Articles about Windows 10

Apple has a reputation for producing stylish and elegantly designed hardware and software products. Microsoft, well, not so much.

Windows 10 under Microsoft’s control isn’t a bad looking operating system, but even after all these years it still doesn’t feel quite finished, with elements of the old design cropping up in various places. If you’ve ever wondered what Windows 10 would look like if Apple was developing it, we have the answer.

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Three-hundred-and-sixty-six 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 plans to introduce functionality in upcoming versions of Windows 10 to improve the installation of optional drivers. Windows Update will highlight optional updates, including drivers, going forward.

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The Windows 10 Insider program has a few requirements but the most important ones are that users need to use a Microsoft Account to receive Insider builds and that data collecting needs to be set to full on the device.

Offline Insider Enroll is a command line script that enrolls Windows 10 devices in the Insider program even if no Microsoft Account is used. The requirement to set Telemetry to full is not changed, however.

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Microsoft seems to have big things in store for Windows 10 in 2020, but it's not exactly clear what at the moment. A few people have recently noticed that after updating to Windows 10 version 19536 that there is a reference to something called Windows Feature Experience Pack under in the About section of System Settings.

But things get more intriguing. A dummy app from Microsoft called Windows Feature Experience Pack has been spotted in the Microsoft Store, leading to speculation that the company could start to deliver some Windows 10 updates via an app, keeping them separate from more major updates to the operating system.

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Three-hundred-and-sixty-six 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 the first build from its new development branch this week to the Fast Ring. Fast Ring insiders will always receive the freshest builds from this point on (since Skip Ahead was retired) but features that are introduced are no longer linked to a particular release.

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Adverts in Windows 10 are not a new thing. Microsoft has a history of sneaking them into any spare real estate in its operating system and included apps. In the past we’ve seen them crop up in the Start menu, in the taskbar, in the Action Center, in File Explorer, in the Ink Workspace, on the Lock Screen, in the Share tool, and in the Windows Store. It’s even currently running full screen ads for Windows 10 inside Windows 7 as the aging operating system reaches its end of life.

Microsoft prefers to call the ads it dots around its OS "suggestions" but that doesn’t make them any less annoying for users. And now the company has added a new ad to the Windows Mail and Calendar apps, and made them impossible to remove.

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Now that Microsoft is nearly finished with the next big feature update of Windows 10 (2004), due out next year, Insiders on the Fast ring are starting to receive new builds from the active RS_PRERELEASE development branch.

In a bid to make things less confusing, Microsoft has dropped the Skip Ahead ring, and Fast ring insiders will now receive the freshest builds, with features not linked to a specific Windows 10 release.

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Bing is a godawful search engine. I try to avoid it as much as possible, but on the few occasions when I do use it -- when writing about the new Chromium version of Edge for example -- I find the results it returns are rubbish. In a blind usage test I can instantly spot the difference between it and Google just by the quality -- or lack of -- of the results.

In what it describes as a bid to bring "convenient, fast web results directly to the search bar in Windows" Microsoft has baked (yet more) Bing searches into Windows 10, including a brand new visual search.

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Three-hundred-and-sixty-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.

Microsoft released two new Windows 10 version 2004 builds this week: build 19037 made PowerShell ISE a feature on demand, and build 19041.1 for the Fast and Slow rings made polishing fixes to the next feature update. Microsoft enabled the new Quick Search feature globally on Windows 10 as well. Previously, Quick Search was only available to devices set to EN-US.

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Windows 7's death is imminent -- support for the popular operating system ends next month on January 14, making it extremely dangerous to use from a security standpoint after that date. This is very unfortunate for the millions of computer users that don't want to switch to the much-maligned Windows 10. Thankfully, in 2019, you don't have to run Windows anymore -- Linux is a totally legitimate option for both business and home use these days. Hell, even the Windows-maker sees the writing on the wall -- the company recently released its wildly popular Office 365 program, Microsoft Teams, for Linux.

If you are ready to ditch the soon-to-be-unsupported Windows 7 for a more secure Linux-based operating system, you have plenty of great options. One of the best choices, however, is Zorin OS -- a Linux distribution that specifically targets people switching from Windows. Today, the latest version of that operating system, Zorin OS 15.1, is released to the world.

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Microsoft is putting the finishing touches to the next big feature update for Windows 10, with the focus now firmly on identifying and fixing problems.

Build 19041.1 is rolling out to Insiders on the Fast and Slow rings and includes a number of changes and improvements.

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Last Month, Microsoft introduced a new feature to Windows 10 that makes it quicker and easier to get answers and results from the web.

The Quick Searches feature, which is found in Search Home, was originally only available to EN-US users, but has now been expanded to a number of other territories and languages.

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Windows 7 may be an aging operating system, but there are still plenty of individuals and organizations using it. With the end of support date of January 14 fast-approaching, Microsoft is getting twitchy and is eager for everyone to upgrade to Windows 10.

Having already started to notify Windows 7 hangers on that support is due to come to an end, the company is now ready to get a little more aggressive. If you haven't moved on from Windows 7, soon you will see full-screen notifications warning you that "your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

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We’ve already had one new Insider build for Windows 10 20H1 this week, Build 19035, but arriving in time for the weekend comes a second one.

Build 19037.1 is available for both Fast and Slow rings, and fixes a couple of additional issues.

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Three-hundred-and-sixty-four 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 Windows 10 in 2015 and ran a free upgrade campaign in the first year. Mark discovered that it is still possible to upgrade to the new version of Windows 10 for free; this may be useful to know for users who run the soon-expiring Windows 7 on their devices.

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