Week in Review: Microsoft finishes up

It's been a busy week in the IT world, as many firms announced quarterly results and Microsoft finished what it started.

Windows 7. You might have heard about it?

Microsoft made a big stink about finishing up its coding work on Windows 7, releasing it to manufacturers this week. The operating system will be made available to IT pros starting in August and consumers in October, so expect the already overwhelming marketing machine to continue throughout August and September.

That said, we can't really blame it for making sure everyone in the universe knows it has produced an OS that people might actually like to use, as on top of that, Windows sales have slid lately, hurting the software giant's results.

Results

Of course, Microsoft is hardly unique in posting poor results. There's a recession going on, don't you know? Indeed, the failing economy and slipping sales hurt EMC, VMware, Amazon, eBay and loads more, but it's just too depressing to continue the list.

That said, Yahoo and LG both posted gains, so it's not all horribly depressing terrible news.

Did you get that?

The BBC picked a fight this week with voicemail-to-text firm Spinvox, saying the UK tech success sends the bulk of its messages overseas for transcription, raising IT and privacy concerns. Spinvox denied the claims, saying its tech is indeed awesome and it keeps its data secure.

Whether Spinvox transcribes by human hand or magical machine, we're just glad we can ignore the flashing messages light on our phones.

Anniversaries

This week marked the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, and IT PRO readers want to go back to space. It was also the 10th birthday of Microsoft's instant messaging client MSN Messenger - the best way to surreptitiously gossip about fellow office workers.