A month after a record-setting batch of updates, the November ‘Patch Tuesday’ package will contain just six updates. Of those, at least three appear to be revisions or repetition of updates from the October release.

The row between the European Union and Microsoft may have caused extensive hassles, but it could be good news for British Windows users. The Internet Explorer squabblings appear to be the reason for a surprisingly low price for the full retail version of Windows 7 in the country.

Intel is launching a new range of integrated chips and ultrathin laptops to coincide with the launch of Windows 7. It’s a practical example of a theory that the system will spark a major growth in spending on new hardware and technologies.

Microsoft has always maintained that Windows Vista sold well despite the bad press it received in the run-up to launch and beyond. However, those figures are now being put into perspective by the Windows 7 sales figures in Europe. To say Windows 7 is proving popular is a huge understatement.

An advance test of Microsoft’s new free security package suggests it avoids the bloatware problems associated with both antivirus software and Windows itself. The package, codenamed Morro, is released today with a supposed limit of 75,000 downloads.

Spin doctoring, the art of subtly changing the facts to sell a product, person, or concept, is inherent in every aspect of our lives these days, from politics to entertainment. And, it seems, it’s also alive and kicking in the Web browser war, at least as far as Microsoft and Internet Explorer 8 is concerned.

Sometimes we at Blorge get things wrong, and this is one of those times. Contrary to our suspicions, Microsoft’s new search tool will indeed be called Bing rather than Kumo.

A new set of tests confirms that Windows 7 does run faster than Vista across a range of applications. However the improvement is likely too minimal to be noticeable in ordinary use.

Microsoft Office 14 is going to be late. How late depends on who you listen to but some suggestions are as late as the second half of 2010. The Microsoft Business Division is responsible for about 29 percent of that company’s revenue and 90 percent of that contribution comes from the sale of Microsoft Office-branded products, including its principal applications suite.

During Microsoft’s CES keynote the company announced that the Windows 7 beta would be available to MSDN and Technet subscribers.  Surely enough of it is there for those users to download.  Windows 7 beta should be available to the general public very soon.

Windows Vista SP2 is supposed to be the second third coming of Vista.  It is allegedly going to fix everything that is wrong with Vista and Vista SP1.  Windows 7 can still be hailed as Vista SP3 though it does add a few more features.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, Microsoft has a small problem.  Not all manufacturers were happy about having Vista’s requirements lowered in order to support some lower end chips/chipsets from Intel.  Now a judge has ordered the head of Microsoft to testify in the case.

Solid State Drives (SSDs) have always underperformed when coupled with Windows Vista.  SanDisk’s new file system method now being used on its SSDs aims to change all that.

Have you ever used Vista’s file search feature to find a file you know exists, but it doesn’t find the file? Here are some causes of this problem and how to fix them.

It’s looking to be a safe bet, that Vista will get a Service Pack 2 before the release of Windows 7. The timing may be an attempt to overcome the idea that it’s better to skip Vista altogether.