Yahoo Inc is giving its popular email service a long-promised facelift in an attempt to make it more appealing to people who are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, Google and other online alternatives to communicate.

You could probably guess most of the FBI's top 10 priorities, listed on the agency's website in the "about us" section. The first nine run the gamut from combating violent crime and terrorist threats to protecting civil rights. But the 10th one might surprise you. It says, "Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission." That one falls to the agency's CIO, Chad Fulgham.

While Microsoft still isn't commenting on whether current Windows Mobile phones will be upgradeable to its new Windows Phone 7 software, it has finally officially revealed that existing applications won't work on the new platform.

Goldman Sachs' latest IT spending survey forecasts modest overall growth in the coming year, with pent-up demand for new hardware such as servers and PCs stimulating an increase in Windows 7 upgrades.

Microsoft is emphasizing the potentially money-saving features of Exchange 2010, the latest revamp of its e-mail application officially released Monday at its TechEd European customer conference in Berlin.

Windows 7 momentum is slowly but surely spilling over into the corporate world as long-frozen tech budgets begin to thaw and new PCs are purchased.

If you're looking for someone who has road tested Windows 7, pull up next to BMW IT executive Bernhard Huber.

Start now. Particularly if you skipped Vista, you need to start testing applications for compatibility with Windows 7. Microsoft says it will discontinue support for Windows XP in April 2014. Gartner predicts that many application vendors will drop support for XP versions by 2012. "Application support is the biggest problem to be concerned with," says Gartner analyst Michael Silver, even with some browser applications: Windows 7 forces an upgrade to Internet Explorer 8.

In case you’ve been too busy dealing with rogue iPhones, October 2009 was a big month for operating systems. Do CIOs care about operating systems? Probably not as much as they used to, but with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" (from here on abbreviated to simply "Karmic" for sanity purposes) being released within days of each other, CIOs at least have a reason to be excited about the future of the desktop. Here are five things about Karmic that senior IT executives should consider before disregarding Linux as an option for their desktop and server fleets.

At the Windows 7 launch in downtown Manhattan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the general availability of Windows 7 with his usual enthusiasm, emphasizing ease of use, faster boot up times and the ability to bring together the PC and the television.