Rumors that Mr. Xbox, Mr. Zune and the almost Mr. Courier, J Allard, will be parting ways with Microsoft. This whole mess began when Steve Ballmer decided to pull the plug on the Courier (or as I like to to call it, the iPad 2.0). Allard did not take to kindly to this and according more »

It seems the current economy can now be blamed for both the rich as well as the poor losing money. In recent news Bill Gates has lost $7 billion in this last year. Of course, while that may sound bad, truth be told he is still very rich. According to the recently published Forbes list more »

The Register seems to have started an interesting little rumor that despite all their recent ads and millions spent to lure users to Vista, Microsoft is actually extending the time OEMs have to sell PCs that come with Vista with the support to downgrade to XP. The deadline had been January 31, 2009, and it has supposedly been extended by six months to July 31, 2009.

The whole extension hasn’t had any official confirmation by anyone in Microsoft or any OEM, just a “Reg reader” was sourced in the original article. Guess we’ll see. In a way, it would make sense if Microsoft is trying to keep XP available for companies until the release of Windows 7, expected to come out sometime in early 2010 or thereabouts. I’m sure this move (if true), would make several who have been dragging their feet on the transition to Vista very happy.

By now you’ve probably seen the Gates/Seinfeld commercials from Microsoft. If not, you have no need to worry. It seems two “episodes” as some have called them are all we’ll see. The next phase of the $300 million marketing campaign will start soon. The next step: have a Microsoft engineer that looks a lot like John Hodgeman of the Mac commercials to say “Hello, I’m a PC, and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” What follows will be celebrities and Microsoft employees, including Bill Gates showing that they, too, are PC users.

It seems like it was only going to be a matter of time before that happened, actually. There have been a lot of parodies of the “Get A Mac” ads, having Microsoft respond with something at least a bit similar would at least show that Microsoft is aware of Apple. Not much else has gone right for Microsoft since the release of Vista (especially the “Mojave experiment”); taking the Apple template is at least a safe move.

Long annoyed with Apple’s barbs and those “Get a Mac” ads, Microsoft has called in the help of comedian Jerry Seinfield for their latest ad campaign. Along with retired Bill Gates, Seinfield will be helping to promote their new “Windows not walls” tagline.

Their newest ad campaign is running them $300 million, which makes it one of their biggest ever; and $10 million of that is going straight to “key celebrity pitchman” Jerry Seinfield for his assistance. Not a shabby paycheck there Jerry, especially since you usually displayed Macs in your apartment on your show.