Articles about Microsoft

If you have a Surface Pro 4, you might be one of the unlucky tablet owners to suffer from a flickering screen -- a problem predictably dubbed "flickergate". Unable to come up with a fix, Microsoft has opened up a replacement program that means that those affected by the problem will be able to get a new Surface Pro 4 free of charge.

Microsoft says that it has been unable to produce a patch to address the issue, and is therefore simply going to offer replacements to people. What's not clear is why it has taken the company so long to do something; Surface 4 owners have been complaining about screen flicker since the tablet launched back in 2015.

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Despite Microsoft ending support for Windows XP back in 2014, it’s still in use around the world. The latest usage figures from NetMarketShare give the vintage OS a decent 6.13 percent share of the market, and it’s still to be found in many businesses.

The OS first appeared 17 years ago and the final service pack (SP3) came out a decade ago. Compared to Windows 10, XP now looks incredibly dated, and lacks many of the modern features we take for granted. But what if Microsoft updated it?

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

Microsoft announced recently that it will increase the revenue share for Windows app developers to up to 95 percent.

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There's bad news for iPhone users who were previously excited about Microsoft's upcoming Your Phone app. Revealed at Build 2018 earlier this week, this new Windows 10 app will provide a way to connect your phone to your computer and then view notifications, send texts and copy files from within Windows 10.

But some of this functionality will be Android-only. Microsoft says that it needs to work with Apple to get some features up and running, including being able to respond to iPhone text messages via Windows 10. But how likely is this cooperation?

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With Redstone 4 builds of Windows 10, the new features and changes came to users quite gradually. That’s certainly not the case with Redstone 5 releases. The latest build rolling out to Insiders on the Fast ring and Skip Ahead today is the perfect case in point.

Build 17666 (it's a beast of a build, so the number is apt) is chock full of exciting new features that you really won’t want to wait to get your hands on, including Cloud Clipboard, a dark theme for File Explorer, major improvements to Sets, the ability to search Bing in Notepad and much, much more.

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For many people, keyboard shortcuts are essential to using a computer, and over time they become hardwired into muscle memory. You've probably become used to the way Alt-Tab can be used to switch between running apps, but Microsoft plans to change the way this particular shortcut works.

At Build, the company revealed that the next Insider build of Windows 10 will not only let you Alt-Tab between running programs, but also browser tabs. It's something that's being introduced as part of Sets, and it's likely to divide opinion.

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If you are a PC gamer, there are many ways to gain an edge -- such as upgrading components and accessories. A new GPU and mouse, for instance, can make a big difference. With console gaming you are much more limited -- you can't upgrade the CPU, GPU, or RAM. Some argue that is a good thing, as it levels the playing field, while others say a lack of upgradeability is a negative.

If you are an Xbox One gamer, however, there is a new piece of hardware that could give you an edge when playing online -- the Linksys WRT32XB 802.11ac wireless router. If you aren't familiar, this is a variant of the company's WRT32X gaming router where the firmware has been optimized for Xbox One (plus PCs using Killer networking). Linksys says it can detect Xbox traffic and reduce peak ping by up to 65 percent, and ultimately, reduce lag. If you are dubious of that claim, please know that Microsoft has certified this router as a part of the "Designed for Xbox" program. Today, the Linksys WRT32XB finally becomes available for purchase.

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It’s that time of year again. Microsoft is kicking off its annual Build developer conference in Seattle today, May 7, starting with its opening keynote this morning (a second keynote is happening tomorrow).

Last year at Build Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, new mixed reality headsets and controllers, and 'Project Emma', a wearable for Parkinson's disease sufferers. So what can we expect this year?

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The Windows 10 April 2018 Update rollout to PCs around the world has already started, and Microsoft says that the update will also make its way to compatible Windows 10 Mobile devices.

The number of people who will actually end up receiving this update, however, is likely to be rather limited. Microsoft says that the availability of Windows 10 Mobile April 2018 Update will vary according to "manufacturer, model, country or region, mobile operator or service provider, hardware limitations" and -- ominously -- "other factors".

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

The Windows 10 version 1803 update is out; since it has quite a large number of bugs and issues, you may find Wayne's tutorial on rolling back to the previous version of Windows useful.

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Microsoft launched Windows 10 April 2018 Update this week, and if you rushed to install it you may well have noticed one or two issues. There have been complaints that various apps have been problematic since the update, but Chrome and Cortana seem to be causing the most problems.

Microsoft has confirmed that it is aware of issues with Chrome and "Hey Cortana" that can lead to Windows 10 April 2018 Update freezing. A patch is currently being worked on and should be released next week, but the company has a couple of suggestions for fixes you can try in the meantime.

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Now that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update is done and rolling out to users, Microsoft can focus all of its energy on the next big feature update. Insiders who haven’t yet opted out of the program will, from today, start receiving updates from the Redstone 5 branch.

The first of these updates to be rolled out to Insiders on the Fast ring, as well as Skip Ahead, is Build 17661, and this introduces a number of big changes.

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The Windows 10 April 2018 Update is rolling out to users. If you install it and encounter major problems, as some users doubtless will, you might want to go back to your previous version, and wait until the update is a bit less buggy.

If you've been using Windows 10 for a while you’ll probably know how to do this, although the process may be slightly different to what you've been used to.

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Your web browser remembers every page you visit, making it easy to return to a site you saw earlier. Timeline is a similar idea, but for the latest version of Windows 10.

It remembers all of the different tasks, apps and files you’ve been working on, across your various Windows devices. In future it will even work with Microsoft’s many iOS and Android apps, and maybe third-party apps too.

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Microsoft has just released another huge update to Windows 10. The April 2018 Update introduces lots of new features and general improvements, including Timeline, and Focus Assist, as well as some lesser known improvements.

Of course, a big update like this requires a big download, and the files that Microsoft places on your system don’t get removed afterwards. In other words, the April 2018 Update could be responsible for taking a massive bite out of your free hard drive space -- tens of gigabytes in fact. Fortunately it’s easy enough to reclaim this.

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