Short Takes Daily: What's going on in the world of Microsoft for Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Today in the news: Meet the machines that are built for Windows 10; find out how to debug your Skype (if necessary); see why Microsoft's snapping up all those mobile productivity tools.

Lisa Schmeiser

June 3, 2015

2 Min Read
Short Takes Daily: What's going on in the world of Microsoft for Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Microsoft

Today in the news: Meet the machines that are built for Windows 10; find out how to debug your Skype (if necessary); see why Microsoft's snapping up all those mobile productivity tools.

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FROM OUR SITE/ OUR SISTER SITES

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Q. How can I view available images in Azure using ARM?

Q. Will Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V support nested virtualization?

Q. When creating an IaaS v2 VM under ARM can I use existing non-ARM storage accounts and virtual networks?

Make your Windows 10 reservation in Windows Update

The Windows 10 hardware ecosystem

Windows 10 can be clean installed during and after free upgrade

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RISE OF THE NEW MACHINES

During the Computex keynote today in Tapei, Microsoft's VP of Microsoft's Original Equipment Manufacturer Division, Nick Parker, debuted an array of Windows 10 devices coming to market soon. They include:

  • The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA, which is a thinner, more powerful addition to the existing Transformer line.

  • The ASUS Zen AiO Z240 with an i7 Quad-core CPU, USB Type C port, voice recognition and a 3-D camera.

  • The Dell XPS 15, optimized for Windows 10

  • The new X2 from HP, a “tablet first” mobile PC with a magnetic hinge design that makes the device flexible, thus letting users move from tablet to PC mode and back again.

  • An HP tablet with pen functionality that allows users to annotate directly in Edge.

  • A Toshiba PC with a face authentication camera, an Ultra HD 4k screen and optimized for Cortana.

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WHY ALL THOSE MOBILE APP BUYS ARE HAPPENING

As we covered yesterday, Microsoft's been on a bit of a mobile productivity apps buying spree, having acquired Wunderlist, Accompli and Sunrise in a span of a few months. Today, the news broke that the company's also working on a project management/planner tool for enterprise customers. The so-called "Planner" will sit on top of Office graph on Office 365 and allow users to link assets to specific projects, among other features.

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SKYPE SKIPS A BEAT, LANDS ON ITS FEET

Merely typing "http://" was enough to disable the Skype app on Windows, Android, or iOS, but Microsoft's acted to fix that already. In more Skype news: Microsoft rolled out a revamped Skype for Outlook.com users. New and changed features include the ability to check for Skype contacts who are online, the ability to synch Skype chats across multiple devices and the ability to easily sync contacts between Outlook and Skype.

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MICROSOFT & SSH

Ars Technica reports:

Microsoft is going to work with and contribute to OpenSSH, the de facto standard SSH implementation in the Unix world, to bring its SSH client and server to Windows.

This will give network administrators the ability to perform remote access and administration on Linux machines in their network.

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That's it for today. See you back here tomorrow!

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