Microsoft is preparing to launch its own music streaming service later this month, following the runaway success of Spotify.com and other similar services. TechRadar reported earlier this week that there has been a notable shift in younger web-users habits in recent years, with teenagers now favouring instant (and legal) streaming services such as Spotify, over illegally downloading their music via P2P sites. Microsoft’s Peter Bale, Executive Producer of MSN, told The Telegraph today: "Music is an important area for Microsoft. We are looking at launching a music

Microsoft is looking to push what it terms ‘consumer internet devices’, with the Windows Embedded team using its Computex keynote to talk about devices that fall between smartphones and netbooks. Various names have been applied to devices that are for surfing the internet, do not have full computer functionality but that are not smartphones. Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs, is currently the most common term, but Microsoft has labelled the category ‘consumer internet devices’ or CIDs. Key area Microsoft’s OEM Division Chief Stev

Fresh from being a key figure in the showcase of Project Natal, Peter Molyneux has been promoted to creative director for Microsoft Gaming studios. The man behind the likes of Populous and Fable and head of Lionhead studios was the person to show off virtual friend Milo as the potential of Microsoft’s controller-less vision of gaming was displayed. MGS addictive And now, the games designer will be responsible for the creative direction of MGS, while continuing in a role at Lionhead and helping out at Rare. Molyneux "will bring a unique set of

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has expressed her doubts that Bing will finally crack the search market for Microsoft. The arrival of Bing, backed by a massive marketing budget, represents Microsoft’s latest attempt to gain a bigger market share in internet search. But Bartz, speaking at the Bank of America US Tech conference, said that a short term uplift would not lead to any kind of key market shift. No scale "They’re not going to get scale through Bing," insisted Bartz . "They’re going to get some temporary interest." Bartz

Microsoft has unveiled its television advert for Bing, suggesting that its new search engine means that search overload is ‘officially over’. Bing in Microsoft’s latest attempt to start grabbing some search audience back from Google – by far the most dominant search engine in the US and the UK. With Steve Ballmer telling the All Things Digital Conference that the marketing budget for Bing even made him gulp, the campaign is likely to be long and ubiquitous, although Microsoft in Britain will only start pushing the product when it comes out of beta in this

Reset your alarm clocks by 24 hours, Windows 7 is launching the day before everyone expected. The big day – 22 October – was confirmed by Microsoft today, as Asia’s largest computer show (Computex) got under way. Eager users can download a release candidate for Windows 7 today at www.microsoft.com/downloads, which will remain free to use until June next year. Starter gets an upgrade Windows 7 will available in five editions – Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate – with a Basic edition also sold in developing

We’re blown away by the potential of Microsoft’s Project Natal tech for the Xbox 360, but our minds quickly wandered. What would Microsoft call the final release? Our friends at Redmond hardly have the best pedigree when it comes to naming new releases and Microsoft’s long-meeting and focus group naming reputation has hardly been helped by the launch of Bing. So we decided to dream up some amusing final release names for Project Natal and got some help from our friends in the Twittersphere. See what you think and then send us your own in the comments,

On first launch, SP2 complained that we had to remove Swedish language support before it could continue. There were no further hassles though, and 33 minutes and two reboots later, the service pack was installed. Small visual changes include a permanent Bluetooth applet in the Control Panel, a new Indexing option or two (if you didn’t have Search 4) and Blu-ray disc format options. Otherwise, SP2 Vista looks much like SP1. Our performance tests showed that boot and shutdown times weren’t significantly affected. Browsing over time felt a little snappier, though. The

The first day of Taiwan’s Computex hasn’t been dominated by any product release – far from it. It’s the obvious indictment by the computing industry that it loves Windows 7, hates Vista, and wants Microsoft to put its marketing programs in place today. Microsoft’s keynote is to follow so maybe the ‘big announcement’ is just that. Not until now had Microsoft so clearly given up on Vista. On the walls of its own booth there’s not a mention of Vista in sight. The new saviour of Microsoft is waiting. Some product demos of gaming desktops

Microsoft has made a bold play by announcing a ‘controller free’ Xbox experience called ‘Project Natal’ using full body motion capture and voice recognition offering a jaw-dropping concpet of the future. Natal, which will work with all current Xbox 360s, is a revolutionary 3D motion sensor that incorporates voice recognition, ending what Microsoft termed ‘the barrier of the controller.’ Steven Spielberg was on stage to support the project – which was not given a launch date. Doing away with the controller "I often