Under the terms of the proposal, Microsoft would front several billion dollars towards a fund with Silver Lake Partners and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.
The microphone, however, seemed to pick up much more background noise than the Logitech C910 we tested it against here, but we'd say that's likely due their relative locations: top-mounted on the Microsoft, front-mounted on the Logitech.
Right there, that is the challenge Microsoft has in front of it for 2012.
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But when it comes to speech recognition, Microsoft is way out front.
On the marketing front, Microsoft is really pushing the Zune Pass going forward, and will be launching a new TV commercial to help plug it.
ENGADGET: Zune 2.5 update brings TV downloads, Zune Card sharing
On the wireless server front, Microsoft needs to catch up with a number of vendors, including IBM and Oracle, that have already launched such products.
And it is probably the last front on which Microsoft expected a competitive challenge to its software.
And to cap it all off Microsoft will put them all in front of one of its biggest online competitors-- Yahoo!
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put gaming front and center when he delivered the opening keynote Wednesday night at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
And despite coming out with a tablet years before anyone else, Microsoft has been left behind on this front as well.
Yesterday at Microsoft's Government Leaders Forum, in front of 300 leader figures from Canada, Latin America and the US, you apparently outlined a future where one's cellphone will becomes their " digital wallet, " and you'll be able to do things like scan business cards?
Front-runners Google, Apple and Microsoft are joined by Facebook at No. 4, Salesforce.com at No. 13, Twitter at No. 14 and Expedia at No. 19.
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Unfortunately, news on the video store front isn't so compelling: Microsoft is only adding TV shows at this point, no movies, and there's no way to pull video you've bought on your 360 over to your Zune.
ENGADGET: Zune 2.5 update brings TV downloads, Zune Card sharing
But Microsoft and Sony were ahead of the game in this front, too.
Despite facing a united front of the US Department of Justice and Microsoft, both anxious for their four-year-old case to be wound up quickly, she has remained determined to give careful consideration to all the options.
On the acquisition front, Ballmer did not address questions about whether Microsoft will take a stake in Facebook.
Microsoft has been very quietly moving and making progress on that front, while all of the flash and interest has gone to Apple.
After giving regulators the runaround and repeatedly dodging the question of why they charge Australians so much more than Americans for the same products, senior executives from Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have finally been forced to sit down in front from a parliamentary committee.
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Microsoft is quite confident of its leadership status on the Netbook front, boasting earlier this year of 96 percent attach rate for Windows and making other, more recent claims of return rates on Linux netbooks that are "like four or five times higher" than their Windows equivalents.
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However you feel about the new interface, that transition is at last complete: Outlook.com is now the sole front end for the over 400 million people who use Microsoft's free email services.
How this will play out on the front end is unknown, but rather than supplying a kludgy front end to a broken back end, Google must see light at the end of the tunnel and believe it can supply both front and back ends and dispense with that piece of the Microsoft relationship entirely.
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There are some things we can glean from the specifications of the device, however, including the lack of a front-facing camera on the 8S. Given that the Microsoft-owned Skype looks likely to be a core feature of the new Windows mobile OS, it seems a shame to not include -- if not the wide-angled front-facer of the 8X -- then something a little tamer.
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The first chat was during the period when Microsoft was defending itself against the U.S. Department of Justice in front of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the late 1990s.
For the front end, or customer-facing applications, Dell continues to use Microsoft 's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows software.
But when it comes to speech recognition, Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) is way out front.
In 2010 when the iPad was launched many mocked it as a plaything - but Apple, Google and even Microsoft believe the future of their industry is tablet-shaped, so getting the right offer in front of consumers is a very serious business.
For those with a WiFi dongle, Microsoft's suggesting you use that packaged USB extender and plug your wireless connection into one of the front two ports.
Would a Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Xbox embedded on the rear of the front seat keep the kids quiet?
The tale of the browser wars between Microsoft (MSFT) and Netscape Communications nscp ( nscp) reads a lot like a history of the Western Front in World War I.
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