Winsupersite.com

IDG News/Computerworld/Gregg Keizer gets it wrong again when this bizarre distributed entity reports this week that Microsoft "may move up Windows 7 service pack release" from its fictional original plan to "wait nearly two years after Windows 7's launch to issue a first service pack." Now, he says, Microsoft has "since changed its mind" and may ship Windows 7 SP1 as soon as "the last quarter of 2010."

Nope.

Q4 2010 has always been the plan...

The tech blogosphere is abuzz this weekend about a Microsoft demo at TechEd Middle East 2010 where Eric Rudder plays the same game on Windows, on a Windows Phone, and then on the Xbox 360. And it's not just the same game--it's the same game session, so you can continue playing a game you started on one device on either of the others.

And the crowd goes wild.

Sorry, but spare me. Microsoft has promised this kind of thing in the past, sort of: Remember when Shadowrun for the PC...

In Friday's Short Takes, I included the following blurb:

Stupid People Writing Stupid Stories About Stupid Non-issues
Surveying my so-called peers in the tech press can be depressing. This week is a typical example, with IDG News running a complete non-story FUD episode examining a so-called "Windows 7 issue," in which the new OS "maxes out" RAM usage at 86 percent—much higher than previous Windows versions. Attention, Joe Clueless. That's not a...

Microsoft this week revealed the final design of its browser ballot screen (or "choice screen") for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, which will begin appearing in EU-based versions of those products over the next few weeks.

Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a 'web browser choice screen' to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission.

Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now. We'll begin a limited rollout...

I just received an email about this battery issue but had never experienced it (... to my knowledge, anyway. On the other hand, I'm not doing a lot of upgrades these days either). Apparently, Microsoft is looking into it:

After installing the Windows 7 upgrade, many customers have seen their machine's battery life dwindle significantly, even when working with a freshly charged battery. They've also been confronted with the Windows 7 warning message: "Consider replacing...

Despite assurances that yesterday's Zune outage was for maintenance purposes only and wouldn't be accompanied by a software update, Microsoft this morning delivered a pretty decent Zune PC software upgrade, bringing the version up to 4.2. I'll need some time to figure out if there's anything new in the user experience, but blogger Long Zheng reports that Microsoft has surreptitiously added support for a device that identifies itself as "Phone." He extrapolates this...