As of 21:00 PST (9:00pm PST), Internet Explorer 9 is now available for you to download and enjoy.

Over the last year, Microsoft has been releasing previews of some of the features destined for its next browser release, Internet Explorer 9. In September 2010 Microsoft then released a fully usable beta followed in February 2011 by a near-final “Release Candidate”.

Tonight’s release of IE9 marks Microsoft’s return as a true competitor in the browser marketplace – something that many thought would never happen. And not only has Microsoft released a truly competitive browser, but they’ve actually leapfrogged Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Opera’s browsers.More...

I’ve written about this issue before, but what’s wrong with this picture?

Today … the launch-day for IE9 … the Azure team STILL haven’t updated their site to allow one to purchase Azure services using IE9.

C’mon Microsoft, this is now far-beyond embarrassing.

Following on from (and lending some more weight to) my recent speculative posts about Microsoft’s possible plans for virtualization within Windows 8 (“Will Microsoft make Windows 8 entirely virtual?” and “More evidence for Windows 8 being fully virtualized”) …

Microsoft published two virtualization related posts today: More...

 
Leaked Windows 8 M2 Wallpaper

A few months ago, I posted an article speculating that Microsoft may be building Windows 8 as an entirely virtualized OS.

Today, I read with some interest, a post on Windows8Center.com quoting a report on Win7China’s site that Windows 8 builds are currently installing in around 8 minutes and that restoring the OS to factory defaults can be done in less than 2 minutes!

A clean OS install in 8 minutes? Seriously? Wow!

A clean-installation of Windows 7 (on my crazy-fast Sony Vaio Z Series) takes just under 20 minutes. On machines with spinning disks, the fastest I’ve seen Win7 install (from USB stick) is 25-30 mins. Installing a major new OS in 8 minutes on spinning disks is staggeringly fast.

So, is this smoke and mirrors or is this possible and how might Microsoft make something like this happen? More...