Kinect for Windows launched today – pause for celebration. Now that the celebration is over, we can get into the stuff that really matters on the Kinect for Windows front – software. Over on the Microsoft blog, the Kinect team …

Today marks exactly five years since Microsoft cast the cruciatus curse of operating systems onto PCs everywhere: Windows Vista. The reviews have never been… kind, to put it gently. You’d be lucky to find anyone these days who could convincingly …

The unholy union of Windows and Mac shall be consummated with the appearance of Windows 7 on an iPad. Onlive, the company that made cloud computing cool with their game streaming service, are bringing virtual desktop streaming to the iPad. …

People often test how robust their computer is by seeing how long it takes to boot it up from an off postion. Now, it’s true the software being booted into has a huge impact on upload speeds, so that needs …

After an impressive return to glory with Windows 7, after the negativity surrounding Vista, Bill Gates Steve Ballmer’s gang doesn’t appear to be resting on their laurels. The apparent goal for the next version of the Windows operating system is …

Yahoo has introduced its Flickr app for Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 devices.

The Flickr Windows Phone 7 app is available in the Zune Marketplace and the Windows 7 tablet app can be downloaded from the Flickr website.

It can only be a company of the stature as Microsoft that can continue battling and trying real hard to make it big in every field that it enters. No matter how much competition it faces from stalwarts like Apple, Google, etc. in the Tablet market (which is dominated by iPads) Microsoft is bent on making it big here too.

As you probably know, Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 9 (beta) publicly today. It can be downloaded here. 

Don’t be shocked if one or more shrines to Windows 7 are erected in Redmond today.  Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report this afternoon, and thanks in large part to the new operating system, the company’s numbers look quite good.

U.S. software retail sales fell slightly by just over 1 percent for the 2009 holiday season, according to The NPD Group.

Sales for the 5-week holiday period totaled $278 million dollars, up from the 13 percent decline during the 2008 holiday season.

Initial sales of Microsoft’s Windows 7 software outperformed those of Vista’s first few days on the U.S. market, according to the latest analysis from The NPD Group.

Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. were 234 percent higher than Vista’s first few days of sales. A combination of early discounts on pre-sales and a lack of promotional activity for the Ultimate version resulted in dollar sales that were 82 percent higher than Vista.

Apple has released a new commercial in their "I’m a PC" and "I’m a Mac" successful advertising campaign. The new ad is aimed directly at Windows 7, which was just released yesterday.

Which has the better OS: Apple or PC - Tell us what you think.

UPDATE: A video has surface on Youtube of someone attempting to eat the Windows 7 Whopper… watch at your own risk.

Microsoft unleashed Windows 7 onto the public today, and the company’s Bing team has released some downloadable wallpaper things for the operating system. The themes are based on the images that the search engine uses on its homepage.

Machines with Microsoft’s Windows 7 went on sale today. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the hottest topics on the web. Everybody’s talking about it on Twitter. Everybody’s searching for it. Microsoft and Windows queries are all over Google’s Hot Trends list. Everybody wants to know more about Windows 7.

Well, let’s look at what people are saying about it. Here’s a sample from the Twitterverse:

Professionals who still use XP machines shouldn’t plan on acting out a certain equipment destruction scene from "Office Space" anytime soon.  A new report indicates that, even though Windows 7 will be released in the near future, it may be quite some time before the average company decides to deploy the new operating system.

If you’re Microsoft, it probably isn’t the most comforting thought to know the biggest headline about your new OS, Windows 7, isn’t about features or updates… it’s about supported downgrade options.

Of course if you are a Vista person who has already downgraded back to XP, today is a good day for you.  Microsoft has announced that the new Windows 7 OS will have downgrade support to both Vista and XP.

Steve Ballmer didn’t drop many jaws with his keynote speech at CES yesterday; for better or for worse, he didn’t confirm or deny rumors about Zune phones, deals with Yahoo, or 15,000 layoffs.  Still, Microsoft’s CEO got into some interesting stuff, touching on the subjects of Windows 7, search, and a top social network.

OK, so tonight Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer showed off a tiny piece of Windows 7: that multi-touch capabilities will be built into the OS. Tons of info on this over on TechMeme.

Of course, viewers here last week had a lengthy discussion and demo with the guy who invented these features inside Microsoft Research.

A whole lot of people (your humble author included) have been hanging onto old computers, hoping they’ll last until Windows 7 is released.  At a conference yesterday, a late 2009 launch was confirmed, and interesting multi-touch abilities were demonstrated.