Articles about Microsoft

Microsoft may be an American company, but make no mistake, the Windows-maker will happily accept money from consumers in any country. And so, today, Microsoft announces its popular PC Game Pass service is expanding to 40 new countries, opening up the platform to millions of additional gamers around the world.

The service will now be available in new countries including Albania, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Guatemala, Iceland, Kuwait, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Malta, Oman, Panama, Peru, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia, Ukraine, and more.

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Microsoft is not shy about introducing controversial changes to its software, even if feedback forces it to reverse course further down the line. Windows 11 has seen a huge number of modifications, not all of which have proved popular, and a proposed change to the functionality of a key in Windows 11 is likely to be a divisive move.

The key in question the Print Screen (or Prt Scr and numerous other variations) which currently takes a screenshot and copies it to the clipboard. But in the latest builds of Windows 11, pressing the key does something different by default.

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Microsoft made a significant investment in Windows 10 Mobile, including acquiring Nokia to produce its own handsets. Despite the strengths of the tiled mobile operating system, it was unable to compete with the dominant iOS and Android platforms. While Windows 10 became a successful operating system for PCs and tablets, Microsoft was eventually abandon its mobile ambitions

As Windows 11 gradually replaces Windows 10, the question remains whether it would perform better than its predecessor in the mobile space.

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Use Windows 11 for long enough, and you will almost certainly encounter an app that becomes unresponsive. And when an app freezes, you're likely to find that it misbehaves to the point that it is not possible to close it in the usual way.

When this happens, you may well fire up Task Manager, locate the troublesome app or process in the list and terminate it. But to help optimize this unnecessarily lengthy process, Microsoft is introducing a new End Task option that can be accessed from the Windows 11 taskbar.

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If you’re running a modern version of Windows, you'll either be on Windows 10 or Windows 11. For a while though, Microsoft was working on Windows 10X, a version of the OS designed for modern PCs.

Windows 10X was built from scratch on top of "Windows Core OS" and aimed to do away with legacy features and offer a simplified Windows experience. It was cancelled in 2021, although leaked builds did give us an idea of how it would look and what it would offer.

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Microsoft has started the rollout of Edge Image Creator to all users. Continuing its love affair with all things related to artificial intelligence, the company's in-browser AI image generator is powered by OpenAI's DALL-E.

Rolling out the tool to Edge comes just a few weeks after Microsoft announced the launch of Bing Image Creator in the preview version of the browser and the new Bing. It means that everyone running the desktop version of Edge will have access to Image Creator.

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Microsoft has acknowledged that changes to the Quick Access Toolbar in Office were "disruptive and slowed […] workflow. Having used the Microsoft 365 Visual Refresh to hide the QAT toolbar by default and move various commonly used button, the company has listened to user feedback ad reversed its changes.

Among the complaints that ultimately forced Microsoft to perform the U-turn were criticism of the decision to relocate the Undo and Redo buttons. In announcing the about-face, the company does not really admit to making a misstep, merely that the previous change "wasn't quite right".

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If you are having trouble sending and receiving email via your Outlook.com account, you are not alone. Problems have started to surface following a recent policy change by Microsoft that means email attachments now eat into OneDrive storage limits -- as we reported previously.

Microsoft started to roll out the change at the beginning of February, but it seems that the pace of the rollout has increased as more and more users are hitting their storage limits and experiencing problems with their emails.

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As well as a new Windows 11 build for Insiders on the bleeding edge Canary Channel, Microsoft has rolled out a new flight for testers on the Dev Channel.

New features here include a change to how urgent and important notifications are handled when 'do not disturb' is turned on -- users will have the option to click a 'view notification' button.

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Windows Insiders have been made to wait all week for a new Windows 11 build, but arriving in time for the weekend comes a new flight on the experimental Canary Channel.

Build 25336, which is also available for Insiders with Arm64 devices, comes with a couple of changes and improvements.

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Microsoft has issued a reminder to users of certain versions of Windows 10 that their operating system will reach end of serving in mid-June.

The announcement applies to the Home, Pro, Pro Education and Pro for Workstations editions of Windows 10 21H2, and when June 13 rolls around no more monthly security updates will be issued. Microsoft says that in order to ensure protection, users will be automatically updated to a supported version of Windows.

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It is a month since Microsoft added Mouse Jump and Paste As Plain Text utilities to PowerToys, and now there is yet another new toy to play with -- Registry Preview.

We first heard about this new registry editing and visualization module last week, and now it has been officially released as part of PowerToys v0.69.0. Microsoft says that the v0.69 release cycle focuses on new features, stability and improvements, and the company gives early notice for v0.70 which is due for release next month.

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Two years ago, Microsoft unveiled its subscription-based Windows 365 service which allowed users to stream Windows 10 and Windows 11 from the cloud to any device.

Today, it announces Windows 365 Frontline is available to preview, aimed at workers who only need a Cloud PC for a limited amount of time during a working day.

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Since its inception, Microsoft Defender Antivirus (FKA Windows Defender) was considered somewhat of a joke by power users. They would assert that it provided you with the protection of an umbrella in a hurricane. While its deficiencies were often exaggerated, indeed, it didn’t give you the same depth and scope as high-quality third-party solutions. 

When Bitdefender retired its free antivirus solution in 2021 (only to release a new free antivirus in 2022), many turned back to Microsoft Defender. After all, Microsoft should ultimately know the best ways to secure its software. It's surprising it took so long for the company to expand the coverage of its Microsoft Defender line, especially, with the largest share of its revenue being made from intelligent cloud computing.

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Having announced its plans to do so last year, Microsoft has added support for Gmail accounts to the new Outlook for Windows preview for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Gmail support is something that has been available to Office Insiders for a little while, but now the company is opening it up to anyone who is running the preview of the new Outlook for Windows. Microsoft says that it also plans to add IMAP support as well as support for Yahoo and iCloud, but for now it is Gmail users the company is treating -- but there is something you need to do first.

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