According to Computerworld, Microsoft raised its pricing on Office for Mac 2011 during its Office 365 event last month by as much s 17% and stopped selling multi-license packages of the application suite.

The move puts Office for Mac 2011 on the same pricing schedule as the new Office 2013 for Windows. The price increases and the disappearance of the multi-license bundles also makes Microsoft’s Office 365, a software-by-subscription deal the company has aggressively pushed, more competitive with traditional “perpetual” licenses.

But why? It seems Microsoft is using its Office package as a blackmail tool and pricing it higher. They had better be careful as there are other options out there.

From today Hotmail is being moved by Microsoft to its new swanky Outlook.com look to all users in the US and then across the world.

Your hotmail email address and folders will not be lost. Microsoft intend to target gmail users with a multi million pound campaign.

Sounds like a good plan but is it too little too late.

Nokia Music+ has gone live in the UK. For £4 per month (or use a one-week trial) you will get unlimited offline downloads to your Lumia, improved audio quality, unlimited radio skips and web streaming.

Not a bad deal but it really depends on depth and breadth of music catalogue.

What makes an operating system the best. One word. Apps. Decent apps and volume of apps. If you have an iPhone you have access to so many apps its incredible.

Microsoft’s Windows store actually proceeded to grow at a decent pace once it hit the streets pumping nearly 500 apps into the market each and every day, pushing the global total to 20,000 apps in less than a month. However, per country this is a lot less.

The next 15,000 came at a slightly reduced speed, but it was nothing to worry about. When the Windows Store hit the 35,000 mark on December 27, the apps were flying in at a rate of 415 per day, according to The Next Web. However, the rate of apps has declined per day per week. Just look at the graph below from metroscore. It shows the apps are plateauing. In real terms this means there are now only 137 new apps per day and that nyumber is declining. At this rate t will take over a year to hit 100,000 apps and not 3 months as stated by Microsoft.

Maybe with the Surface Pro and new and multiple Window handsets being released this number will flourish. Or perhaps Microsoft need to look at what Blackberry did to create 70,000 apps at launch of its new Z10 phone.

Whatever happens, Microsoft has a big war chest if needed to fight back.

Shortly after the Surface Pro went on sale, Microsoft announced the 128gb version was sold out in many locations. This seems fairly similar to a situation when the Zune went on sale, then sold out and ultimately didn’t sell too many.

When sales speech like this occurs, it is not really possible to believe anything unless you are given the hard numbers of actual sales, and not shipped items. Microsoft hasn’t released the actual numbers yet, but just states it working hard to replenish stock at its retail partners.

According to feedback on forums and blogs, many people were left frustrated as stores like Best Buy had less than 5 units in some cases. Or most cases if you believe some of the posts. It is no surprise that they were flying off the shelves. It must have been a stampede to get to the few stock items first!

Now don’t get me wrong the Surface Pro is a decently designed bit of kit albeit expensive and remember if Apple had stock shortages, it would get heavily criticised by the media and investors.

And if you are looking to get a 128gb model, just remember the available space is just over 83gb.
Do not be alarmed by this as this is normal for any product on any platform to allow space for the operating system.

It can’t be so. But I’m left speechless. The Surface Pro only has a 4 hour battery life at best. If you are working away, 4 hours is simply not enough. My iPad goes over 10 hours.

One word. Fail. Shame as the device is otherwise a clever concept.