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On Thursday, February 4, Satya Nadella will celebrate his second anniversary as the CEO of Microsoft. It's been an eventful couple of years. Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android, and generally made people like it a lot more. But the real victory of Satya Nadella — the truly monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is pointed in one direction for first time in modern memory.

At at event in San Francisco, Microsoft previews the next iteration of its desktop operating system with a surprise naming leap that leaves out 9 and goes straight to Windows 10.

According to a recent article in Zdnet, Microsoft will monitor users in the new Windows 9 Operating System in order to determine how the new OS is used, thus decide what tweaks and changes are need to be made. During Windows 8 testing, Microsoft said that they had data showing Start Menu usage had dropped, but it seems that the tools they were using at the time weren’t as evolved as the new ‘Asimov’ monitor. The new system is codenamed ‘Asimov’ and will provide a near real-time view of what is happening on users’ machines. Rest assured, the data is...

We already know quite a bit about Windows 9 (or whatever Microsoft decides to call it). Thanks to the president of Microsoft Indonesia, we might now know another detail about Microsoft’s upcoming OS—its price. According to Indonesian news site Detik.com (via BGR), Andreas Diantoro, the president of Microsoft Indonesia, confirms that Windows 9 will be a free upgrade for all Windows 8 users. Why it matters: Users are becoming more accustomed to free operating system updates, given the fact that even major iOS, Android, and OS X updates are gratis. And after the negative reception Windows 8 received, Microsoft has...

After spending the past two years in damage control mode over Windows 8, Microsoft will officially begin a new era for its OS on Tuesday, when it’s expected to unveil a preview of Windows’ next major version during an event focused on enterprise customers. After the success of Windows 7, Microsoft misread the market with Windows 8 and botched the product’s user interface, leaving a trail of many unhappy customers, especially in the consumer market. Among businesses, Microsoft encountered much resistance to upgrade, as many CIOs clung to the very stable Windows 7, and took a pass on Windows 8...

Microsoft is about to introduce Windows 9 next week at an event, ahead of its widespread release in 2015. The project for the next Windows operating system has been given the internal code name as Threshold. Microsoft watchers have noted that the next OS could indeed be a needed threshold move to win back business users who were put off by Windows 8 because of its tiles-based interface instead of the start menu they had relied on in Windows 7 and older Windows versions. The frustration was palpable last year, and one example was a posting in Micro Doctor, a...

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will unveil a new name for its best-known product on Tuesday when it offers the first official glimpse of its latest Windows operating system. The project, known for the past few years as "Threshold" inside the software company and "Windows 9" outside it, will likely get an entirely new brand, or just be called Windows, analysts said, ahead of its full release early next year.

It’s official, Windows 8 is a write-off . Sales for the operating system have been poor and now it is even starting to lose market share to Windows 7. To Microsoft MSFT -0.12%’s credit it has bravely persisted addressing issue after issue. Most notable was the major Windows 8.1 Update 1 patch released in April which makes the OS a genuinely credible platform. Still it remains far from perfect and now Microsoft is prematurely pulling the plug. In a blog post by Microsoft Senior Marketing Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc, he explains that there will be no more major update releases...

Windows 9 is going to strip out even more of Windows 8 than we thought: It will kill the Charms Bar. Considering that it will also add back the Start menu, and allow Metro apps to run as windows apps on the desktop, when it's done it may be an operating system you can love. WinBeta reports that in Windows 9, currently code-named Threshold, the Charms Bar is going to be killed, as least on traditional PCs. That's good news. Although Charms works fine on tablets, on traditional PCs it's always been confusing and awkward to use. It's one more...

Microsoft attempted something different and daring with Windows 8. It introduced a whole new interface and means of interaction with your PC that was identical to a smartphone or tablet. It threw out the “Start” menu and mouse-driven interface people had used for decades in favor of a touch-driven interface with tiles, some of which received active information updates. And people hated it. “They tried to get their entire audience to jump from a UI [user interface] they were comfortable with to a brand new one with a serious learning curve,” California-based Creative Strategies tech analyst and president Tim Bajarin...

Microsoft might be preparing to give the public its first taste of Windows 9 between the second and third quarters of 2015, according to a newly leaked document. Tech blog Myce has obtained a leaked internal Microsoft document from a source in China known as FaiKee.The document, first spotted on Myce's website by Windows blog WinBeta, lists both Windows 9 and Windows Phone 9 as scheduled for a release preview between Q2 and Q3 2015. Here's a screenshot of the document: Myce A release preview is exactly what its name suggests. It's a nearly finished version of the software that the public...

Software giant Microsoft is rumoured to be intending to release the next update to its Windows operating system suite in April 2015. It is apparently currently codenamed 'Threshold' within Microsoft, although once released the client operating system will be called Windows 9. This is likely to be an attempt by the firm to differentiate the new OS from Windows 8, and its later iteration Windows 8.1, which experienced disappointing sales and poor user feedback. Among the changes rumoured to be part of the new release is the return of the Start menu, which was controversially left out of Windows 8...

SOFTWARE COBBLER Microsoft might be ready to abandon Windows 8 earlier than it planned in an attempt to reverse the slide in its fortunes.The company might announce Windows 9 as early as April, reports claim, as it tries to distance itself from the poorly received Windows 8.We reported on Friday that the Threshold project was being tipped as a major update for Windows 8, however according to Winsupersite it will instead be billed as a new Windows operating system version slated for release in April 2015.Although the launch of Windows 8 has not been the disaster that Windows Vista...