NEWS

Microsoft's developer conference will usher in the "Spring Update" to Windows 8.1, and more news on Microsoft's touch-based Office suite.

As it rolled out tools and features for coders at its Build developer conference Thursday, Microsoft showed that it is ready to embrace technologies and platforms not invented within its walls.

Hardware vendors making smartphones and tablets with screens smaller than 9 inches will get Windows for free, the latest aggressive move by Microsoft.

Virtual reality through the Oculus Rift headset is novel enough. But VR through Internet Explorer, enabled with just a few lines of code? Microsoft just demonstrated it at its Build conference.

Microsoft has unveiled its new Azure Cloud portal at Build in San Francisco, which delivers a series of new tools and services to radically simplify Cloud development.

Microsoft is delivering a way to turn legacy Win32 business apps into modern touch apps that run on Windows 8.1, a feature it hopes will help prod businesses toward adopting the new operating system.

Microsoft partners, developers and customers may get a clearer picture of how the company plans to keep Windows relevant now that its rock-solid position in the market has been shaken up by competitors, shifts in technology and the lukewarm reception of recent releases.

Microsoft launched a number of features that should dramatically improve the usefulness of its Outlook Web app, including an Outlook Web app for Android and a "decluttering" tool for your inbox.

Microsoft said Monday it was cutting prices of its Azure cloud services to match the prices of competitor Amazon Web Services in the latest in a price war in cloud services.