Users have reported extremely shortened battery life on their laptops and notebooks after upgrading to Windows 7. Downgrading to the old operating system doesn’t fix the problem. Now Microsoft is looking into the problem.

If you get an e-mail from Microsoft Support asking you to upgrade Outlook using the attached patch, don’t do it. Microsoft does not send out patches in e-mails.

Windows Server 2008 R2 includes some new Active Directory features. Some of these you may find very useful, others will be less so. This site may require registration to read the full article.

Some software is sent out to thousands of testers, Office 2010 isn’t one of them. At least officially, Office 2010 RC1 has been sent to a small group of testers. Unofficially, the software has been posted on BitTorrent sites.

The U.K. government has confirmed its faith in Internet Explorer 6 and, so far, has declined to upgrade from the nine-year-old browser. Dan Frydman, a managing director of web publishing contractor Inigo, has begun an online appeal to convince the government to upgrade.

For those still running the release candidate of Windows 7, your systems will start shutting down soon. Beginning February 15 the operating system will start to nag you with expiration notices. By June 1, your system will start rebooting itself every couple of hours.

Win7 seems to be convincing people to finally upgrade from WinXP. At current adoption rates, by June the number of Windows 7 installations may move ahead of Vista.

Beginning March 1, if you still use Internet Explorer 6, Safari 2.0, or Firefox 2.0, Google will no longer support your old browser. If you connect to Google Docs or Google Sites after March 1, you may find things don’t work as they used to.

Microsoft will start charging for Azure February 2. If you currently use the Azure platform, and decide not to pay for it, your data will become read-only.

This slide show looks a lot like Microsoft’s standard advertising points, but provides links to additional information on the various features. This site may require registration.