Microsoft Corp. launched its first new computer operating system in five years Thursday, saying that despite delays, the product's emergence is perfectly timed for PC users who increasingly need to coordinate information from a dizzying array of sources. ...

Businesses that buy Windows licenses in bulk have first crack at PCs with the new operating system or at upgrade discs for installing Vista on existing machines. Consumers won't be able to get Vista on home PCs until Jan. 30.

In its first week, Zune secured the No. 2 spot among portable media players, well behind iPod, but edging out previous second-place holder SanDisk, according to data released by the NPD Group today. Zune won 9 percent of the U.S. market, measured by unit sales, and 13 percent of dollar volume for the week ended Nov. 18, NPD reported. Microsoft released the device Nov. 14.

• What: Microsoft Corp. will host a news conference and live webcast to announce the availability of the Windows Vista™ operating system, the 2007 Microsoft® Office system and Exchange Server 2007 for business customers with volume license agreements. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer will celebrate this historic product launch, which coincides with Microsoft’s 20th year as a publicly traded company, by ringing the bell to open the NASDAQ market.

• Who: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, Chris Liddell, CFO of Microsoft, and executives from Microsoft customer and industry partner companies

• Where: NASDAQ MarketSite event at Times Square in New York, 43rd St. and Broadway; a live webcast of the news conference will be available.

• When: The news conference and webcast will begin at 10:35 a.m. EST (7:35 a.m. PST) on Thursday, Nov. 30.

From the day after Thanksgiving, known as “Black Friday” in the retail industry, through “Cyber Monday,” the unofficial kickoff of the online holiday shopping season, MSN Shopping (http://shopping.msn.com) recorded 21 percent more visits compared with the same period in 2005. Site visits on “Cyber Monday” increased 63 percent from 2005 and consist of more than double the number visits to the site on “Black Friday” this year. Increase in traffic is believed to be due to MSN Shopping’s improved selection, handcrafted gift guides, popular Sales and Deals page, and tighter integration with MSN and Live Search

This year, visitors to MSN Shopping can consult an even broader selection of gift guides with recommendations for every person on their list, and save money with MSN Shopping online coupons. The site also offers expert buying advice provided by Consumer Reports and MSN’s own staff of editors to help shoppers find the best values.

“Gifts for Him,” “Gifts for Her,” and “Stocking Stuffers” were the popular MSN Shopping gift guides over the weekend. Jewelry, massagers, picture frames and beer-making equipment were among the most popular items. The most popular video game was “Madden NFL 07,” and the most popular toy was the Marshmallow Fun Company Marshmallow Shooter.

US software giant Microsoft has lost a legal battle with a South Korean firm over its flagship Office software, officials have said.

The Supreme Court in a ruling last week rejected a request from Microsoft to nullify patents obtained by Hankuk Aviation University professor Lee Keung-Hae in 1997.

Edgy thinkers like J Allard are looking far beyond Windows for the next big thing

At 3:32 p.m. on Oct. 19 an e-mail flashed across the screens of the 230 Microsoft employees working slavishly to bring the Zune music player to market. The sender was their brash team leader, J Allard, 37. The message included a link to an old video of Steve Jobs on YouTube, mocking Microsoft's creativity. "The only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste," the Apple Computer boss says. "They have absolutely no taste."

We strongly encourage all folks who have experienced an error message or did not receive a download they purchased to call customer support at 1-800-4MYXBOX.

Microsoft Corp. filed revised documents with the European Commission on Thursday aimed at complying with a landmark antitrust decision from 2004, the European Commission said.

Microsoft met a deadline set by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, but it will be months before it is clear whether the submission is sufficient to avoid a fine that could be as high as 3 million euros ($3.9 million) a day.

"We've had an issue, a problem that we've had to confront, which is because of the way the GPL (General Public License) works, and because open-source Linux does not come from a company -- Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders. We spend $7 billion a year on R&D, our shareholders expect us to protect or license or get economic benefit from our patented innovations. So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation, and how do we do interoperability. The truth is, because of the complex licensing around the GPL, we actually didn't want to do one without the other.

We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.

Our stance on software patents is unchanged by the agreement with Microsoft. We want to remind the community of Novell's commitment to, and prior actions in support of, furthering the interests of Linux and open source, and creating an environment of free and open innovation. We have a strong patent portfolio and we have leveraged that portfolio for the benefit of the open source community. ...

"Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.

Believe it or not Windows is 21 years old on Monday. When it was launched in 1985 the PC market was barely out of it’s infancy, and whatever you may think of Microsoft it is amazing what they Bill Gates & Co have built in such a relatively short time.

The 31-year-old, who moved here in June at the behest of Microsoft's legal team, died from rib, pelvis and other fractures Thursday when a crane crashed into his Bellevue apartment building. Reached at home in Texas, Ammon's father, who had learned shortly before of his son's death, was too distraught to comment.But in photographs, online postings and interviews, a picture emerged of a man who grabbed life with gusto -- a race-car hobbyist who eagerly offered help to other automotive fans, and approached his work as a lawyer with equal zeal. ...

"We were thrilled his past year when we were able to persuade him," said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft. Though Ammon had been on campus only a short time, Smith added, "the impression he made was both a deep and lasting one."

Today, we are excited to announce that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are coming together in support of the SiteMaps protocol. The goal of this effort is to improve search results for customers around the world. This protocol enables site owners everywhere to tell search engines about the content on their site instead of having to rely solely on crawl algorithms to find it.

Microsoft Corp. and Sprint Corp. announced Thursday that they will collaborate on developing new products for Sprint's business and consumer customers.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Microsoft® Office Live in the United States at http://www.officelive.com after being in beta for nine months, and its free beta availability in Japan, France, the U.K. and Germany on Nov. 21. Customers can sign up for Office Live, a complete, affordable set of Internet-based software and services that help small businesses attract new customers, keep in touch with existing customers, generate repeat business, and easily manage their business while on the go.

“Most small businesses lack IT expertise,” said Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president for Microsoft Office Live at Microsoft. “Office Live is a one-stop shop that levels the playing field for companies with 10 or fewer employees by providing software and services that make a big difference; Office Live can impact business growth and profitability. Small businesses that sign up for Microsoft Office Live will now find it easier and cheaper than ever before to build and manage their business online. I’m confident that our industry partners will do a fantastic job of helping customers get started on Office Live.”

Microsoft Office Live provides an open platform for partners on which they can build customized or industry-specific software applications and deliver services for their customers.

In addition, Microsoft is committed to enlisting the breadth of partners already part of the company’s ecosystem to drive revenue in the online services market and has joined with Best Buy, Toshiba and Sony in January 2007 to make it even easier for customers to have access to Office Live in the 50 United States and District of Columbia. Best Buy, and its small business-focused business unit Best Buy for Business, will enable customers to add Office Live to other technology purchases in retail stores nationwide and will provide targeted support to Office Live customers through the Geek Squad 24 Hour Computer Support Task Force®. Best Buy will also offer value cards so that customers may sign up and get three months of service for the price of one with Office Live subscription services.

One day after the United States Federal Trade Commission took its own legal action against ERG Ventures, its affiliates and its operators in the company's home state of Nevada, Microsoft brought its own lawsuit against the firm accusing it of violating the Washington Computer Spyware Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act. ...

Microsoft alleges in its lawsuit that the defendants distributed their programs through sites built to end users, including a site that uses the brand name of well-known golf equipment manufacturer Taylor Made.

Once installed, the Trojan applications would reportedly dial out and download numerous other programs that would saddle users' computers with pop-up advertisements, track their Web usage habits, redirect infected browsers to suspicious URLs, add desktop icons to Windows and change the registry settings on Windows PCs, Microsoft said.

Aggreg8 is a social networking and collaboration space for the IT community. Inside you can keep track of your trusted network, find others through your network with similar interests or situations. Then you can collaborate with anyone in the community inside our working groups.

In a first-of-its-kind arrangement, Microsoft Corp. is paying a major record label a percentage of the sales from its upcoming Zune portable music player in order to license songs for Microsoft's digital music store, which launches next week.

PressPass: Windows Vista was released to manufacturing today -- what does that mean?

Hallauer: Release to manufacturing signifies the completion of our development work and the start of the next phase for Windows Vista. Windows Vista is the highest-quality version of Windows that we’ve ever produced. We’ve had more people test more builds than previous development cycles, and the result is that we received more feedback than ever before.

That being said, Windows Vista’s journey is not yet done. PC makers, device manufacturers and software developers can finalize work on their products and applications to ensure great customer experiences when Windows Vista becomes available -- to our volume license customers this month and consumers on January 30, 2007.

If you're keeping score, based purely on the terms of the deal, that's $442 million to be paid and spent by Microsoft, and at least $40 million to be paid by Novell to Microsoft. At the same time, Microsoft does expect to generate revenue from the joint offering and the coupons...