Even though the PC market has seen record declines, high-flying Lenovo just reported record revenue and a 90 percent increase in profits compared to a year ago. Has the Chinese-based company figured out how to turn Windows 8 into gold?

Microsoft's new-style "Metro" Windows 8 apps were supposed to draw people to the operating system in droves, but the exact opposite is happening. Just-published research shows that 60% of users don't bother to launch even a single Metro app a day.

When it comes to paying taxes, Apple certainly thinks different, using sketchy tax dodges and phantom offshore companies to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes. Competitors like Microsoft have used similar tactics, but not nearly to the extent that does Apple. This is one more example of the way that Apple polishes a shiny public image, but acts in private in a less-than-stellar manner.

If selling and buying operating systems were a football game, Dell and enterprises might be called for piling on, because within the last several days both of them have given big thumbs-downs to Windows 8. This is just the latest in a long series of bad news for the newest version of Windows.

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.