the unnecessary re-targeting of the updates or the correct offering of these updates."

Microsoft identified four of last Tuesday's 13 security updates as flawed, including one for SharePoint Server, one that affected Office 2007 and Office 2010, another that impacted Office 2013, and a fourth that patched Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.

A non-security update for PowerPoint 2010 also exhibited the same behavior.

Almost immediately after Microsoft issued September's slate of security updates, customers reported the recurring install snafu on the company's support forums.

Some were caustic about their experiences dealing with the endless loop, and their time on the telephone with Microsoft support representatives. "I've spent more than 3 hours chatting with MS Answer desk with people who were unable to comprehend this simple issue," wrote "choisington" on Sept. 10, the day Microsoft delivered the updates.

"I am so fed up with Microsoft, their ability to totally take over a machine's ability to function," ranted "Ffaith" on Thursday.

The frustration was understandable: Also last week, an Office 2013 stability and performance update blanked the folder pane in Outlook 2013, the suite's email client. After fielding scores of complaints from customers, Microsoft acknowledged the update was flawed, yanked the original, began working on a corrected re-release, and urged users to uninstall the update.

September's update blunders were the latest in a series of embarrassments for Microsoft. In August, the Redmond, Wash. company yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches. In April, Microsoft urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous "Blue Screen of Death"; it re-released the update two weeks later.

Other security professionals weighed in on Microsoft's inability to produce top-quality updates. Paul Ducklin, the head of technology for Sophos' Asia-Pacific region, dubbed Sept. 13 "Patch Horror Day" in a post to his company's blog.

"Microsoft is killing their record," said CloudPassage's Storms, referring to the company's hard-won reputation for issuing flawless updates. "Their record had been so good that people were starting to relax on their own internal testing."

Storms, joined by some of those who reported the over-and-over installation demands by the four Office updates, wondered whether Microsoft's focus on the cloud, and the subscription model for Office 365, was to blame for the lack of attention to detail on the traditional "perpetual" license versions of the suite.

"I think they recognize that's where the market demand is moving," said Storms of Office 365 and its continuous, behind-the-scenes updating. "But at what cost?"

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Malware and Vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft updates display 'worrisome' decline in quality

September 15, 2013 03:27 PM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday acknowledged it had rewritten four of its security updates issued just three days earlier after customers reported never-ending demands that they be installed, even though they had been.

The flawed updates were just the latest in a disturbing trend of quality problems in Microsoft's security and stability updates. The repeated installation requests followed Microsoft's yanking of a non-security update last week, as well as buggy fixes shipped in August and April that blocked access to server-based email mailboxes and crippled Windows 7 PCs.

"Worrisome," is how Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at San Francisco-based cloud-oriented security vendor CloudPassage, put it when asked about the trend in an interview conducted via instant messaging Friday. "Are we starting to see a shift back to when people called Microsoft the necessary PITA [pain in the ass]?"

According to Microsoft, it's already fixed the four updates that were dunning customers with installment demands. "We have received reports of updates being offered for installation multiple times, or certain cases where updates were not offered via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)," the company said on an Office engineering blog. "We have investigated the issue, established the cause, and we have released new updates that will cease the unnecessary re-targeting of the updates or the correct offering of these updates."

Microsoft identified four of last Tuesday's 13 security updates as flawed, including one for SharePoint Server, one that affected Office 2007 and Office 2010, another that impacted Office 2013, and a fourth that patched Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.

A non-security update for PowerPoint 2010 also exhibited the same behavior.

Almost immediately after Microsoft issued September's slate of security updates, customers reported the recurring install snafu on the company's support forums.

Some were caustic about their experiences dealing with the endless loop, and their time on the telephone with Microsoft support representatives. "I've spent more than 3 hours chatting with MS Answer desk with people who were unable to comprehend this simple issue," wrote "choisington" on Sept. 10, the day Microsoft delivered the updates.

"I am so fed up with Microsoft, their ability to totally take over a machine's ability to function," ranted "Ffaith" on Thursday.

The frustration was understandable: Also last week, an Office 2013 stability and performance update blanked the folder pane in Outlook 2013, the suite's email client. After fielding scores of complaints from customers, Microsoft acknowledged the update was flawed, yanked the original, began working on a corrected re-release, and urged users to uninstall the update.

September's update blunders were the latest in a series of embarrassments for Microsoft. In August, the Redmond, Wash. company yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches. In April, Microsoft urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous "Blue Screen of Death"; it re-released the update two weeks later.

Other security professionals weighed in on Microsoft's inability to produce top-quality updates. Paul Ducklin, the head of technology for Sophos' Asia-Pacific region, dubbed Sept. 13 "Patch Horror Day" in a post to his company's blog.

"Microsoft is killing their record," said CloudPassage's Storms, referring to the company's hard-won reputation for issuing flawless updates. "Their record had been so good that people were starting to relax on their own internal testing."

Storms, joined by some of those who reported the over-and-over installation demands by the four Office updates, wondered whether Microsoft's focus on the cloud, and the subscription model for Office 365, was to blame for the lack of attention to detail on the traditional "perpetual" license versions of the suite.

"I think they recognize that's where the market demand is moving," said Storms of Office 365 and its continuous, behind-the-scenes updating. "But at what cost?"

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Malware and Vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft working out kinks in Outlook.com's IMAP implementation

September 13, 2013 03:27 PM ETIDG News Service - Getting Outlook.com to work with email client applications via IMAP is proving to be a challenge for some users of the Microsoft webmail service.

A variety of problems have been reported through comments in the blog post Microsoft published Thursday announcing the new IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) support in Outlook.com.

To their credit, Microsoft officials are clearly monitoring the feedback very closely, as evidenced by their frequent replies to the comments being posted.

"We've seen a handful of reports of users running into the error 9 so we're looking into this with high priority," wrote Ben Poon, an Outlook.com program manager with Microsoft, referring to a server timeout error some users are experiencing.

Another common complaint is that messages deleted using IMAP-compliant client applications remain on the Outlook.com Web interface.

The thread of comments, which is now nearing 80, also goes into questions and recommendations about specific configurations under certain scenarios and for particular OSes and email applications.

Matthew Cain, a Gartner analyst, said that scaling up IMAP support, particularly given the various ways IMAP can be interpreted by developers, can be difficult.

"Thorough testing at scale, and testing of all major permutations, is a requirement before any go-live action," Cain said via email.

Microsoft declined to comment on the issues.

In its announcement Thursday, the company said that support for the IMAP email retrieval technology would expand the scope of client software and devices that can interact with Outlook.com.

"With today's announcement, we now have a richer email experience across devices and apps, including those not using EAS (Exchange ActiveSync), such as Mac Mail and Thunderbird on a Mac," wrote Microsoft official Steve Kafka in the blog post.

Outlook.com already worked with EAS, which allows it to be used with devices running the Windows Phone, iOS and Android mobile operating systems, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft was prompted to add IMAP support based on feedback from Outlook.com users who let the company know "loud and clear that this was important," Kafka wrote.

The addition of IMAP also opens the door for third-party developers to create applications for Outlook.com or integrate existing applications with it.

Microsoft detailed in its blog post how several developers have already linked their applications and Web services with Outlook.com using IMAP.

One of them is TripIt, which can now detect emails with travel confirmations in Outlook.com inboxes and import them into a TripIt itinerary.

Outlook.com, first unveiled in mid-2012, has replaced Hotmail as the company's webmail service. Microsoft describes Outlook.com as a total reinvention of webmail, from the user interface to the back-end platform. With Outlook.com, Microsoft expects to have a stronger competitor to Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

However, Outlook.com has been hampered by occasional technical problems, including an incident last month in which the product malfunctioned in various ways for several days, as well as a prolonged outage in March.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop

Pros Comfortable ergonomic design. Stylish "manta ray" design. Three-piece set offers flexible functionality. Wireless design cuts clutter without monopolizing USB ports.

Cons Keyboard has a pronounced learning curve. Lettering may wear off early. Bottom Line The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop is a trio of PC peripherals designed to reduce strain and improve your PC experience.

By Brian Westover

Microsoft spends a lot of time thinking about how people use PCs, from the organization of an operating system to the design of a tablet. There's a lot of attention to detail that goes into a Microsoft product, but one category that many overlook is the keyboard. Microsoft's newest PC peripheral, the Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop, shows an attention to detail, awareness of design and style, and dedication to functionality that makes it our Editors' Choice for wireless keyboards, ergonomic or otherwise.

Ergonomic Desk Set
The Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop is the latest entry in Microsoft's line of ergonomic PC peripherals, now with a three-piece desktop set, consisting of a keyboard, numeric keypad, and an ergonomic mouse. In addition to upgrading the ergonomics of your workspace, the Sculpt trio also looks great, with a sleek new look and clutter-free wireless design.

All three devices connect to your Windows or Mac PC via 2.4GHz wireless signal through a shared USB receiver. That shared receiver also means that, unlike a wired keyboard and mouse, you'll only be using one USB port on your PC for all three devices. The mouse and main keyboard are each powered with two AA and AAA batteries, respectively, and the separate keypad uses a CR2430 button battery. All three come with new batteries already installed; you just need to pull out the little plastic strips that keep them from connecting.

The Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop is also made with Windows 8 in mind, with built-in features that take advantage of shortcuts and commands to provide a faster, more intuitive Windows experience. All three devices are plug-n-play (compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs, but many features are Windows only), but for more fine-tuned control, you can download Mouse and Keyboard Center 2.2 for Windows 8 (Windows only). Microsoft covers the Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop with a three year warranty.

Keyboard and Keypad
Designed from the ground up for use with Windows 8, the keyboard and mouse both feature a few distinctive features that streamline your Windows 8 use. The keyboard features built-in media controls and several hotkeys that pull up specific functions on the Windows Charms Bar, while the mouse features a bright blue Windows thumb button, letting you jump back to the start screen without having to look down at the keyboard.

It's also worth noting the peculiarities of the function buttons (Escape and F1-F12). The keys themselves are half the size of the regular chiclet keys, and rounded to provide a visual and tactile distinction from the rest of the keyboard. Instead of a "Fn" button allowing you quick access to extra functions, the keyboard uses a slider switch, which switches the keys from standard F1-F12 functionality to media and Charms functionality. While this might make it a bit difficult to swap from one use to the other, it also makes it easy to select to function set of your choice and defaulting to those functions until you manually flip the switch.

The "manta ray" design combines the curves of the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Keyboard with a divided layout similar to the Smartfish Engage Keyboard, but without the automatic angle adjustment. To compensate a bit for the adjustment to the two-halves design, the keys along the split are slightly larger, helping you to touch-type just as quickly without having to fumble into the gap in the middle.

The two halves of the keyboard are angled into a slightly domed shape, putting the wrists and forearms into a very natural position. Along the bottom edge of the keyboard is a padded wrist rest that follows the same contours and provides a comfortable support. The keyboard can also be raised and the angle adjusted thanks to a plastic riser that magnetically latches to the bottom of the keyboard, raising the palmrest up and changing the pitch for an alternative position.

Along with the distinctive ergonomic keyboard is a wireless numeric keypad, providing ten-key functionality in a self-contained device. It's similar to the two-part design seen on the Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000, and the detached keypad offers some ergonomic benefit itself. You can either position the numeric pad immediately next to the keyboard, as it would be on the traditional office keyboard, or it can be positioned anywhere else within the range of the wireless USB, letting you angle it, stack it on a pile of papers, pick it up and use it like a calculator, or enter numbers one-handed, like it's a TV remote. The fact that it's separate and wireless makes it extremely flexible, which in turn makes it far more ergonomically sound than the flat design might suggest.

Both keyboard and keypad use chiclet keys with scissor switches, about the same as you'll find on the average laptop. The keys are extremely quiet, so there's none of the clickity-clack noise you would get with a mechanical keyboard. The one complaint I might have is that the key lettering is pad printed, meaning that the individual letters are like stickers affixed to the surface of the keycap. Compared with laser etched keys, the lettering will wear off much sooner, but it's not uncommon for consumer keyboards.

Mouse
The mouse, which is also sold alone as the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse, has a very geometric-looking design, with an overall spherical shape and an indentation serving as a thumb rest. The raised rounded shape provides plenty of support, sitting taller than most, ostensibly preventing drag between your forearm or hand and the surface of your desk. It also puts the wrist at a more neutral, almost like the Evoluent VerticalMouse 4, but without the vertical orientation. With the scooped thumb cradle, it's almost like the Hippus HandShoe Mouse (with LightClick), providing similar support for the entire hand.

The mouse sports the usual right and left buttons, along with a clickable scroll wheel, and two thumb buttons. Unlike most mice, these thumb buttons aren't forward and back for browser navigation, but a back button and Windows button, which will be a real boon to anyone using Windows 8 or 8.1. The back button also has the option of being reprogrammed with you choice of commands, such as the Alt or Tab buttons, or macros for copy, paste, undo, and others. The mouse features an optical sensor with 1000 dpi tracking, and will work on most surfaces, with the exception of reflective surfaces like glass.

Performance
Using the Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop at my own desk for a week really highlighted what does and doesn't quite work on the shapely desk set. The wave design of the keyboard does reduce wrist discomfort, but it comes with a trade off in that you need to relearn your keyboard layout. The split design may require some relearning if you commonly use your right hand on the left-hand side of the keyboard or vice-versa, and touch typists may be thrown by the odd size of keys along the right/left divide. That said, once you've grown accustomed to the new shape and layout, the benefits are clear. The neutral wrist position is much easier on the wrists, and alleviated my own carpal tunnel discomfort while using the keyboard.

The separate numeric keypad is great, with the wireless design letting you position it with ease. The mouse is also beneficial, but the spherical design felt a bit weird, even when compared to other ergonomic mice. The regular mouse functions all worked exactly as they should, and the thumb accessible Windows button is a feature I'd love to see added to other mice.

The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop combines some of the best ergonomic features with Windows 8 features that will power-up your regular PC use in addition to making it more comfortable. Throw in the simplicity of wireless and a distinctive, stylish design, and it's not just one of the best ergonomic devices we've seen, it's also our new Editors' Choice for wireless keyboards, replacing the Logitech K810 Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard.

View the original article here

Microsoft botches still more patches in latest Automatic Update

No sooner did Microsoft release the latest round of Black Tuesday patches, than screams of agony began sounding all over the Internet. At this point, I've seen verified problems with KB 2817630, KB 2810009, KB 2760411, KB 2760588, and KB 2760583. Here's what we know at this point.

KB 2817630 is not a security patch, it's a gratuitously delivered functionality patch for Office 2013, and man has it had an impact on functionality. I've seen dozens of reports that installing this patch, possibly in conjunction with the KB 2810009 patch that is part of MS13-074, causes the folder pane in Outlook 2013 to disappear. An anonymous poster on the SANS Internet Storm Center offers this picture of the effect.

Thirteen hours after the first posts complaining about the problem appeared on the Microsoft TechNet forum, Microsoft still hasn't done anything. As of 00:15 a.m. PDT on Wednesday, Sept. 11, the patches are still available, still marked for automatic installation, and the KB articles have not been updated to reflect the screw-up.

It appears as if uninstalling both patches will bring the folders back, although there's a more substantive workaround offered by one of the posters on the TechNet forum:

This behaviour seems to be caused by using the latest version of the shared Office library mso.dll 15.0.4535.1002 from KB2817630 in combination with an outdated version of Outlook. Try installing KB2817503 to update Outlook to the matching version 15.0.4535.1004. I don't have the issue with the missing folder pane in this constellation. Updating Outlook with the August 2013 hotfix (KB2817503) restored the reading pane on multiple machines.

KB 2760411, KB 2760588, and KB 2760583 are parts of the MS13-072 and MS13-073 security patches for Office 2007. There are many reports of the patches being offered and re-offered and re-re- ... you get the idea. On sevenforums, poster harin35 says:

No error messages. Windows Update appears to install them; but the updates have not been installed. These are 'important' updates.When I run Windows Update again, these three updates reappear as 'important' updates.

No guidance for handling the problem is on offer in the usual forums, because the people moderating the forums haven't a clue what went wrong and Microsoft isn't saying a thing.

Again, as of 00:15 am PDT on Wednesday, Microsoft hadn't pulled any of the patches, nor had it updated the KB articles, posted any recommendations on the usual fora, issued a press release, or made one iota of effort to help its customers. 

Does this make you feel warm and fuzzy about automatic app updates in Windows 8.1? Terry Myerson, are you listening?

t/h SB

This story, "Microsoft botches still more patches in latest Automatic Update," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

View the original article here

Microsoft Patch Tuesday brings critical Explorer, Outlook fixes

Microsoft has shipped fixes for critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Outlook as part of September's round of vulnerability fixes.

Overall this month, Microsoft issued 13 bulletins -- 4 for them critical -- that cover 47 vulnerabilities found across Internet Explorer, Outlook, SharePoint, Office and the Windows kernel. It is an exceptionally large number of patches for any one month, said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of IT security firm Qualys.

[ Security expert Roger A. Grimes offers a guided tour of the latest threats and explains what you can do to stop them in "Fight Today's Malware," InfoWorld's Shop Talk video. | Keep up with key security issues with InfoWorld's Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter. ]

Of this round of patches, enterprise security professionals should take a look first at MS13-068, which details a vulnerability allowing for remote code execution in Microsoft Outlook, Kandek said.

This remote code execution vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it does not require user interaction to launch.

The flaw lies in how Outlook handles incoming user certificates, which identify the sender of an email. Outlook's certificate parser can recognize only 256 certificates in any one email.

"The programmer [probably] said 'Well, no one would nest more than 256 certificates,' and no one in their right mind would," Kandek said. "But an attacker would. They always go after this sort of thing."

A hacker could nest more than 256 certificates in an email, which would cause a buffer overflow that could place malicious data in the computer's memory. Microsoft failed to add a mechanism that would check to ensure no more than 256 certificates have been submitted to the parser by any single email.

An exploit for this vulnerability would not require the user to click on anything. Code could automatically be triggered simply by displaying the contents of the email message in a preview window.

MS13-069 for Internet Explorer, a collection of 10 patches, should be dealt with as soon as possible as well, Kandek advised. With these vulnerabilities, an attacker could plant malicious code on a Web page that, when visited by an unpatched browser, could take control of the user's machine, said Amol Sarwate, director of Qualys' Vulnerability Labs .

While Microsoft rated bulletins for Microsoft Office Word, MS13-072, and Excel, MS13-073, as important -- rather than critical -- they still could be harmful to the enterprise if not applied, Kandek said.

Both of these bulletins focus on file format vulnerabilities. They require a user to open a file in order to initiate code that would take control of the computer. Kandek pointed out that environments with sensitive data could be subject to spear-fishing attacks that use these vulnerabilities, in which an attacker may devise a way to fool the user into opening a malicious file.

In addition to the Microsoft patches, administrators should also take a look at the critical patches that Adobe also issued Tuesday for Reader and Flash. Users of Google Chrome and Internet Explorer will have the Flash patches applied automatically, Kandek said.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

View the original article here

Decline of Digital Equipment offers lessons for Microsoft

Computerworld - Microsoft has piled up so many stresses on its corporate body in the last 10 months that it must beat almost insurmountable odds to remain healthy and viable, a business strategist said today.

"There's something endemic in technology companies that they are not built to last," said Peter DeLisi, founder and president of Organizational Synergies, a Fremont, Calif. strategy consulting firm. "The larger and larger they become, the more they spin out of control. In a highly empowered culture like Microsoft or DEC, the pieces are loosely held together. And in a crisis, down they go."

DeLisi was not predicting the collapse of Microsoft -- the Redmond, Wash. firm is a member of the Fortune 50, with revenues in its latest fiscal year of $78 billion -- but current and former Microsoft employees have been struck by the parallels between the company's current situation and that of DEC, or Digital Equipment Corporation, which in the late 1980s was the world's second largest computer company. By 1996, DEC had disappeared, sold at a fire sale price of $9.6 billion to Compaq.

And DeLisi knows DEC -- specifically its downfall. A 16-year-veteran of the Maynard, Mass. company, half of those as a strategy, IT and organizational culture consultant to DEC's largest enterprise customers, DeLisi wrote a seminal paper on the company's decline, "A Modern-Day Tragedy: The Digital Equipment Story," in 1998. Five year later he co-authored the book, "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC" with Ed Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the world's foremost authorities in organizational behavior.

Computerworld spoke with DeLisi after seeing his paper mentioned numerous times in a semi-underground blog, "Mini-Microsoft," purportedly written by a current Microsoft employee, when the blog's author posted his or her take on Ballmer's retirement. Among the several hundred comments left by others -- most anonymously -- were dozens referencing DeLisi's description of DEC's downfall.

Those with time at Redmond saw similarities between the tale of DEC and today's Microsoft:

"I spent 12 years at Microsoft after leaving DEC in 1994," stated one anonymous commenter. "The time between DEC's first [layoffs] and its closing shop was brief. DEC in its heyday had 140K employees, large cash reserves (no debt) and was the 2nd largest computer company in the world (behind IBM).

"DEC missed early entry into the PC market and was not able to catch up; similar to Microsoft missing on mobile. Missing the market, sound familiar? [emphasis in original].

"DEC's beloved CEO and visionary, Ken Olsen, left in 1992 and was replaced by Bob Palmer who had been internally lobbying for the job for years ("managing up"). Palmer I believe is still on the board at debt-laden AMD. [Editor's note: Palmer left AMD's board this year.] CEO change, sound familiar?

"If employees think it cannot happen at Microsoft because of its large cash reserves, they are wrong."

While DeLisi was hesitant to cast Microsoft as a DEC doppelganger because he was not inside Microsoft -- as he had been at DEC two decades before -- he was confident that Microsoft had, purposefully or not, stacked the deck against itself.

Microsoft's strategy turn-about and the resulting July top-to-bottom reorganization, then the announcement six weeks later that Ballmer would depart and a new CEO found, and then 10 days after that, the acquisition of Nokia -- a move that will boost the company's head count by a third -- are an incredible number of corporate strains in quick succession. "Any one of those are by themselves major efforts to assimilate," DeLisi said. "Sometimes companies can weather some of those changes, but when they must deal with more than one major change, most cannot."

Just absorbing Nokia and its estimated 32,000 employees will be a chore that could disrupt Microsoft or otherwise end badly, said DeLisi. "The integration of Nokia is not a slam dunk," he said. "Half of all mergers and acquisitions fail outright, and in two-thirds of the cases, the companies would have been better off investing in Treasury notes. That by itself is going to be difficult to pull off."

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft plans changes to Office 365 targeted at SharePoint Online users

To prevent SharePoint Online customers from feeling boxed in, Microsoft wants to improve the way they upload and store documents in the cloud collaboration server.

Over the coming weeks, Microsoft will roll out a set of changes to Office 365 targeted at SharePoint Online users, including increasing from 250MB to 2GB the size of files that people can upload to their individual SkyDrive Pro repositories and to SharePoint Online team site document libraries, the company said on Thursday in a blog post.

The enhancements are in response to companies' increased use of Office 365, according to the blog post's author, Mark Kashman. "Users are uploading more documents to SkyDrive Pro, teams are building numerous team sites to work with internal teams as well as with external customers and partners, and companies are establishing their corporate intranet sites," he wrote.

In addition to lifting the size limit on individual uploads, Microsoft has expanded the types of files that can be uploaded by adding .exe and .dll files.

Another change will be to increase from 3,000 to 10,000 the number of site collections -- groups of websites organized hierarchically -- that an Office 365 Enterprise customer can create. This improvement will not be applied to Office 365 Small Business and Midsize Business customers.

Microsoft is also prolonging the time that discarded documents remain in SharePoint Online recycle bins from 30 days to 90 days to give users more chance to recover these items. In addition, retaining multiple versions of Office 365 documents will be on by default on newly created SkyDrive Pro libraries.

Thursday's announcement comes shortly after Microsoft increased SkyDrive Pro storage from 7GB to 25GB and doubled the size of Exchange Online mailboxes to 50GB.

Microsoft is in a dogfight with Google, as Office 365 and Google Apps battle for customers large and small that are looking to move their email, calendaring, office apps and other collaboration and productivity tools to a vendor-hosted public cloud service.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

View the original article here

Microsoft to patch dangerous Outlook hack-by-preview bug next week

Microsoft today said it will ship 14 security updates next week to patch critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE), Windows, Office, and SharePoint, its enterprise collaboration platform.

The IE update, slated to affect every supported version, from the soon-to-be-retired IE6 to the newest IE10, was at the top of most security experts' lists, including the one crafted by Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at CloudPassage.

[ Security expert Roger A. Grimes offers a guided tour of the latest threats and explains what you can do to stop them in "Fight Today's Malware," InfoWorld's Shop Talk video. | Keep up with key security issues with InfoWorld's Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter. ]

Microsoft has patched IE every month so far this year, Storms said, the fruit of a change in July 2012, when Microsoft ditched a years-long practice of updating the browser on alternate months. The company patched IE in June, July, August and September 2012 to demonstrate its new capabilities before pausing, then returned to IE last November and December.

"I expect we'll see IE updates every month from now on," said Storms, basing his take on the 11-months-straight stretch. That would put Microsoft's patch tempo between that of its chief browser rivals, Google and Mozilla, which update their Chrome and Firefox applications several times monthly or once every six weeks, respectively.

Of the 14 updates slated to ship next Tuesday, Microsoft pegged four as critical, the company's most severe rating. The other 10 will be labeled "important," the next step down in Microsoft's four-step threat system.

Storms also put the spotlight on what Microsoft marked as "Bulletin 2," which will quash one or more bugs in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010, the email clients included with Office 2007 and Office 2010, the most widely-used editions of the company's productivity suite.

While Microsoft kept to its practice of not disclosing details of the underlying vulnerabilities in its Thursday notification, another researcher predicted that the Outlook flaw would turn out to be extremely dangerous.

"Past patterns in critical Office vulnerabilities have always been through the preview pane," said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, in an email. "It is pretty much the only way to get into Outlook without user interaction, which is Microsoft's criteria for a critical rating."

Kandek argued that the bug or bugs to be patched by Bulletin 2 will turn out to be exploitable if hackers can simply get users to preview an e-mail in Outlook.

Such vulnerabilities are considered nearly as treacherous as a drive-by browser exploit, said Storms, because by default Outlook automatically displays the contents of each message. He suggested users disable the preview pane in Outlook 2007 and 2010 until more is known of Bulletin 2's vulnerabilities.

"The Outlook update is almost as important as the one for IE, because next to the browser, your email reader is just as popular and important," said Storms of corporate users.

One of the two remaining critical bulletins will affect only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, while the second will address one or more flaws in SharePoint Server 2007, 2010 and 2013, and in Office Web Apps 2010.

Both were notable to Storms.

View the original article here

Elop moves from long shot to shoo-in as next Microsoft CEO

Computerworld - Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has moved into a commanding position as the overwhelming favorite to win the chief executive's chair at Microsoft, according to online bookmakers.

Just over a week ago, U.K.-based Ladbrokes had Elop at 5 to 1 in its listing of potential CEO replacements for outgoing chief Steve Ballmer. As of Sunday, however, the odds had shortened dramatically: Elop, still the favorite, was at 1 to 4.

Betting $100 on Elop to get the nod would return a profit of just $25, compared to the earlier odds, which with the same $100 bet would have produced a profit of $500.

Another bookmaker, PaddyPower, had even less attractive odds for Elop. The Irish firm listed him at 1 to 12, meaning someone would have to put up $120 for the chance to earn a profit of only $10.

What changed? Microsoft's planned acquisition of Nokia, the Finnish phone maker that Elop has led since 2010.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it will pay €3.79 billion ($5 billion) for "substantially all" of Nokia's Devices & Services business and €1.65 billion ($2.17 billion) to license Nokia's patents. If the deal passes regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and elsewhere, and closes in early 2014 as Microsoft expects, Elop and several other top Nokia executives will become Microsoft employees.

Elop, 49, will take the title of executive vice president for Devices, one of the groups under Microsoft's reworked corporate structure, and replace Julie Larson-Green, who held the spot for less than two months. Larson-Green will report to Elop after he joins Microsoft.

His return to Microsoft, the odds makers concluded, makes Elop the obvious front-runner.

Ladbrokes also trimmed its candidates list from the original 26 to just 11, and changed the odds for others as well.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, moved up from odds of 40 to 1 to 7 to 1, good enough for second place on the Ladbrokes chart. Steven Sinofsky, ousted from Microsoft last November -- reportedly after clashing with Ballmer -- dropped from 8 to 1 to 12 to 1, but remained in third.

Ladbroke and PaddyPower weren't the only ones betting on Elop. Many industry analysts and observers have also tapped him as the most likely replacement for Ballmer, perhaps assuming that Elop would not take a demotion unless there was a clear understanding that he would be appointed CEO of Microsoft.

Some experts, however, have put the spotlight on others that Ladbrokes touted, including Kevin Turner, Microsoft's COO (at 16 to 1); and Satya Nadella, the chief of the Cloud and Enterprise group (20 to 1).

In interviews, Ballmer has said nothing of Elop's chances, other than to state the obvious, that Elop would be an internal candidate rather than an external one. Ballmer has also said that the CEO search will continue.

The latest betting line on the candidates for Microsoft's new CEO has Stephen Elop, now with Nokia but destined for Microsoft, as the overwhelming front-runner. (Data: Ladbrokes.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about IT Leadership in Computerworld's IT Leadership Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft sets $100 Surface Pro discounts in stone

Computerworld - Microsoft yesterday made permanent the $100 price cut to its Surface Pro tablet that it ran as a temporary sale through most of August.

Surface Pro devices rely on Windows 8 Pro and Intel processors, rather than the stripped-down Windows RT and lower-powered ARM processors of the Surface RT. Surface Pro tablets can run traditional Windows software, often called "legacy" software, like the full-featured Office 2013 productivity suite.

Sale prices were first unveiled Aug. 4 and were to run only through Aug. 30, or until supplies lasted. The discounts were available only in the U.S., Canada, China and a few other markets.

According to Microsoft, the Surface Pro permanent prices will be the sales prices: $799 for the model with 64GB of storage space, $899 for the one with 128GB.

Touch Cover prices will start at $79.99, $40 off the former price, and Surface RT-Touch Cover bundles, which were also discounted, will start at $399, $50 lower than originally. The more keyboard-like Type Cover, however, will remain $129.99.

The cheaper prices will be extended to all markets where Microsoft sells the Surface.

"The customer response to recent Surface pricing and keyboard-cover promotions has been exciting to see, and we are proud to begin rollout of Surface Pro, Touch Cover and Surface RT bundles at even more affordable prices starting August 29," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email.

Late Thursday, however, the Microsoft Store did not show all the new prices.

The Surface Pro discounts followed even more aggressive Surface RT price cuts in July. Then, Microsoft slashed the price of the Surface RT by up to 30%, reducing all models by $150.

Although Microsoft is expected to unveil new Surface tablets this fall, it's had a hard time unloading the first-generation inventory. For the quarter that ended June 30, Microsoft took a $900 million charge against earnings to account for excess stock of the Surface RT, and unspecified components and accessories.

According to one analyst, that write-off was probably the precipitating event that pushed Microsoft's board of directors to shove CEO Steve Ballmer out the door.

Microsoft has also heavily discounted the Surface RT in offers to schools, and given away thousands of the tablets at various conferences this year.

The Redmond, Wash., company could revert to the earlier, higher prices with new models later this year, but that seems unlikely considering the difficulty it's had selling its tablets. For the period October 2012 through June 2013, Microsoft recorded just $853 million in revenue from its first foray into computing devices.

A 32GB Surface RT with a Touch Cover now costs $399, or 33% less than the price when the tablet debuted last October. The entry-level Surface Pro with a Touch Cover now runs $878, or 14% less than in February, when the more capable tablet-notebook hybrid launched.

Microsoft's August sale price for the Surface Pro has become the permanent price.

This article, Microsoft sets $100 Surface Pro discounts in stone, was originally published at Computerworld.com.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Tablets in Computerworld's Tablets Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Microsoft will move forward with litigation over NSA data collection

Computerworld - Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said on Friday that the company would move ahead with its lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking permission to release more information on demands Microsoft receives from the National Security Agency (NSA) and others for Internet user data.

In a blog post, Smith dismissed as inadequate the Obama Administration's announcement late on Thursday that it would begin publishing, on an annual basis, the total number of national security requests for customer data made to Internet and telecom service providers.

"The Government's decision represents a good start. But the public deserves and the Constitution guarantees more than this first step," Smith said.

He noted that it is vital for companies such as Microsoft to be able to publish data that clearly distinguishes between government requests for actual user content and government requests for metadata like the subscriber information related to a particular email address.

Such information can be published in a manner that poses no risk to national security. Any discussion on service provider obligations and government data collection practices under the anti-terror Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would remain incomplete unless this type of information is publicly released, Smith said.

However, in a blog post announcing intention to release data on the number of NSA requests each year, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made clear that this is as much information the government is willing to provide for now.

"FISA and national security letters are an important part of our effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe, and disclosing more detailed information about how they are used and to whom they are directed can obviously help our enemies avoid detection," Clapper said.

Both Google and Microsoft sued the government in June over the issue. Both companies are among the several major Internet players from whom the NSA and other intelligence agencies are gathering large volumes of data on Internet users under FISA orders.

Under the anti-terror statute, the companies are currently prohibited from disclosing any details about the information they are required to provide, or even how many requests they receive each year from the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

Microsoft and others have vigorously argued that their inability to disclose such information is hurting them and had resulted in all sorts of misperceptions about the government having direct access to their systems. Their concerns are also likely being fueled by recent warnings that the NSA's data collection activities could cost U.S. cloud companies billions of dollars in business going forward.

In his blog post, Smith noted that since June the U.S. Department of Justice has filed six extensions for time to respond to the complaints aired by Microsoft and Google in their lawsuits. Microsoft agreed to those extensions, he said.

Last month, the company asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to personally help Microsoft and others share more complete information on how they handle national security requests for customer data.

"We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all," Smith wrote. "While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure."

As a result, the company will "move forward with litigation in the hope that the courts will uphold our right to speak more freely," Smith wrote. "And with a growing discussion on Capitol Hill, we hope Congress will continue to press for the right of technology companies to disclose relevant information in an appropriate way."

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at  @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

See more by Jaikumar Vijayan on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Privacy in Computerworld's Privacy Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Bookmaker handicaps Microsoft CEO race

Computerworld - Adding insult to injury after Wall Street boosted Microsoft's stock price when CEO Steve Ballmer announced he would retire, now a U.K. bookmaker is taking bets on Ballmer's replacement.

Ladbrokes, a 127-year-old bookmaking conglomerate that runs nearly 3,000 betting shops in the U.K., Ireland, Belgium and Spain, has opened wagers on Microsoft's next CEO with a list of 26 candidates that include current and former Microsoft executives as well as people from rivals such as Apple and Facebook.

"There is always interest in high-profile CEO vacancies and we feel that offering the odds gives our view of the likelihood of the chances various contenders have," said Alex Donohue of Ladbrokes in an email.

Current Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop was the favorite, at odds of 5 to 1. Betting $100 with Ladbrokes on Elop to get the CEO chair would return a profit of $500 if he was, in fact, named to the top spot.

Elop, 49, worked for Microsoft two years, running the group responsible for Office after another former executive, Steven Sinofsky, left that position to head up Windows development. Elop has been the CEO at Nokia since September 2010.

Kevin Turner followed Elop at odds of 6 to 1, while Sinofsky and Julie Larson-Green were listed at 8 to 1.

Turner, currently Microsoft's COO, was previously the CEO of Sam's Club, the warehouse outlet owned and operated by Wal-Mart. Sinofsky was ousted from Microsoft last November, reportedly after clashing with Ballmer, but according to some analysts also because of his strategy and execution on Windows 8 and Windows RT. Larson-Green, a Sinofsky protégé, has worked for Microsoft for two decades and now runs the Devices and Studios Engineering Group, which handles hardware device design, including the Surface tablet line and Xbox game console. Previously, she was in charge of Windows engineering.

Ladbrokes' list leans toward former and current Microsoft employees; 58% of the wager-ready candidates have ties to Microsoft.

Along with Elop and Sinofsky, the eight former executives on the bookmarker's list included co-founder, former CEO and current chairman Bill Gates at 50 to 1; Jeff Raikes, who runs Gates' foundation (25/1); and Paul Maritz, who stepped down as VMware's CEO last September (14/1).

All seven current Microsoft employees on the list have been touted on one roundup or another of possible Ballmer replacements, including Qi Lu (10/1), head of the new Applications and Services Group; Terry Myerson (12/1), leader of the Operating Systems team; and Satya Nadella (14/1), the chief of Cloud and Enterprise.

The 11 outsiders included Reed Hastings, CEO of NetFlix and a former Microsoft board member (16 to 1 odds); eBay CEO John Donahoe (20/1); Marissa Mayer, the new CEO at Yahoo (33/1); and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook (40/1).

But the oddest candidates on Ladbrokes' odds list were Jonathan Ive, who overseas all software and hardware design at Apple, and current Apple CEO Tim Cook. Ladbrokes gave Ive odds of 40 to 1, and Cook even longer odds of 100 to 1.

In the off chance that Cook moved north to Redmond, Wash., someone who put down $100 would see a profit of $10,000.

"We often take bets on things like this, under the umbrella of 'novelty betting,'" said Donohue of Ladbrokes. "It's not something we will take vast sums of money on at all, with the average stake less than £10 [$15.54 at today's exchange rate]."

Ladbrokes' odds are listed on its website.

The bookmaker's line on the top 10 candidates for Ballmer's CEO chair. (Data: Ladbrokes.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about IT Leadership in Computerworld's IT Leadership Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here