Articles about Microsoft

Windows Phone 8.1 may seem like a distant memory in the mobile space, being released three years ago, but it remains very much relevant for many Windows smartphone users. Nearly three in four Windows smartphones run this version of the tiled operating system, despite the fact that Microsoft replaced it with Windows 10 Mobile over a year ago.

Why is this a problem? Well, Microsoft is getting ready to end mainstream support, which will leave Windows Phone 8.1 users without updates starting July 11. Making things worse is the fact that Windows 10 Mobile is not available to every smartphone that can run Windows Phone 8.1.

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Earlier last week, rumors emerged about Microsoft laying off thousands of workers as it reorganizes and focuses even more on cloud computing. The Redmond giant has confirmed these speculations.

CNBC has reported that Microsoft is preparing "thousands of layoffs," mostly in sales, and mostly abroad. In total, less than 10 percent of the workforce will be laid off, and out of those that will have to look for a new job, 75 percent are outside the US.

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As the workplace evolves to become more diverse and teams are more widely distributed, businesses are looking to technology to empower their staff.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used his speech today at Inspire to announce the launch of Microsoft 365 which incorporates Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security, to deliver a complete, intelligent and secure solution for employees.

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With the launch of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Build 16237 to the Fast Ring yesterday, Microsoft wheeled in numerous fixes and new features. At the same time, the company also announced that the second Bug Bash for the next big update to Windows 10 is about to take place.

This is the last Bug Bash that will take place before the release of the final version of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and it will see an intense period of testing with the help of Windows Insiders. Things kick off on Friday, July 14 and continue for more than a week.

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It’s a great time to be a Windows Insider at the moment, as the past two Windows 10 builds -- Build 16226 and 16232 -- are jam packed with new features and major improvements.

Build 16237 arrives today in time for the weekend, and like its predecessors, it offers a lot of changes, fixes, and additions.

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In an effort to help managers better understand just how productive their workers are, Microsoft has announced a new product for its enterprise customers called Workplace Analytics that utilizes the data collected by Microsoft Graph to provide valuable insight into how employees spend their workdays.

This new product builds off of the company's MyAnalytics, which was released last year, that gave employees the ability to view their own individual productivity using data collected from their Skype history, calendars, emails and documents.  The difference between this previous tool and Workplace Analytics is that now employers will also be able to view the productivity levels of their employees.

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In 2017, it is not uncommon for people to own many mobile devices. Using myself as an example, I regularly use an iPhone, iPad, and Nintendo Switch. Let's not forget my portable MacBook Pro too.

If you own a bunch of mobile devices like me, such as a smartphone, tablet, and slim laptop, Satechi has a really cool new product for you. Called "R1 Aluminum Foldable Stand," it aims to provide an optimal viewing experience for all of your devices -- including Nintendo's popular Switch gaming console. When you aren't using it, it can fold up to go into a drawer, laptop bag, or luggage.

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Does Microsoft support open source? Absolutely. The company has released many open source projects, and believe it or not, its has the most open source contributors on GitHub. With that said, Microsoft stops short of being a complete open source proponent. After all, the company makes a lot of money from two of its closed source golden geese -- Windows and Office.

Today, Microsoft releases yet another open source tool -- Visual Studio Code Extension for Arduino. This MIT-licensed code should greatly help developers that are leveraging Arduino hardware for Internet of Things-related projects and more.

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Yesterday we reported about Microsoft's sudden change to OneDrive that requires the use of NTFS drives. The change not only caught people off-guard when they discovered that they couldn’t access their files, but also caused a great deal of annoyance about the lack of communication.

While FAT32 has largely been replaced by NTFS, cross-compatibility with Linux and macOS is one of various reasons many people choose the format for SD cards and external drives. Despite the fact OneDrive users are now seeing warning messages about the need to format drives using NTFS, Microsoft insists that "nothing has changed" and it merely forgot to display a warning message until now.

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If you aren't familiar with Anime, please know that it is essentially just Japanese-originated animation. Not only are the videos offered in short form for television, but as full-length films too. If you don't understand Japanese language, do not worry -- they are offered with either English language dubs or subtitles. These cartoons are not just popular with children, but adults too. Heck, some people even dress up as their favorite Anime characters for things like Comic Con.

Today, Microsoft announces that July is "Anime Month" in the Windows Store. Not only is the company offering great deals on movies and TV shows, but video games based on them too. In fact, there are even some free offerings to be had.

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A recently completed Adaptiva survey on efforts to migrate enterprise desktop and laptop systems to Microsoft Windows 10 reveals that enterprises are completing their migrations faster than earlier surveys had projected. In a survey conducted in 2016, a significant majority of respondents (88 percent) indicated that they had barely begun to deploy Windows 10. That group was running Windows 10 on less than 5 percent of their systems. Only a small portion of the 2016 respondents (12 percent) had migrated more than 5 percent of their systems to Windows 10, and less than half of this small portion (representing a total of 4.8 percent of all respondents) indicated that their enterprises had migrated more than half of their systems to Windows 10.

So, with more than 88 percent of last year’s respondents indicating that they had not even migrated 5 percent of systems to Windows 10 -- and with more than 95 percent of respondents indicating that they had migrated less than 50 percent of their systems -- we were more than slightly surprised when more than 10 percent of respondents to this year’s survey indicated that they had already completed their migrations.

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Microsoft has made a change to its cloud synchronization and storage service OneDrive that requires users to use NTFS formatted drives.

The change came out of the blue, with no announcement from Microsoft, meaning that anyone using a non-NTFS drive, such as an SD card, suddenly found themselves unable to use their OneDrive shares, and as you might expect they aren’t too happy about that.

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Over on Ghacks, Martin Brinkmann posted his thoughts on Microsoft’s Windows 10 feature updates schedule. The software giant is committed to rolling out two major updates to Windows 10 every year. In April we had the Creators Update, and in a few months' time the Fall Creators Update will begin to roll out.

Martin asks if this rapid release schedule is such a wise idea, and he has a good point.

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Microsoft is killing Windows App Studio, its web-based app development tool. The news was announced late last week by the Windows Apps Team. However, don't be too alarmed -- the Redmond giant has already prepared a replacement.

Windows App Studio has long been the go-to place when it comes to the first steps in app development. Starting as a Windows phone app, it transformed over the years and became available for desktop operating systems, including Windows 10.

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Microsoft is set for a major reorganization as it moves to focus more on selling cloud services, and less on selling traditional software, according to new reports.

A report by the The Wall Street Journal, claims that the Redmond giant has kicked off "structural changes" first proposed in 2014, when Satya Nadella took over the company.

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