I don’t know how much money Microsoft is spending — make that squandering — on the Windows 8 and Surface ad campaigns. But if you counted loudness as a factor in making one product more successful than another, you’d think the world had happily embraced the newest Microsoft products. But if the latest Black Friday […]

Conspiracy theories are often entertaining. The conventional explanation about an episode, usually a tragedy, is really a cover-up. There are actually other reasons why things happen that don’t necessary depend on a lone gunman, or some haphazard event over which we have no control. Certainly in our unique corner of the world, we wonder why […]

Let me say at the outset that I’m posing this question not because I truly believe that Microsoft would actually give money to Consumer Reports, or that the publication would even accept such a donation, but I have to wonder about a few things in the December 2012 issue. This is the annual product wrap-up edition, where […]

Supposedly Microsoft is in favor of focus group testing, the better to evaluate new products and get public reaction. Yet you have to wonder how they continue to come up with curious, ill-thought solutions that seemingly defy logic. Take the ribbon toolbar. Microsoft wanted you to believe that toolbars containing icons that were context sensitive […]