Articles about Microsoft

For Insiders on the Dev Channel, Wednesday is the day when they are most likely to see a new Windows 10 build arrive.

Today’s new flight, Build 21332, introduces a number of changes and improvements but also takes away one big new feature -- the 'News and interests' experience on the Windows taskbar. Don’t panic through, this is only a temporary move.

Continue reading →

Yesterday was the second Tuesday of the month, and for users of Windows this means one thing -- Patch Tuesday. Sticking to its regular schedule, Microsoft released updates for Windows 10, specifically the KB5000802 and KB5000808 cumulative updates.

These updates fix literally dozens of issues, including actively exploited 0-days. But while the number of problems addressed is impressively large, there are also -- predictably, perhaps -- already reports of new problems being caused by the updates.

Continue reading →

The original Microsoft Edge browser wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t finished. Microsoft hasn’t always made the best decisions when it comes to Windows 10 (who can forget the dark days when the software giant 'upgraded' Windows 7 machines to the new OS without user consent), but adopting the Chromium engine for a brand new version of Edge was one of its smartest moves.

The new Chromium browser is a huge improvement, which is just as well as from today Microsoft is stopping supporting its predecessor, now referred to as Edge Legacy.

Continue reading →

Microsoft famously lost out on the mobile market when consumers largely rejected its Windows phones and embraced Apple and Google's offerings instead. This is a shame, as smartphones running Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile were actually quite good -- they just lacked apps and third-party developer support. And so, Microsoft abandoned its mobile plans, ultimately embracing the Linux-based Android for the Surface Duo.

Following smartphones, the next big thing was voice assistants, and sadly, Microsoft lost there too, getting beat out by Amazon and Google. This is also unfortunate, as Microsoft's assistant, Cortana, was pretty great. Once again, however, consumers rejected it. And so, like Windows 10 Mobile, Cortana has been largely canceled, as the company slowly phases it/her out.

Continue reading →

I know it has its fans, but I’ve always found Microsoft’s search engine to be a bit, well, rubbish. Partly my views on it have been formed by years of using Google. I get the results I expect to see when I type something into that, but I don’t when I use Bing.

The UK’s Prince Philip has been in hospital recently -- which isn’t a huge surprise as he is 99 years old. He underwent a heart procedure on a pre-existing condition and is currently recuperating at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London. Doctors there say he’s doing well. Bing, on the other hand, has declared him dead.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has revealed a new deployment service for driver and firmware updates which will make it easier for administrators to keep enterprise systems up to date.

The company says that the new system will make it possible to see drivers hosted on Windows Update that match devices, as well as giving admins control over the selection and deployment of updates.

Continue reading →

Four-hundred-twenty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Microsoft Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft released build 21327 for Windows 10 to Insider devices this week; the new build debuts a new look for the news and interests feed widget that Microsoft introduced in preview builds some time ago. The new build comes with a new font and several system icons have been updated as well.

Continue reading →

It has been a little while since there was a PowerToys update, but Microsoft has today rectified this with the release of version 0.33.1 of the suite of Windows 10 utilities.

There are a number of notable changes in this particular release, including improvements to plugins in PowerToys Run, and the editor UX in FancyZones. PowerToys v0.33.1 also features a new 'First time load' experience which serves to introduce new users to what is available in the software.

Continue reading →

The original Microsoft Edge was often described as being 'half-baked' with features commonly found in other browsers either poorly implemented or missing entirely.

With the switch to Chromium, Microsoft had a chance to start over, and it hasn’t wasted the opportunity. The new Edge is a massive improvement over its predecessor and the software giant isn’t resting on its laurels either, striving to add new features on a regular basis. Case in point being Microsoft Edge 89.

Continue reading →

These days, it is almost a given that an update for Windows 10 will not only fix bugs and introduce new options, it is also likely to cause additional problems. It is something that Windows users have been painfully aware of for some time, and Microsoft has been working on a solution.

And that solution is KIR, or Known Issue Rollback. The new system enables Microsoft to rollback changes introduced by problematic patches rolled out through Windows Update. KIR only applies to non-security updates.

Continue reading →

We already know that Microsoft is planning on giving Windows 10 a major makeover later this year as part of a refresh code named  Sun Valley.

Insiders in the Dev Channel can from today start to get an idea of how this new Windows update will look.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has announced Power Fx, a new open source programming language. The Windows-maker describes it as "a low-code general purpose programming language based on spreadsheet-like formulas".

The language can be used across Microsoft’s Power Platform, and the fact that it is based on Microsoft Excel means that it should be immediately accessible to large numbers of people, even if they would not necessarily consider themselves programmers.

Continue reading →

Whether you’re a system administrator or a Windows power user, the chances are that you spend lots of time performing the same tasks over and over again. To help with this, Microsoft has made its Power Automate Desktop tool for Windows 10 free for everyone.

This enterprise-quality macro-like utility can be put to endless uses, helping to optimize all manner of workflows by automating frequently performed tasks. Available to install free of charge right now, it will eventually be included in Windows 10 as standard.

Continue reading →

It’s been a month since Microsoft released Windows Terminal 1.6 Preview, the first update in 2021 of its powerful command line tool. That brought with it a new UI for Settings, as well as various other minor improvements.

The software giant is now rolling out Terminal 1.7 Preview, a move which means Terminal 1.6 is now generally available to all Windows 10 users.

Continue reading →

We recently shared some very shocking news about Linux Mint users. Sadly, it turned out that users of that operating system were extremely irresponsible regarding updates. You see, Linux Mint developers spilled the beans on this upsetting trend -- many of its users weren't just a little behind in installing updates, but were running unsupported versions for more than a year!

This shows that not all Linux users are responsible, nor are they necessarily more knowledgeable than Windows users regarding computer maintenance. It also highlighted that the Linux Mint developers were doing a poor job in convincing users to update. And now, it seems the Linux Mint developers are taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook by planning to force some updates on its users. Yes, folks, Linux Mint is becoming more like Windows 10.

Continue reading →