Reports surfaced over the weekend that an early version of Windows 7 has appeared on the Web, but so far only a couple of users claim to have seen the OS, and Microsoft won't confirm such a version exists. Several bloggers report that Windows 7 Milestone 1, which reportedly was sent out to OEM (o... Read more…

A New York state employee who had access to government-owned archives has been arrested on suspicion of stealing hundreds of historic documents, many of which he sold on eBay, authorities said on Jan. 28. Among the missing documents were an 1823 letter by U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun and c... Read more…

Microsoft has released yet another build of its first planned service pack for Windows Vista on Wednesday, opening up the patch to a broader base of testers. Read more…

After warning just two weeks ago that the conversion of workplaces' information infrastructure to XML "must not be disruptive," the open source group that helped catalyze that conversion has apparently ceased to exist. The OpenDocument Foundation has disappeared, taking with it a once-intriguing Compound Document Format translator project. Read more…

Beleaguered electronics company Creative took a moment to toot its own horn on Wednesday, saying it had recently shipped its 25 millionth player. Read more…

VeriSign is exiting the business sector, instead opting to focus on its core businesses of running the .com and .net registries and securing online transactions. Read more…

During the opening keynote of Oracle OpenWorld today, Dell and Sun Microsystems announced a multi-year distribution agreement in which Dell will provide OEM support for Sun's Solaris 10 operating system. Dell will now be working more closely with Sun to provide Solaris support, as well as to give new Dell customers an intriguing alternative. Read more…

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Xbox Live, Microsoft is preparing a system update that will be delivered to users starting December 4 and bring support for downloading full versions of older Xbox titles such as "Halo," "Psychonauts" and "Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge." Read more…

Comcast said Wednesday that it had teamed with Microsoft to offer its small and medium-sized business customers new Internet-based communications services built on the Redmond company's productivity platform. Read more…

In a news conference slated for tomorrow morning, Pacific Time, Microsoft plans to introduce the R2 release of its Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system for embedded devices. Prominent among its new features, according to the company this afternoon, will be a new implementation of Web services on devices. Read more…