Microsoft is looking to bolster sales of Windows-powered computers this summer by offering students a free Xbox 360 video game console with a qualifying PC purchase. Beginning on May 18th in Canada and on May 20th in the United States, students who purchase a PC for at least $599 CAD in Canada or $699 in the U.S. will receive a free 4GB Xbox 360. Purchases must be made from participating retailers including Best Buy, Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect.com, Microsoft Stores and NewEgg.com in the U.S., a...

Rovio on Wednesday announced that its Angry Birds franchise has surpassed one billion downloads across Android, iOS, Windows and Mac OS X, with 350 million downloads having been served in 2012 alone. The latest Birds installment, Angry Birds Space, was downloaded more than 10 million time in less than three days and a whopping 50 million times in 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game of all time. The immensely popular franchise generated $106 million for the company in 2011 and drew in 200 mil...

Apple may be the most valuable company in the world, but when it comes to security, the Cupertino-based company doesn’t hold a candle to Microsoft. Kaspersky Lab co-founder and chief executive Eugene Kaspersky on Wednesday told CBR that Apple is a decade behind Microsoft in terms of computer security. ”I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky said. “For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference...

Since Microsoft released its Windows 8 Consumer Preview in February, millions of users have downloaded the software giant’s latest operating system, which looks to carefully blend its existing mobile and desktop experiences into one. According to research from ad network Chitika, the Windows 8 CP adoption rate in the U.S. and Canada has doubled that of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple’s upcoming operating system. Of course Microsoft’s Windows 8 preview is publicly available for free while AppleR...

Security firm Sophos on Tuesday indicated that a surprisingly high level of malware has been found on Mac computers — the firm’s research revealed that one in every five Mac computers is harboring some kind of Windows malware. Of the 100,000 customers sampled through Sophos’s antivirus offerings, 20% of users were found to be carrying one or more instances of Windows malware. The firm highlighted that Windows malware on a Mac won’t cause any harm, however, unless the computer also runs a W...

Following the huge loss reported by major mobile partner Nokia, Microsoft posted its fiscal third-quarter results on Thursday following the close of the market. Wall Street was expecting the software giant’s earnings to slide 7% year-over-year to $0.57 per share on sales of $17.18 billion, up 5% from the same quarter in 2011. Microsoft reported earnings of $0.60 per share, beating estimates, and revenue came in at $17.41 billion. Operating income totaled $6.37 billion, up 12% year-over-year. Read on for...

Microsoft on Monday announced that there will be three editions of its next-generation Windows 8 operating system: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. The Redmond-based company detailed each edition on its blog and promised “all editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience.” Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro will support PCs and tablets powered by x86 processors, while Windows RT will be reserved for ARM-powered devices. The basic edition of Windows 8 is aimed at the average consumer, whi...

Images of Microsoft’s product roadmap for partners have leaked onto the web. The documents were posted on Twitter by Maartin Visser, who discovered the them on the Microsoft Partner Network. The purported roadmap reveals new details regarding the next versions of upcoming products, including Office 15, Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Phone. Microsoft’s IE 10 could be out by mid-year according to the roadmap, possibly around around the same time as the Windows 8 Release Candidate. Office 15 is exp...

Microsoft products fit into two different life cycle stages — mainstream support and extended support. With mainstream support, users receive free security updates, stability improvements, bug fixes and occasional new features. In the extended support phase, security updates are available for free but other fixes require paid support. Microsoft reminded Windows XP users earlier this week that XP is now in the extended phase, and it said support for the operating system and Office 2003 will be officially dis...

Android users who are looking to sell their old devices should be wary of the possible consequences. McAfee identity theft researcher Robert Siciliano warned that personal data from Android devices is not completely removed after a user activates the built-in wipe option, The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday. “What’s really scary is even if you follow protocol, the data is still there,” Siciliano said. If you have a BlackBerry or Apple device, Siciliano said your data can be fully delete...

After learning about Microsoft’s latest “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge, Sahas Katta visited his local Microsoft store equipped with confidence and his trusty Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The Windows Phone challenge is issued to users with non-Windows Phone handsets, and it calls for these users to perform a variety of tasks faster than a Microsoft store sales associate armed with a Windows Phone. Microsoft was rewarding 10 winners a limited edition Hunger Games PC (HP Folio 13 Special Edition)...

Rovio on Monday announced that the company’s latest Angry Birds installment has been downloaded 10 million times in less than three days. Angry Birds Space launched last Thursday on iOS and Android devices, as well as on OS X and Windows PCs. In the fourth major Birds release, users are faced with new challenges such as zero-gravity planets and new gameplay features like slow-motion and lightspeed destruction. The game has over 60 levels, including some hidden ones, and Rovio has promised that it will ...

Early rumors suggested that devices running Microsoft’s next-generation Windows 8 operating system might launch as soon as this summer, but a new report places the platform’s public release in the fourth quarter. Citing multiple unnamed sources, Bloomberg on Tuesday reported that Microsoft will complete work on Windows 8 this summer, and the first wave of PCs and tablets powered by the new OS will launch in October. Intel x86 and ARM-based devices will both become available at the same time, and M...

Whether or not we are currently living in the post-PC era is no longer a question, Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said recently. ”People argue about ‘are we in a post-PC world?’. Why are we arguing? Of course we are in a post-PC world,” Ozzie said on stage Wednesday at a technology conference, according to Reuters. ”That doesn’t mean the PC dies, that just means that the scenarios that we use them in, we stop referring to them as PCs, we refer...