Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

The Microsoft PC Manager app -- a free and official tweaking and optimization utility available from the Microsoft Store -- is the latest software from the company to offer up questionable and controversial advice.

We've already seen the appearance of ads (or recommendations as Microsoft prefers to call them) in Windows itself, Office and Edge. Now users of the Microsoft PC Manager who have changed Edge's search engine to something other than Bing are being told that this is something that needs to be repaired.

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Microsoft has teamed up with Byowave to produce a highly customizable, modular controller designed for those who find traditional gamepad-style controllers difficult or impossible to use.

The announcement coincides with Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which falls on the third Thursday of May each year. Comprising cube-like modules and interchangeable faceplates that allow for dozens of configurations, the Proteus Controller lets users create a completely personalized gaming experience.

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It's not often that Google makes a change to its search engine that proves almost universally popular, but with the introduction of a new Web filter, the company seems to have achieved just that.

Eliciting reactions such as "Holy shit are they making the search engine useful again", the Web filter joins existing filters such as Videos, Images and Shopping that are already found at the top of search results. Rolling out right now, the only complaint so far appears to be that there is (currently) no way to set this as the default view.

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Microsoft has released its monthly patches for Windows 11 in the form of the KB5037771 update. There are lots of fixes in this release including for problems with domain controllers, VPNs, and SMB clients.

There are a number of security fixes, but also more controversial changes -- including ads in the Start menu (or app recommendations as Microsoft calls them). Other changes include improvements to Widgets and Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

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Pioneering AI firm OpenAI has launched the latest edition of its LLM, GPT-4o. The flagship model is being made available to all ChatGPT users free of charge, although paying users will get faster access to it.

There is a lot to this update, but OpenAI highlights improvements to capabilities across text, voice and vision, and well as faster performance. Oh, and if you were curious, the "o" in GPT-4o stands for "omni".

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In a bid to make its AI chatbot more accessible, OpenAI has announced a new desktop ChatGPT app. There are already third-party desktop apps, but now there is an official option too.

It joins the existing mobile apps that are available for iOS and Android and, unusually, it is macOS users who get their hands on the desktop app before Windows users.

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It seems that Microsoft’s attempts to sidestep anticompetition legal action over its Teams software has failed. Although Teams has been -- begrudgingly -- unbundled from Office, the European Commission is believed to be forging ahead with antitrust charges.

Many rivals to Teams, including the likes of Slack, have expressed concern about what they believe to be anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft. Despite Microsoft decoupling Teams from Office and other software, EU officials are of the opinion that the company has not gone far enough to level the playing field.

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Microsoft has released Windows Terminal Preview 1.21 and, despite the small version number increase, it is home to a large number of changes.

Possibly the most interesting -- and useful -- addition is Buffer Restore which will load the windows from the previous session if you want. There are new font options, rendering changes, new settings, and new support for Custom Action by JSON Fragment Extensions.

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Microsoft has made a lot of controversial decisions when it comes to the Start menu in Windows 11, not least of which is the plan to introduce ads. In the latest beta build of Windows 11. However, there are some interesting changes afoot -- notably Start Menu Companions.

While not yet fully operational, Companions are essentially plugins or extensions for the Start menu. The display information -- such as weather or stock prices in a floating panel to the side of the Start menu, will blend the ideas of Live Tiles and Widgets into something new.

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Windows 11 is far from perfect, and any complaints are usually met with disdain from the Linux community. The advice proffered by Linux users is to switch from Windows 11 to one of the nearly endless number of Linux distros that are available.

This is unhelpful advice because, in the most part, Windows users simply don’t want to use Linux. They chose Windows for specific reasons, and the fact it is not completely ideal is not really a good enough reason to simply abandon it. So it is lovely to see that one Linux fan has put their software development skills to good use and produced OFGB (Oh Frick Go Back), a utility that removes ads from Windows 11.

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The world has gone crazy for AI, and Microsoft has jumped feet-first into the technology. Copilot is just one of the company’s tools in this field, but not everyone is completely in love with this digital assistant.

For anyone who is of the opinion that things are moving too fast when it comes to Copilot, there is some good news. With the release of the latest beta build of Windows 11, Microsoft says that it is slowing down the rollout of new Copilot experiences.

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Updates released for Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server back in January proved problematic for many users. There have been widespread reports of 0x80070643 errors, and Microsoft acknowledged the issue some time ago.

But for anyone holding out for a fix, there's some disappointing news. The company says that it will not be releasing a fix for the problem, but is instead expecting users to follow instructions to sort things out for themselves.

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In what will come as something of a disappointment to Microsoft, the latest figures from Statcounter shows that Windows 11 is becoming less popular.

While Windows 11’s market share is in decline, there is an almost mirrored increase in Windows 10’s market share. It appears that there remains a preference for the significantly older version of Windows.

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If your VPN has stopped working in Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can take some comfort in the fact that you're not alone. The April update for the operating system, or the preview version, is causing VPN connection failures.

It is not clear quite how widespread the problem is, nor just how many VPN tools are affected. However, Microsoft is aware of the issue but is offering little in the way of help at the moment.

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Having already taken steps to decrease the size of updates for Windows 11, Microsoft is doing the same for Windows 10.

The company describes this by suggesting that "Windows 10 is becoming more like Windows 11", although this is something of a stretch. What it means in practice is that Microsoft has used various techniques, including removing reverse differentials from the cumulative update package, to shrink update sizes quite considerably.

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