Elizabeth Montalbano

Hoping to accelerate the adoption of Vista for businesses, Microsoft Corp. Tuesday unveiled tools to help companies deploy the new Windows client OS, including software that allows older versions of Windows to run virtually alongside Vista.

Xerox Corp. research subsidiary the Palo Alto Research Center has struck a licensing deal with a high-profile startup in the hopes of building a search engine that could one day rival Google Inc.

Companies have completed the first phase of a Microsoft Corp.-sponsored project to create software that can convert Microsoft Word documents between Open XML and Open Document Format for Office Applications file formats.

Just as Windows 95 ushered in the Internet era, Windows Vista, which will be released to U.S. consumers at midnight on Tuesday, sets the stage for the multimedia hub the PC is set to become in the future.

Industry watchers and Microsoft customers have expressed concern that many applications won't be available for Vista in time for its launch on Jan. 30. But this week Microsoft partners of various sizes have stepped forward to back the OS, the first major release of Windows in five years.

Microsoft Corp. is offering a free online "test drive" of its Windows Vista OS so users have a legitimate way of testing the software rather than going out and buying a counterfeit copy or pirating a genuine version.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Kevin Martin weighed in on net neutrality, saying it "means different things to different people" during his presentation at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Kevin Martin Wednesday waffled on the hotly debated issue of net neutrality, saying it "means different things to different people" during his talk at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.