The day was August 24th, 1995. Microsoft Windows 95 was released to the public. It changed the way we do…well…things. It’s pretty crazy to think that up until Vista, the layout really didn’t change much. That’s not a bad thing, really. There’s a lot of technology that hasn’t changed for quite some time. The workings of a CRT monitor have been roughly the same for about 100 years now.

Anyway, we salute you, Windows 95. You’re almost old enough to drive.

The chip-making giant that we all know and love will be acquiring the antivirus/security company McAfee for a whopping $7.68 billion. This doesn’t mean that McAfee is going kaput. It will simply function as a wholly owned subsidiary.

“We believe this acquisition will result in our ability to deliver a safer, more secure and trusted Internet-enabled device experience.” — Dave DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee.

I suppose when you’re owned and controlled by Intel, great things can happen.

[Press Release]

Microsoft announced today that the Internet Explorer 9 beta will be officially launching on September 15th and the company will be holding a neat little event in San Francisco to celebrate, but as far as the beta itself, there’s really no information about it yet. However, we do know that it will require either Windows Vista or 7 to use. Windows XP users are left in the dust. Not surprising, though. Microsoft has been trying to get people to stop using XP for a while now.

[Windows Team Blog]

Wow, so it’s totally been a year since Windows 7 was officially launched (RTM, that is). We felt like we should recognize such a birthday, since Windows 7 is probably one of Microsoft’s best pieces of software in a long time. So, what’s next for the revolutionary OS? For starters, Service Pack 1 should be arriving sometime early next year, but the public beta is already out and about.

So, Windows 7, it’s been a good 365 days. Hopefully the next 365 days and days beyond will be even better. Happy Birthday!

UPDATE: Also, on top of Window 7′s first birthday, Microsoft has announced that they sold over 175 million licenses since the OS’s release.

We’ve all heard the saying that all things must come to an end eventually. Well, Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows XP SP2 and will no longer support it, which means users will no longer receive updates and important security fixes for the OS itself, as well as programs like Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Outlook Express. There is an easy fix for this, though. Simply upgrade to SP3 and you’ll be in the clear.

[via Maximum PC]

Hey-Oh! The first beta of the new Firefox 4 is up and ready for usage. It seemed like yesterday when Firefox 3.0 came about and already we’re seeing Firefox 4.0 at full beta throttle. Sadly, this first beta is Windows only. If you’re a Linux or Mac OS X user, sorry about your luck, but hopefully they’ll have something for you shortly.

EDIT: This first beta is out for all three platforms, but only Windows users get the new UI.

As always, use the beta version at your own risk. Most of your add-ons probably won’t work and you might encounter a few bugs here and there, but if you’re feeling ambitious, feel free to hit up the download link and let us know what you think!

[Download Firefox 4 Beta 1]

Want to see the Earth as it looks right now and have it show on your desktop? Well, you can with a little nifty application called Desktop Earth. It automatically downloads snapshots of the Earth from NASA every few minutes and turns it into a desktop wallpaper. It shows the night-and-day cycle, as well as clouds. It also has a few different options like the frequency of updating the wallpaper and how much cloud cover you want, as well as what to show on the night cycles. Despite it being an actual program that runs in the background, it really doesn’t take up a lot of resources. Give it a try!

[Desktop Earth]

I’m a man of multiple browsers and I’m sure many of you are too. Sometimes Firefox doesn’t always cut it and I have to move over to Chrome for a while. A big downfall with using multiple browsers is that your saved passwords and bookmarks on your favorite browser aren’t with another browser that you might switch over to every once in a while. This becomes a huge pain in the rear end, but the guys over at Tested mention a quick and painless way to sync your bookmarks and saved passwords using Xmarks. This powerful, yet simple plugin can sync bookmarks, saved passwords, and even opened tabs over multiple browsers and even over multiple computers. The plugin currently works with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. We recommend you give it a try.

via [Tested]

We all know that Microsoft is a pretty big corporation, but exactly how big are they, really? Take a look at some numbers that Microsoft posted:

• 150 million Windows 7 licenses sold

• 7.1 million projected iPad sales in 2010
• 58 million projected netbook sales in 2010
• 355 million projected PC sales in 2010

• less than 10% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2008
• 96% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2009

• 16 million subscribers to the largest 25 US daily newspapers
• 14 million Netflix subscribers
• 23 million Xbox live subscribers

• 173 million Gmail users
• 284 million Yahoo Mail users
• 360 million Windows Live Hotmail users

• $5.7 billion Apple net income for fiscal year ending in Sept 2009
• $6.5 billion Google net income for fiscal year ending in Dec 2009
• $14.5 billion Microsoft net income for fiscal year ending in June 2009

Say what you will about the company, but you have to admit they are freaking huge and successful.

via [Official Microsoft Blog]

[Download]