Madison, Wisconsin school district will be handing out 1,400 iPad’s this year. All of these are being purchased by Microsoft. Not directly, but due to a settlement for a consumer lawsuit, Microsoft is paying $3.4 million to the school district. While it isn’t a move to show their dislike of Microsoft, it is a punch in the face of sorts.

Whether or not you like Apple or Microsoft, what is the point of an iPad in an educational environment? Text books are available on other platforms, and have been for a while, but Apple is getting attention for their iTextbooks application. There is no fine writing skills, it’s all from the touch of a finger, without the precise and accuracy of a stylus. I have no experience with it in an educational model, other than reading (which tablets are great for – consuming media, not creating it). Any thoughts? Am I missing something?

The School District for the first time plans to buy more than 600 iPads for use in the majority of schools this spring. Another 800 iPads are expected to be in classrooms by next fall, all paid for with money from a state settlement with Microsoft.

With all the chatter with Windows 8, it is easy to overlook Microsoft’s other cash cow: Office. Well, the Office team has been hard at work and have just released the technical preview of Office version 15. A full public beta is expected later this summer. A lot of new features and ways to share information.

At this early point in our development cycle, I’m not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division. With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio. Quite simply, Office 15 will help people work, collaborate, and communicate smarter and faster than ever before.  

Ilana Smith, a lead program manager for the Windows 8 Engineering System team has written a post talking about the comments and suggestions given by developer preview users and how they are using those to make changes for the upcoming beta. It’s always nice to see developers using consumer feedback and comments to make a product better. Of course, I do notice that there are still a lot of people that aren’t happy about the changes. They still are angry about switching from DOS to Windows, though!

Those posts prompted great discussion and we read the approximately 2200 comments you left. This was wonderful feedback for us, and, along with information from our other feedback channels, we incorporated it into our design process.

Microsoft is really pushing the Kinect in to computing. They are working with vendors to include Kinect sensors within the hardware of laptops. As  long as the applications are there, I see no reason why this wouldn’t succeed. There is a lot going for the Kinect, from gestures to security to gaming. The only thing missing: applications. Without them, the need for the Kinect is dead.

A source at Microsoft has confirmed that the devices are indeed official prototypes of laptops featuring a Kinect sensor. In terms of functionality, there are hundreds of different ways that motion control could be leveraged in a portable. Gaming has the most obvious applications, but a Kinect-enabled laptop could also toggle between programs with the wave of a hand, or media controls could be tweaked with the wag of a finger. What’s more, motion-controlled portables could offer a new way for disabled individuals to interact with their devices.

Nokia has confirmed that it has sold over a million Lumia Windows Phone devices. Great for Windows Phone (yet still less that what Nokia has done in the past). They have started releasing the devices to US users through T-Mobile and AT&T. The new Nokia Lumia 900 is launching on March 18th for a price of just under a hundred bucks. When Verizon starts offering these devices (which based on their track record won’t be for a while), I’ll probably be picking one up. I love my HTC Trophy, but the new Nokia’s look real nice!

The bigger news is the phone’s price: AT&T and Nokia are planning to launch this flagship smartphone at just $99.99 on a two-year contract. That price point would make this sleek smartphone an absolute game-changer for Windows Phone, and it makes sense when you think about how much money Nokia and Microsoft are planning to spend promoting the launch.

Windows 8 does have a lot of challenges with the ARM processors, most of them related to compatibility with x86 instructions. While this is going to be a big issue, I do think that Microsoft knows about this and plans on some kind of emulation on both fronts. They wouldn’t segment the Windows ecosystem, they seem to be trying to do the opposite.

So what does this mean?   That Office 2010 someone bought for $120-350 or that Sims 3 Pets game you bought for $29 in September of 2012 will not run on a ARM-based Windows 8 tablet or notebook. This doesn’t mean that WoA platforms won’t have applications; they will.  Microsoft has gone great pains to develop a new application development environment where developers can write new Metro Windows 8-based applications using a new and slick Visual Studio developer app.  That doesn’t change the fact that none of the legacy apps will work.

For those wondering whether or not to use the 32 bit or the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer (if you use Internet Explorer), Computerworld has some good information on it. There is a good reason not to use the 64-bit version, but many times it won’t matter. I use 32 bit, myself, due to the plugin issue. I don’t notice any speed difference, so it may be noticeable, but it’s not a hindrance to any work being done.

They do this for a good reason: backward compatibility. Plug-ins have to be rewritten to work with the x64 version, and a lot of plugins have yet to be rewritten. More 64-bit plugins are being released all the time, of course, so this problem isn’t as severe as it used to be. For instance, you can now download and install 64-bit versions of Adobe Flash Player and Google Toolbar. But if Windows were to default to running the 64-bit browser tomorrow, it would still result in a lot of frustrated tech support calls.

Hmmmm, I call BS. There are rumors that the new Xbox (720, Next, whatever you want to call it) will not allow you to play used games. This would nearly kill the console before it even launches, if it is true. There are a lot of people that won’t buy a game new with prices topping $70 these days. Waiting a year for it to drop to $30 is an option, but buying it used for $15 or less after the year or $35-$40 right off the bat can save some money. If it’s true, I’m sure that modding of consoles will be very popular.

Gaming news site Kotaku is claiming that the so-called Xbox 720 will incorporate some type of anti-used game technology. Citing a "reliable industry source," Kotaku admitted that it’s not clear how such a technology would be set up and if it means the Xbox wouldn’t play used games at all.

This guy has a good opinion on Windows 8 – techies are going to dislike it, those that use computers as a tool are going to love it. It does seem to have a lot more attention to detail.

First lets go back to 2005 and 2006. Microsoft was in the height of it’s “me-too” phase. Bill Gates had clearly checked out mentally from the company. Windows Vista was in beta, and the talk of the town was that the Windows XP’s follow up was going to be a disaster. It was. It was a living embodiment of everything wrong with Microsoft. The operating system had been mismanaged to the tune of a years of delays. It felt designed by committee and sterile. This was a dark time for me. I openly lusted for a MacBook: an elegant machine, with an operating system made by people who cared about the details, about the way people who used their products would perceive it. I was standing on the edge, and I almost became a member of the Mac faithful until Zune made it’s debuted and helped me understand that Microsoft could in fact produce quality products.