Microsoft after Gates, Google Chrome, ID cards, printer woes and more

silicon.com's top stories for July are an eclectic bunch - from calls for an offshoring tax, to work on cows that don't fart to one man's epic struggle to get an all-in-one printer simply to work.

This July marks one year since Bill Gates took his leave of Microsoft, so silicon.com reporter Tim Ferguson ponders the question of how Microsoft has changed since the departure of its figurehead and former CEO - in this proudly-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin feature: Five ways Microsoft has changed since Gates left.

Since Bill and Melinda walked off hand in hand into the sunset to battle exotic diseases, the software behemoth hasn't put itself into a cryogenic deep freeze. Instead Ferguson reckons it's grown a few grey hairs, found its mojo for cloud computing, buried the corpse of Vista (well, almost) and pulled up its socks a bit too. But has it changed enough? Click here to read the article and decide for yourself - don't forget to add a Reader Comment.

Even if Bill Gates still has "about 20 per cent involvement with Microsoft" he clearly has much bigger fish to fry than Google these days as this interview with the big man reveals. Cow-sized fish in fact.

Talking about his work with Intellectual Ventures, a company which invests in scientific discovery, he said: "We're going to make the cows that don't fart." (Cow farts are a major contributor to global warming, for the uninitiated.)

While it may no longer have Gates to keep it on its toes, Microsoft is having to confront Google at every technological turn and July was no exception, after the company announced it is developing a netbook OS proper.

In what can only be described as barbed comments aimed squarely at Microsoft's heart, Google said: "We are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates." Ouch.

But does the world even need another Linux distro? Renai LeMay debates the Chrome vs Ubuntu question here.

Ubuntu vs Chrome was not the only epic battle being waged in July: silicon.com's futurist columnist Peter Cochrane may know more about wireless technology than the IEEE but can he get an all-in-one printer, copier, scanner to work straight out the box? Of course not. Read the full saga here.

Also more than worth a punt is silicon.com columnist Seb Janacek's thoughts on how the Palm Pre is likely to fare at beating the iPhone at its own game. He may be an iPhone owner but Janacek admits to a few fantasies about interfacing with the Pre. Click here to read more.

BT was also making the headlines last month on two fronts: revealing the next lot of towns and cities to get fibre broadband and announcing it's cutting its call centre workforce in India by 4,000 and bringing some of the work back to the UK.

Last but not least, the perennial favourite of ID cards with yet more axe-grinding from critics after the Home Secretary confirmed the scheme will now go ahead only on a voluntary basis.

Click on the links in the box above for all July's highlights.

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