What does this all mean? To be honest, not all that much — mostly, it means that there are just more computers out there every year. But what’s kind of heartening, to me at least, is that it also means the general public is more and more tech-savvy: An OS release is a huge deal for nerds like us, but it’s starting to be a big deal for Joe Sixpack as well.

Given that Windows 7-packaged hardware sales are actually lower than Vista-packaged hardware in this time period, it means that people are installing a new OS on existing computers, something that’s no big deal for us but could be intimidating for a tech neophyte.

So this is a victory for nerds everywhere. Go us! [Microsoft via NYTimes Twitter]

This release date would be consistent with the schedule Microsoft has been maintaining, but I suggest they don’t rush it. I still can’t let go of some Windows XP installs, much less jump to Windows 8 so quickly. [MSFT Kitchen via Electronista]

In a response to Computerworld’s article on NSA involvement in Windows 7 development, Microsoft stated: “Microsoft has not and will not put ‘backdoors’ into Windows.”

Not to nitpick here, but doesn’t this denial leave another “door” open? As in, couldn’t the NSA have stuck their own backdoor into Windows 7 while official Microsoft employees turned a blind eye? Or — and this may come as really shocking — could Microsoft have simply lied to us in the interest of national security??

Of course, but if you freak out over this potential lack of digital autonomy, you’re clearly a terrorist. [Computerworld via Digg]

Here’s what Texas-based law firm AbingtonIP says to justify their new suit:

Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against the terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft ‘conveniently’ timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game.

I’m not sure that modding consoles is “arguably” against the terms of use; it is against the terms of use. And why wouldn’t they want to keep people from pirating their biggest game of the year?

Certainly, anyone who is banned who hasn’t modded their console has a legitimate bone to pick with Microsoft, and there’s no defending their heavy-handed banning tactics and their collateral damage. But to suggest they’re intentionally banning legit accounts in order to get people to sign up again, well, that’s pretty stupid. [TG Daily via Engadget]

There’s certainly always opportunities for improvement. There is a group of people with whom our market share is less. You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing? The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life.

It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that’s a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the US, 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac.

Ballmer also remarked that Apple has gained a few “couple of tenths of a per cent of market share”, but when the audience chuckled, he was prompted to correct them:

Every couple of tenths matter. They matter when we’re increasing our Bing market share, too.

Ooooooh, you are good, Mr Ballmer, you are good. There were many other piercing questions about the iPhone, Android. Check them out at: [Techflash]

The graph above is a JavaScript performance comparison in which the same machine ran the SunSpider test (so shorter bars are better). Microsoft is comparing one, specific (but incredibly important) browser task to the competition’s numbers, and as you can see, boy has IE improved over the years!

But it’s still not enough.

I mean, kudos for the improvements, but you don’t win by coming in last place. The disclaimer, of course, is a sort of “this is where we are today… just wait until you see us tomorrow!” kind of mentality. But you could ethically slap a “today” on everyone else on that graph.

For the optimists out there, Microsoft talked about some other big improvements coming to IE9, including HTML 5 support and GPU acceleration. More about that here: [IEBlog via PCWorld via Engadget]

According to the NSA’s Information Assurance Director, Richard Schaeffer, it’s important for the agency to work with Microsoft and other software makers because otherwise the increasing reliance on “private-sector computing products” could put national security at risk. By creating and maintaining high security standards, the agency hopes to reduce the danger of the “rising threat of cyberattacks”. Whew. That actually sounds quite reasonable and like a good thing, rather than cause to panic after seeing “NSA” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence. [NPR via Crunch Gear]

According to Zhongyi Electronics, Microsoft “only paid to use [their] software for its Windows 95 system”. They say that the two fonts weren’t even covered in the agreement to begin with. Yikes. Microsoft is appealing the court’s decision by claiming that the fonts were in fact covered by the agreement and that there was a “legitimate right” to use them. [Obama Pacman]

There’s a lot new about Office 2010: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook all come with evolved UIs, taking cues from Office 2007’s “ribbon” UI by using tabs instead of traditional menus. Word offers the new “backstage view”, which replaces the old File menu with a sort of visual representation of it: You’ll get a sidebar with live previews, which could come in handy for things like print preview. Besides that, Word (along with PowerPoint and Excel) also adds minor photo and video-editing tools like colour adjustment, cropping and trimming. PowerPoint brings the new “broadcast slideshow” feature, allowing you to beam a presentation to any connected PC with a one-click interface; and Excel adds some smart enhancements like automatically shading the highest numbers in a given chart, and Sparklines, which are word-sized graphs that can be added inside charts.

There are a boatload of minor changes in Office 2010, and we won’t go into them all. The biggest change, and the one that’s most exciting to us, has been around for awhile in some form or another: SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage, now includes what’s essentially the Office take on Google Docs. With any version of Office 2010, you get 25GB of storage space. That storage gives you the ability to create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the fly, with simultaneous group editing, just like in Google Docs.

There are two main versions of Office 2010: The full version, the price of which has not yet been announced, and the Starter version, which offers limited-feature (we might say crippled) versions of the three main programs in the suite, and will come free with many new PCs. With either option, you’ll get the 25GB of storage space and access to SkyDrive. Office 2010 will be released sometime in the first half of 2010. [Microsoft]