This article was published on January 7, 2011

The TNW Microsoft week: The gifts of CES


The TNW Microsoft week: The gifts of CES

As it is every year, this has been the week of CES, and Microsoft played its usual part. Microsoft news was dominated by a press briefing and keynote that Microsoft held the day before the main floor at CES opened.

This has been a massive week for the world of Microsoft

As a note, we missed a weekly recap or two over the holidays due to a general dearth of news and constricted schedules. Expect the TNWmicrosoft weekly roundups to be here every Friday for the forseeable future. Right, now let’s get to the news:

Surface 2 Is Real

Yes, the sequel to the first Microsoft ‘Big Ass Table’ is real, and is decidedly svelte. Now merely four inches thick, with better inputs, mountable in various orientations and supporting a slashed priced tag, Surface 2 is the real deal.

Oh, and it is going on sale late 2011. For a mere $7,600 expect to see these little bad-boys popping up all over the place in early 2012.

Kinect Posts Big Sales

Numbers speak louder than words: 8,000,000 Kinects in 60 days.  Let’s say that again: Microsoft has sold 8 million Kinects in just 60 days, or around 133,00 a day since it came out. Even better? Microsoft has promised PC support in the future.

The Kinect is the fastest selling gadget ever, so expect to see Microsoft tout bigger numbers when new milestones are hit.

Hotmail Hits Some Rocky Waters

Last weekend a grip of Hotmail users logged into the email service only to find their inboxes empty. Needless to say, controversy ensued and Hotmail ate a plate of crow while trying to solve the problem.

It turned out to be a hardware kink, and all data was restored to the impacted users. All told some 17,355 users had the problem. It is now sorted, but raised the age-old questions of whether the cloud can be trusted.

Windows 8

The only thing more elusive than Windows Phone 7’s sales numbers are details on the next version of Windows, but this week was a good one as we learned of two new Win8 related code names: Jupiter and Mosh.

Mosh is a tiled interface that should be used on tablets and the like while Jupiter is something radically different that we have yet to pin down exactly, though we do have our suspicions.

To put it bluntly, Win8 is going to evolve via leaks over the next year so get ready for a blizzard of often half-cocked and hard to parse details.

Windows Phone 7

Oh Windows Phone 7, it seems like we can never stop covering you. This week the WP7 app marketplace cleared 5,500 applications and the phones were pledged by Ballmer to be making the trip to the world of CDMA in preparation for sale on Sprint and Verizon.

While both of those facts are not surprises at all, they are both crucial: WP7 will be open for purchase to a massive new audience and it will have the apps to entice curious testers. The phone line continues to go strong, in other words.

There was even more, so if you are still hungry head to /Microsoft and just read backwards. That is all for now, more as it comes.

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