Microsoft now acknowledges it complied with a controversial U.S. Department of Justice subpoena for a look at its MSN search customer activity.

The Microsoft admission, in a recent blog by MSN Search Dev & Test General Manager Ken Moss, assures MSN search users that "absolutely no personal data" changed hands.

The PC, which functions similar to a prepaid cell phone, is sold for a low value - in tests a price of 799 reais (US$351) was chosen.

The consumer buys prepaid cards with credits to use the PC and the machine becomes "free" once a certain amount of credits have been paid.

Microsoft Corp will invest about 100 million dollars annually over the next three to five years in China, the world's second largest Internet market with 111 million users, state press reported.

The investment, in response to mounting pressure from rivals Google and Yahoo!, will be channeled into the Internet, research and development in mobile communications, and digital entertainment, the Shanghai Daily reported.

Safeco Corp., the property and casualty insurer, on Wednesday said it agreed to sell its Redmond,
Washington office campus to Microsoft Corp. for $209.5 million.

The sale by Seattle-based Safeco's General America Corp. unit excludes a lot containing Safeco's data center. General America would lease back parts of the Redmond campus. Safeco expects to recognize a $29 million pre-tax gain on the sale.>

MSR Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image.

A forum is hosted at GotDotNet. There, you'll find message boards to discuss MSR Group Shot and ways to use it. You'll be able to file bug reports, sign up as a member of the community, and get announcements about new features.

The Microsoft Office Live beta is expected to go live any day now.

Office Live is not a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Instead, it is a set of software services Microsoft is developing as extensions to its shrink-wrapped Office product. Microsoft introduced the Office Live concept in November last year, at the same time as it rolled out its Windows Live strategy. Company officials said at that time to expect a first beta of Office Live in early 2006.

Microsoft has gone public with a tentative date for its third service pack for Windows XP. And that date — the latter half of 2007 — is considerably later than many company watchers were expecting.

Microsoft has published the due-date for Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) on its Windows Lifecycle Web site. While Microsoft characterized the date as "preliminary," it is still as much as a year later than a number of customers, partners and industry analysts had been anticipating.

In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, Jobs says: "The problem is, the PC model doesn't work in the consumer electronics industry, where you've got all these companies and some does one thing and another does another thing. It just doesn't work. What's going to happen is that Microsoft is going to have to get into the hardware business of making MP3 players. This year. X-player, or whatever."

Just three days after announcing continued support for the Mac version of Microsoft Office at Macworld Expo, Microsoft officials said Friday that the company has halted development for Windows Media Player for Mac.

Microsoft Public Relations Manager Adam Anderson said in a recent News.com article that the move was a business decision for Microsoft.

In an updated support lifecycle listing, Microsoft said that all Windows XP products--which include Home, Pro, Embedded, Media Center, and Tablet PC--will enjoy mainstream support for "two years after the next version of this product is released."

Microsoft plans to release this summer a Wireless Laser Desktop for Apple's Mac machines, which will be the Microsoft Hardware unit's first-ever peripherals specifically designed for Mac users.

"We've been in the business for twenty years, making products for PC and Mac users. We've just never done one for just Mac users," said Marketing Communication Manager Sean Butterworth. "While we've had great success selling our desktops to Mac users but we've gotten feedback that there are still things that are different on a PC keyboard."

Apple Computer Inc. won't thwart users from loading Microsoft's Windows operating system onto its new Intel-based Macintosh computers -- but don't expect Apple to start offering a Mac running Windows.

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in an interview Tuesday that the company won't sell or support Windows itself, but also hasn't done anything to preclude people from loading Windows onto the machines themselves.

``That's fine with us. We don't mind,'' Schiller said. ``If there are people who love our hardware but are forced to put up with a Windows world, then that's OK.'' ...

``Any new machines that are on the market that run Windows are great,'' said Scott Erickson, director of product management and marketing for Microsoft's Mac business unit.

One thing you're talking about here at CES is partnerships, and it's widely known that Microsoft talked to Time Warner about AOL. Now there are reports you offered to buy Yahoo. Did you, in fact?

Ballmer: I haven't seen the rumor. It's not true, but I haven't seen it. I mean we had discussions eight years ago about whether we should get together [with Yahoo]. But it's probably been eight years since we had a discussion like that.

In a report in today's Financial Times, the company shifted its attention to the longer-term target outlined at CES last week. The firm now says it will hit sales of 4 million to 5.5 million by the end of its financial year, in June.

Analysts believe sales of the console had hit around 1.3 million by the end of the Holiday sales period. But as January moves along, retailers have yet to see evidence of shortages easing.

[Engadget:] The last time we sat down the Xbox 360 hadn't been announced yet --- or at least it hadn't been officially unveiled yet. It's been a couple months now, are you happy with how things have gone so far?

[Gates:] Well, I spent most of my Christmas playing Xbox 360.

[Engadget:] Which games?

[Gates:] We played quite a variety. Actually, the Xbox Arcade was a big thing, a lot of the adults wanted to sit down and play for five or ten minutes. It was Hexic or Zuma that were easy for them to learn the rules, get used to the controller. We had some younger kids who were just beating the heck out of me at Project Gotham Racing, Kameo, basketball, Perfect Dark Zero. We have, I think, a dozen titles in total. And the thing that I thought would never happen really did happen to me, where I was standing 12 feet away and I thought, “Oh, they're watching a basketball game,” and then as I walked up I realized, “No, no, they're just playing Xbox 360.” So that was a lot of fun.

Security experts have praised Microsoft for the speed at which the company created and deployed a fix for a dangerous vulnerability in Windows that was discovered over the holiday period.

James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told ZDNet Australia that he was impressed by the speed of Microsoft's response: "Nine days for something fairly deep like this is very impressive."