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Maybe it’s my age, but I’ve found that I just don’t have the time or patience to play with Windows betas anymore. The bugs. The instabilities. The bricked PCs. I simply can’t get excited about once again playing guinea pig for Microsoft.

In fact, aside from a minor dalliance with a "Redstone" pre-release build late last year, I have effectively sat-out the entire Anniversary Update testing cycle. I figured, "Windows 10 (RTM) was working great for me. Why muck it up by installing some buggy preview edition?"

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Today, July 29, is the last day for users of Windows 7 and 8.1 to upgrade free of charge to Windows 10. If you don’t take up the offer in time, and you decide you do want to upgrade after all, the only option will be to buy a copy of the OS.

But hold on. That’s not entirely true. If you want Windows 10 after the deadline has expired, you’ll still be able to get it for free, legally, and doing so couldn’t be easier.

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Alphabet Admirals Sergey Brin and Larry Page had better tell Captain Sundar Pichai to close the watertight doors—lest the search and advertising ship sink in the North Sea, where depths reach 700 meters (2,300). Brrrr. Are the lawyers handing out life preservers? Will paralegals man the water pumps?

Today's expansion of the European Union Competition Commission's investigation into Google business practices makes a really bad situation much, much, much worse. Problems are these: Adding advertising to anticompetitive charges; expanding investigation to four monopolies (AdSense, Android, search, shopping services); citing exclusive contracts as violation of the law; and narrowing the applicable market for search shopping competition, thus blowing apart one of Google's major counter legal arguments. Kaboom!

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In an effort to get as many people as possible to upgrade to Windows 10 before the free period runs out, Microsoft has resorted to all sorts of sneaky and unbecoming tricks, including reversing the meaning of the corner X, so that closing the nag screen actually agrees the upgrade.

Naturally, that and other similar moves (including removing the X from the box), made a lot of people very angry, and could result in Microsoft facing legal action across numerous states.

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When Microsoft first announced that Windows 10 would be free, it rather mangled the message by adding "for the first year" to the end of the statement. That immediately suggested that the operating system would be headed for a subscription model, just like Office 365. The software giant eventually clarified the situation, but the fear that one day Microsoft would start charging a yearly fee for its OS never quite went away in some people’s minds.

And now it looks as if those fears are set to be reignited, as a file found in the latest Windows Insider preview, Build 14376, hints that Windows 10 subscriptions are going to be a real thing.

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Windows 10 is a great operating system, offering a solid user interface and advanced security. The default browser, however, is not so great. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Edge has a lot of potential, but Chrome is arguably the superior browser for now.

Google's browser is not perfect on Windows 10, apparently, as according to Microsoft, it is a battery vampire. In other words, Chrome -- as well as Firefox and Opera -- will drain your battery faster than the default browser. Using Microsoft Edge is like garlic to these vampires, as it can help you reclaim precious battery life.

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Bill Gates is a blogger, did you know that? His blog is called Gates Notes and generally covers areas of interest not only to Bill but also to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which means there’s more coverage of malaria than Microsoft. His latest post that a reader pointed out to me today is about raising chickens, which Bill says he’d do if he was a poor woman in Africa.

I’ll wait while you follow the link to read the post, just don’t forget to come back. And while you are there be sure to watch the video…

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My oldest Internet ID, three letters, is vintage 1996. Yahoo's impending demise, which could be to Verizon, almost certainly will mark the end of our long relationship. We mutually will abandon one another. I'm sorry that it comes to this.

Yahoo sealed its fate when cutting the deal to outsource search to Microsoft during summer 2009. The disaster I predicted then will soon end the iconic brand, what little remains of it. Many people will blame CEO Marissa Mayer, but she was but steward of the sinking ship. Doom was a certainty after Yahoo surrendered crown jewel search. That the company limped along for another 7 years is testimony to the brand and to the services infrastructure built around it.

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As I’ve said numerous times in the past, I actually like Windows 10. It’s still rough around the edges -- and the Anniversary Update, out in July, won’t fully change that -- but what I don’t like is Microsoft’s aggressive, relentless pushing of the OS on to people who not only don’t want it but have expressly rejected it.

It’s scummy behavior, totally unbefitting of a company of Microsoft’s size and reputation. The latest trick, making closing an unwanted upgrade popup the same as agreeing to the upgrade, should have people brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches and marching on Redmond, but it doesn’t. Why? Because Microsoft’s shitty tricks are now what we expect from the company which doesn’t care in the slightest about its customers.

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Answer: Your kids. Chromebook leads laptop and desktop sales through U.S. commercial channels to schools, according to NPD. Education is overwhelmingly the primary market for the computers. The institutions can't buy enough of the thangs, for their utility and low-cost compared to notebooks running either OS X or Windows. That cost is as much about extended webapps and services from Google (or its developer partners), available for free or comparatively next-to-nothing, set against software for the other platforms.

Wrinkle in the Google firmament: iPhone and Chromebook are like water and dirt. The sediment settles unless shaken up. Sure youngsters can do all their Googly things—Docs, Gmail, Maps, Photos, YouTube, etc. -- on iOS but the experience is smoother and more homogenous when mixed Android and Chrome OS. What the kiddies lack, and their educators, is a swath of useful apps like the Apple kids get.

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I’ve been suffering with a shoulder impingement for a while, and seeing an osteopath to try and fix the problem. After today’s session, the osteopath tried to book me in for a new appointment, but the on-screen calendar was obscured by another appointment that had popped up -- this one for a Windows 10 upgrade. An upgrade that -- surprise, surprise -- the osteopath had neither asked for, nor wanted.

Not content with popping up at inconvenient times -- like during a live TV broadcast, for example -- Windows 10 upgrades are now being scheduled for a random date and time. You can cancel them but, like the best crapware, Microsoft has done its best to hide that option.

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Microsoft has made a change to an update for Windows 7 that can prevent certain systems from booting. While you might expect me to say, "good news, the software giant has fixed the problem", in fact what Microsoft has done is switch the update from "optional", to "recommended". So, on some systems, it will now install, and break Windows 7 automatically.

There is good news though, and that’s you can solve the problem and get your computer working again by (can you guess?) upgrading to Windows 10. Hooray!

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Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller has taken to Twitter to set the record straight about the nomenclature of the company's product names. Specifically, he takes umbrage with just sticking an 's' onto the end of product names to pluralize them.

Yep -- iPhones is, apparently, not a word. Someone might need to speak with Tim Cook to get him on the same page though, as he doesn't seem to have seen the memo.

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Ever since Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended update there have been numerous reports of the new operating system installing itself without user consent, and without much warning.

Microsoft has always played down this behavior, but an example of how the OS pushes upgrades on unsuspecting users was earlier today shown live on TV during a weather forecast.

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Windows 10 Mobile does not have much of a future. With two very disappointing quarters for Lumia sales, a market share of around one percent, poor vendor support, and no mention of it at Build 2016, this much is clear. You would expect Microsoft to pull the plug any minute now, but the software giant seems to be doing just the opposite.

In an internal email, Terry Myerson is encouraging "certain partners" to continue to pour their resources into the platform. Microsoft's EVP of Windows and Devices Group says that the company is still "committed" to Windows 10 Mobile, claiming that development of its "next generation products" is well underway. It sounds unbelievable, but that is just what you should expect Microsoft to say.

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