TechNet Keys Reduced Without Notice

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If you are a TechNet or MSDN subscriber, you’ll notice that you are only alloted 2 keys maximum (or 5, depending on the level of subscription) for most products, instead of the original 10. Not so bad, but even Microsoft’s own employees thought it was a system bug, rather than intentional.

However, MS made the switcheroo without first informing its subscribers of the tweak to its TechNet small print. Product keys are used by Microsoft and other software vendors to certify that a user’s copy of a particular program is genuine, and they typically require online activation.

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Microsoft Predicts Over 3M Kinects Sold This Holiday Season

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In a typical “Counting your eggs before they are hatched” situation, Microsoft is predicting that they will sell over 3 Million Kinect accessories this holiday season. While I’ve always liked the add on’s that system makers come out with (I’ve bought several on release: Sega CD, Sega 32X, Sega Power Converter… Mostly Sega!), I’ve never seen an add on sell so quickly. We’ll see, though.

We’ve also done our own research. We believe this will be the biggest launch in our history, for Xbox. We will sell more Kinect sensors than we did [systems] at Xbox 360 launch.

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No IE9 Love For Windows XP

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The nearly decade old operating system from Microsoft is not going to get the newest version of their newest browser, Internet Explorer 9. There are many reasons for this, and it is going to anger many people that don’t want to upgrade to the new Windows 7. For some, updating from Internet Explorer 6 is a challenge, much less a whole new operating system. I still love my old DOS programs and games, but I learned to live with a UI after Windows 95 up until now. Sometimes it’s ok to let go!

Much of the talk yesterday around IE 9 was about moving the browser out of the way of the website, with features like “jump lists” and the “pinning” of websites to the desktop. These features, along with hardware acceleration using DirectX 10, would be unavailable on Windows XP. As Microsoft showed during a reviewers workshop yesterday much of Internet Explorer 9 has been rebuilt from the ground up. If this means that we don’t have to deal with the clunky IE of the past from now on, so be it. Our only lament is that a better, standards-based version of IE will never happen on XP and for now, XP isn’t going anywhere fast.

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Halo Reach Reaches $200M On Launch Day

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As expected, Halo Reach was a hit on launch day. I don’t know if anyone expected these numbers, but WOW. It pulled $200 Million ($200,000,000) on launch day alone. The next few weeks will bring even more. I’ve never really been a Halo fan, but it does have quite the following! I’d like to pick it up just to give an unbiased review (well, I’m going in a bit negative already, but I’ll give it equal treatment!), but I’m probably going to rent it or borrow it to do so.

Spencer said the $200 million figure made “Reach” the biggest launch of any game or movie this year. “Halo 3” garnered more than $300 million globally in its first week. First-day global sales for “Halo 3” were not available.

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Bing Passes Yahoo For #2 Search Engine

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Bing has been growing in popularity by leaps and bounds, giving Google a run for their money. Bing has surpassed Yahoo to become the number 2 search engine. Great news for the Bing team! I still alternate between the two. One weird note, searching for “MSE”, Microsoft’s Security Essentials is #1 on Google results, yet #2 on Microsoft’s own Bing search results.

According to Nielsen data out this morning Microsoft