Helping small businesses not just survive but thrive is key to our global economic recovery. Together, small and midsize businesses employ the majority of the world’s workforce and as we all know, will be the key to future job creation.

Original article: New, Modern PCs Can Save Small Businesses Time and Money

Dell today, is introducing the Vostro 3000 series of Windows PCs targeting specifically at the Small Business customer. The new thin, lightweight and durable laptop computers feature powerful processors, high-end graphics and built-in security, and are designed for small businesses; helping them stretch their budget and protect their data, and come with dedicated small business services and support to keep a small businesses moving.

Original article: Dell Introduces Vostro 3000 Series Windows PCs

MIX is right around the corner, and the Windows Phone 7 Series developer team (@wp7dev) is very excited to be talking about the development platform. This is a guest post by Joey deVilla, Microsoft Developer Evangelist, about our upcoming sessions at MIX.

Original article: Windows Phone Sessions at MIX10

Last Friday I posted about the first of a series of hot deals that will happen at the end of every week this month. Last week it was a hot deal for Batman: Arkham Asylum. This week it’s Street Fighter IV. Starting today and running through to Monday March 8th 5:00pm Redmond time, Street Fighter IV will be available through Games on Demand at 50% off.

Original article: Street Fighter IV 50% off via Games on Demand

Back in August, I wrote a blog post about how Internet Explorer 8 offers the best protection against socially engineered malware threats. This week, NSS Labs released a new study that continues to show Internet Explorer 8 to be the #1 browser in blocking malware!

Original article: Internet Explorer 8 Still the Best at Staying Safe While Browsing the Web

Whenever I’m confused on how to do something and am looking for some help, YouTube is one of the first places I go. Without fail, I can always find some form of video that gives me the answer I need. The Windows Home Server team has also seen the benefits of YouTube, and we thought it would be helpful and fun for our customers if we started making our own videos!

Original article: Announcing the Windows Home Server YouTube channel

As we roll towards full public disclosure of the details of the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform there needs to be a place where members of the team building it can engage in conversations with the community. This is the place. Subscribe to this feed to get deep technical information on the tools, platform capabilities, and so forth. We’ll be linking to other blogs and content sites as well. We’ll do our best to keep away from marketing spiel and instead focus on great technical conversations.

Original article: Welcome to the new Windows Phone Developer Blog

Today Microsoft announced that effective June 30, 2010, Microsoft will discontinue future development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS)the infrastructure solution we designed specifically for midsize businesses. This blog post is to specifically answer the question around whether the change affects other Microsoft solution products. The short answer is, no.

Original article: New IT Trends Bring Change to Mid-Market Product Line

Today at the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Steve Ballmer spoke to students about Microsoft and cloud services. You can watch his speech on-demand below.

Original article: Microsoft & the Cloud

As I’ve shared on this blog before, we’re always eager to hear about our Windows 7 customer experiences and how we can improve our support and tools we offer them through their deployment.

Original article: Forrester provides tips to Windows 7 early adopters