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With Microsoft’s recent opening of about 10 new stores, and the almost exact copy of the apple store employees. (If you are not sure what i’m talking about, just Google, “Microsoft Store employees” and then “Apple Store Employees”). Aside from the store competition, Microsoft and Apple have been competing to gain the highest amount of sales per new product. Recently Apple released the iPad, and a few months later the Microsoft Kinect was launched.

“The adoption rate of the iPad was celebrated as the fastest ever in electronics history. Now, less than a year after the tablet’s launch, Microsoft has usurped that distinction with Kinect.” (Huffington Post Tech) Within its first 25 days of launch the Kinect sold 2.5 million units, the iPad sold 3 million units in the first 80 days, more than three times longer than it took the Kinect to sell almost the same amount.

The Kinect had Black Friday on its side as Microsoft said they gained most of their sales from that single day. And Microsoft’s Kinect which sells for around $140 without the console, is around half as expensive as Apple’s iPad, which starts at $500. “The two are also very different devices, one a gaming accessory to be used in the home, the other a portable tablet computer. More…

Microsoft has officially announced that their “Live” service for the original Xbox will be discontinued on April 15th. This includes original games played on the Xbox 360. Microsoft claims that the reason for this is to encourage original Xbox users to move on their latest and greatest console. Users who are die hard fans of famous games such as Halo 2 will be very disappointed with the news. All current games made for the Xbox 360 will continue to run live as usual so there’s no need to panic if you’re up to date! If you’re like me, and are still using an Xbox from the stone age, I think we can officially say, it’s time to upgrade! What do you think?

The Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD is an extraordinary webcam. It shoots incredible high definition, widescreen video. The webcam is also equipped with a digital microphone including noise canceling technology which has little feedback and sounds pretty good. One of my favorite features of the webcam is the flexible mount on the underside used for attaching the product to your computer or elsewhere. The mount bends forward and backward making it the perfect fit for any monitor. The outer body is made of aluminum and looks very nice. Another thing I was surprised about was the size of the webcam, it is substantially smaller than I anticipated when looking at it on the internet. This webcam is going to cost you somewhere around $90.00 and is not what people usually pay for a webcam. While it films beautifully on a PC, using the webcam with a Mac is not quite the same experience. The quality is reduced, the frame rate drops and auto focus doesn’t work. While all of this sounds terrible, overall it is a very professional and good quality webcam. Make sure you keep all of that in mind when purchasing this product. To view the video unboxing, demo and review click here.

When the new Microsoft Office comes out in the first half of 2010, Microsoft expects a lot of business and personal computer users to go out and buy it.  It has a lot of new features but the one major difference that is visible is shown in the Outlook application. That feature would be the different paste options you can perform.  I am not talking about the Control C then Control V, I am talking about merging the formatting to the right and the left instead of just the alignment options the offer. These new features in all of the programs are very interesting and helpful. But how much will this product be? Well, the price has not been announced yet but it should be same usual price of $39.9 which is the one user option.

Microsoft recently put out their new ad with a white man, a black man and an asian man, for their USA ad.  Everything seems to be fine. Although when we saw their Polish ad come out it had the same concept except the black man in the middle was gone. This means two things. One, Microsoft doesn’t like black people. Or two, Microsoft thinks Polish people don’t like black people. When Microsoft got the feedback on their new ad, they were shocked and displeased with the public’s comments. Microsoft immediately took down the ad. On the side from the people if you notice the man in the middle is using a Apple Macbook computer with the apple logo hidden. Kinda funny…. Microsoft will make sure this mistake is deleted permanently.