Microsoft Office is the best software in the world. If I was running a company, I would choose it over any other solution. While free alternatives like LibreOffice are pretty good, they are all inferior to Microsoft's class-leading office suite. Any spreadsheet power user, for instance, knows nothing compares to Excel. These are indisputable facts.

Today, Microsoft announces that Office 2021 is coming to both Windows 10 and macOS later in the year. And yet, I am not excited about that, nor would I recommend anyone buy it. Why? Because Microsoft 365 exists.

The next feature update for Windows 10, 21H1, is rumored to be set to arrive later than usual this year, with reports claiming we could expect it as late as June.

Microsoft hasn’t said exactly when we’ll get it, but in a new post announcing the feature update it reveals it will be in the first half of the calendar year. More excitingly however, it’s making it available to "seekers" in the Beta Channel to test from now.

Microsoft has acknowledged a problem with an update for Windows 10 that was released earlier this month. The KB4601319 update was part of February Patch Tuesday releases, and it is causing issues with webcams for some users.

While the impact of the problem appears to be limited to a fairly small number of webcams, the issue is no less irritating for those affected. Thankfully, Microsoft is not only aware of the problem and is working on a fix, but also provides details of a workaround in the meantime.

Windows 10 users are keenly awaiting the release of the next big update to the operating system. Due for release in the next four months -- in June if a recent leak is correct -- Windows 10 21H1 is not a major release, and this has important implications.

The fear with milestone releases to Windows 10 is that hardware requirements change. But ahead of the release of Windows 10 21H1, Microsoft has made it clear that this will not be the case with this update.

Some Windows 10 users who have installed the KB4535680 update from last month are experiencing problems with BitLocker.

The update was released on January 12 to fix issues with Secure Boot DBX, but some users are complaining that the patch is triggering BitLocker recovery. For people using BitLocker on just one computer, this may not be too much of an issue, but for administrators taking care of lots of systems it is rather more problematic.

Just days after the regular update release date of Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released an out-of-band patch to address a problem with WPA3 connections in Windows 10.

The KB5001028 update is for Windows 10 version 1909, and it fixes a problem that caused blue screens and stop error 0x7E in nwifi.sys when using a WPA3 connection. Microsoft says that the problems arose after users installed the KB4598298 or KB4601315 updates.

It’s been a while since Microsoft last released a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build to the Dev Channel, and with the weekend looming you’d be forgiven for thinking there might be an even longer wait ahead.

Today, however, the software giant rolls out Build 21313 and it’s worth the wait.

Four-hundred-twenty-five 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.

Windows 10 version 2004 is now ready for broad deployment according to Microsoft, and that means that nearly all devices running earlier versions can be upgraded to the version using Windows Update.

Windows 10 is actually a really great operating system. The problem? It is actually quite expensive at its normal retail price. Amazon sells Windows 10 Home for a whopping $130! Not to mention, Microsoft's desktop OS is quite resource intensive, making it a bad choice for those with aging hardware. For those with older computers, Linux-based operating systems are often a better option.

While many people associate Linux distributions with "free," the truth is, some can actually cost money. There is nothing wrong with paying for a Linux distro either -- it is a fine way to support the development. One such operating system, Linspire (formerly known as "Lindows") recently hit a major milestone -- version 10. Starting at just $29.99, the Ubuntu-based operating system is far cheaper than the expensive Windows 10.

Whenever Microsoft releases updates for Windows, the company is always keen for as many people as possible to get the patch installed. But with this month's Patch Tuesday bug fixes, the company is encouraging Windows users even more than usual.

Referring to two Critical security issues and one Important one, all affecting TCP/IP, Microsoft says that "it is essential that customers apply Windows updates to address these vulnerabilities as soon as possible". The CVE-2021-24074, CVE-2021-24086 and CVE-2021-24094 vulnerabilities affect Windows 7 upwards.

This Patch Tuesday -- the second Tuesday of February, yesterday -- Microsoft released fixes for a slew of Windows 10 flaws. Included among a total of 56 vulnerabilities is a critical zero-day which was being actively exploited to gain admin privileges on victims' systems.

But the fix for CVE-2021-1732 (Windows Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability) is just one of 11 fixes for critical bugs this month. In addition, Microsoft has fixed two Moderate vulnerabilities, as well as 43 that are marked as Important.

Later this year, Microsoft is expected to refresh the look of Windows 10 and native apps, introducing a number of long-overdue visual improvements, including rounded corners and new colors. For many people, the changes likely won’t go far enough, but it’s too early to pass judgment just yet.

When Windows XP first arrived back in 2001 it really shook things up with its revolutionary design and playful color scheme. If you were wondering how it might look if it was released today, we have the answer.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a bug in Windows 10 which could lead to an NTFS drive being formatted simply by opening a folder. The issue affects the $i30 NTFS attribute, and it can be triggered in Explorer as well as web browsers.

Now Mozilla has released a key update to Firefox which prevents it from activating the bug. To be protected, you need to be running at least Firefox 85.0.1.

Microsoft has acknowledged that two recent updates for Windows 10 are causing problems for users. People who have installed KB4598299 and KB4598301 are reporting BSoDs as well as app crashes.

The two updates (released Windows 10 versions 1909, 2004 and 20H2) were supposed to address issues in .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8, but they have -- as is increasingly common with Windows updates -- introduced new problems of their own.

It is only a few days since Microsoft released PowerToys 0.31.1, but there is already a new version for you to install.

While there are no major changes in the latest release of the utility suite, does include important bug fixes. Microsoft detected issues with the FancyZones PowerToy, and deemed them significant enough to push out this patch release.