Reports say that Microsoft is readying a smaller, less-expensive version of its Window RT-based Surface tablet, and may announce it as early as June. Will that be enough to save the struggling Windows RT OS?

It might not seem like a victory to many people, but Windows Phone has finally climbed to number 3 on the smartphone popularity list, edging past BlackBerry. Even better news for Microsoft: Windows Phone shipments more than doubled in the past year.

Google CEO Larry Page zinged Microsoft for its "sad" behavior during his rambling remarks at Google I/O, complaining about the company's "us versus them" mentality. Yet only a few days earlier, Google had served Microsoft with a cease-and-desist letter to pull a Windows Phone YouTube app. Whose behavior is really sad here?

PC sales in Western Europe plummeted in the first quarter in the biggest decline the continent has ever seen -- more than 20 percent. And one key reason for the drop is that European users simply don't like Windows 8.

Windows RT tablets may have underwhelming sales, and some people believe RT is on a death watch, but a top Windows executive said today that Microsoft won't abandon RT-based tablets and the ARM platform on which they run. That being said, she pointed to this fall as the rollout time for full Windows 8 tablets based on Intel's low-power Haswell chips.

Windows Blue is likely to be available for free, but elements of it show that eventually Microsoft may turn Windows into an annual subscription service in the same way it's doing with Office.

Don't wring your hands about Apple refusing to build an iTunes app for Windows 8. Who needs it? What you should be hoping for is a Windows 8 Spotify app, because it's the present and future of digital music, while iTunes is the past.

Acer, which has long been publicly critical of Microsoft's Windows 8 strategy, now says that Microsoft has started to listen to its hardware partners. And the company's chairman has offered a strange, backhand compliment, saying that Microsoft has finally learned "how people living on earth think." With compliments like that, who needs to hear criticisms?

Micrsoft's announcement that it has sold 100 million licenses for Windows 8 is impressive sounding but misleading. It represents the number of licenses shipped, but not actually bought. There's plenty of evidence that not nearly that many copies have sold and are in the hands of users.

With Windows 8, Microsoft has done everything it could do to kill off the Desktop. But now, after months of getting sometimes angry feedback, Microsoft has finally admitted that people want to use it. Will Windows Blue finally end Microsoft's anti-Desktop fixation?