The last few months have seen the already intense and often snarky conflict between Microsoft and Apple take a turn for the better, at least if you’re a Microsoft and Windows fan. Basically, Microsoft has started to fight back against the onslaught of Apple diatribe. This has, rather unsurprisingly, upset the Apple fanboy brigade who are now fighting back themselves.

The final stages before a new Windows operating system gets released seems to drag forever, and Windows 7 is no exception. Finally, there looks to be some light at the end of the tunnel as it has leaked that the Release Candidate will be hitting on May 5. Hopefully.

Customer satisfaction is a key tenet for any business. Get it wrong or fair badly and the chances are you’ll lose that customer forever. Get it right and make the customer happy and they’ll likely stick with you for life. Judging by the latest Forrester Research survey this fact is good news for Apple and bad for every Windows-based PC manufacturer.

Microsoft has agreed to a Department of Justice request to extend government oversight of its activities for a second time. The firm will remain under supervision until May 12, 2011.

Mac users who run Windows applications through virtualization software could now be at risk from Windows-based security problems. A bug in several programs from VMWare allows the guest operating system (Windows) to run code on the host system (Mac OS), contrary to the intentions of such setups.

Windows Vista has come in for an awful lot of criticism since it was released, most of it justified, some not. But could it be that Vista as it is today is the most secure operating system available? Microsoft thinks so.

Microsoft has issued security fixes for 23 issues in its monthly update. The most striking note is that six bugs were already being actively exploited, and hackers appear to have already had a good idea how to exploit a further four.

The ‘Laptop Hunters’ adverts are a joy for all of us who cannot stand Apple, Macs, Steve Jobs, or any product which insists on having an “i” at the beginning of its name. But the slightly cheesy, slightly stilted ads are perfect for parodying. And one has finally turned up on YouTube.

Windows XP has taken one step closer to retirement with today marking the end of “mainstream support”. But users should not panic as help is still available.

A survey of IT professionals has found 83% have no plans to upgrade to Windows 7 in its first year of release. 41% will wait until at least two years after release.

Those lucky people who are currently running the latest builds of Windows 7 are doing so for the good of Microsoft and the mainstream who will be buying the new OS when it is released. Occasionally though, it seems Microsoft feels the need to remind them of who is in charge.

Is it that time already? Time for Microsoft to once again kick the boot into Apple’s smug face? Fantastic. Count me in. Having clearly made the point that Apple Macs are too expensive, not value for money, and more style over substance, it’s now time to turn to the playground for tactics.

Both Hotmail and Messenger have suffered as-yet-unexplained outages and other service problems. To make things worse, many users were greeted with an error message which wrongly claimed they would need to create a new account.

Apple products are expensive. This is a fact of life that we all know and those who buy Apple products accept for some strange reason. Microsoft has seemingly had enough of kowtowing round the issue and has come out and said it loud and proud. Its latest effort to get people listening of talk of a so-called ‘Apple Tax’.

Microsoft has hired the man in charge of Sun’s microchip division. It’s sparked some rumors about Microsoft getting into hardware production, but it seems more likely the role will involve smoothing out problems between software and hardware.