Reporting its earnings for the second quarter, Microsoft said that robust sales of its Office suite of programs and Xbox gaming system helped the company touch a profit figure which was two cents more than the analysts' estimates, even though the figure was `flat' in comparison to the numbers for the previous year.

At a recent conference in San Francisco, Microsoft's Vice President Antoine Leblond said that the Redmond, Washington- based company is working on the scheduled late-February launch of its first widely available test version of the latest iteration of its flagship operating system, Windows 8.

According to a new report from iPad-only newspaper The Daily, citing unnamed `inside' sources, Microsoft is `actively working' on a series of updates which will bring the company's Office suit of apps to the Apple iPad, and also a forthcoming Mac version.

Major software manufacturer, Microsoft Corp., infringed a copyright on technology employed to put off piracy, a petitions court ruled during a verdict that might modify how indemnities are designed in future matters.

The federal authorities have dropped charges against 28-years-old Matthew Crippen, who was arrested last year after allegedly jailbreaking Microsoft Xboxes and trying to sell his modifications online, after a California judge’s criticism and admission that it made several procedural errors.

Software giant, Microsoft has sold more than 2.5 million of its Kinect controller since its launch last month. The new controller is capable of tracking a players full body movements along with voices and faces and translated them into actions on the screen.

A new malware posing as Microsoft Security Essentials is being distributed through a drive-by download as either hotfix. exe or mstsc. exe as these file names are not suspected by most users.