Windows 10

Microsoft’s developer conference Build 2019 is underway, and one of the things that the software giant announced today is a new app for command-line users.

The Windows Terminal is an update of the existing Command Prompt/PowerShell apps and is expected to arrive in the middle of June.

Today is a big day for Microsoft as Build 2019 kicks off with a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella.

There likely won’t be too much to excite consumers, as the event is aimed squarely at developers, but as usual there will be some interesting news coming out of the event in Seattle, including more information about the next version of Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft’s app store came into being at the same time as Windows 8. It was, as I said at the time, part of an attempt to copy Apple's successful model. I think most people expected the Store to be a bit rubbish, but it turned out to be even worse than that. Seven years on and it’s wasteland full of knock offs and junk apps. It hasn’t fallen on hard times, it’s always been that bad.

Part of the problem is there’s no longer a need for the Store, or the apps that it offers. If you want a piece of software to run on your PC, or your Windows tablet, you can download it from a wide range of sources, and the versions you’ll find elsewhere -- programs, legacy apps, whatever you want to call them -- tend to be superior to the crippled and/or packaged apps Microsoft is offering. So what’s the point of the Store?

Three-hundred-and-thirty-three 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 next feature update for Windows 10, the May 2019 Update, is less than a month away. While that is the case, the last Windows 10 feature update, Windows 10 version 1809, is not performing particularly well in regards to adoption rates.

Windows 10 19H1 -- the May 2019 Update -- is currently undergoing additional testing in the Release Preview ring to try and solve a number of upgrade blocks, including one which prevents the update from installing if you have a USB drive or SD card plugged in.

Microsoft is still working on future releases though, and today pushes out Build 18890 to Insiders on the Fast ring (and those who had previously opted to Skip Ahead).

It took a very long time for Windows 10 to finally overtake Windows 7, but the new OS finally achieved that feat four months ago, according to figures from NetMarketShare.

In March, Windows 10 made large share gains, while Windows 7 declined significantly, and that is a picture one would have expected to see continue in April, especially now that Microsoft has started alerting Windows 7 users to the impending end of life of their chosen OS. However, that has proven not to be the case. Despite the warning, it seems Windows 7 users aren’t in a rush to upgrade anytime soon.

After the disaster that was the buggy October 2018 Update, which most Windows 10 users have avoided like the plague, Microsoft has taken the wise step of introducing additional testing.

The next big feature update is expected to roll out to all by the end of May, but for the moment it’s undergoing extended analysis in the Release Preview ring.

The Windows 10 May 2019 Update is currently undergoing testing in the Release Preview ring to ensure it should be relatively bug free when it finally rolls out to all (in theory at least).

Microsoft has already identified an issue that prevents the OS update from installing on systems with a USB flash drive or SD card connected.

Three-hundred-and-thirty-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.

Lots of news this week: Microsoft Paint lives on, at least for now, Sets may be dead, and admins who upgrade devices to the May 2019 Update should make sure they unplug external USB drives or SD cards before doing so.

With the release of the May 2019 Update, Windows 10 is becoming more space-hungry than ever. For both the 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 10 version 1903, Microsoft has increased the minimum storage requirements to 32GB.

For 32-bit users the new requirement is double what it used to be, while for 64-bit users there is a 12GB increase from the previous minimum of 20GB.

In new draft security baseline documentation, Microsoft has scrapped the policy that requires users to change their passwords on a regular basis.

The new security settings apply to Windows 10 version 1903 and Windows Server version 1903, and the change sees Microsoft conceding that its policy of forcing periodic password changes is "an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value". The company has a series of suggestions for how to better improve password security.

If you have external storage attached to your computer, you may well find that you're unable to install the Windows 10 May 2019 Update when it is released next month.

Out of an apparent abundance of precaution, Microsoft is opting to block the installation of the update if a computer has an external USB drive or SD card plugged in. The block is being introduced because of fears that drive letters might be inappropriately reassigned during the installation.

For all of its simplicity and limitations, there are still a lot of people who -- for some reason best known to themselves -- love Microsoft Paint.

As such, when it was announced a while back that Microsoft intended to strip the utility from Windows 10 and replace it with Paint 3D -- an altogether different beast -- there was a collective wailing and gnashing of teeth. But now it seems that Paint has been given a stay of execution.

Windows 7 users have started to report the appearance of a pop-up message from Microsoft informing them that support for the operating system is coming to an end.

While this will not come as a surprise to everyone, not all Windows 7 users will be aware that Microsoft is on the verge of dropping the ageing OS. We have already seen pop-ups encouraging users to update to Windows 10 but now Microsoft is turning up the pressure, telling Windows 7 users: "After 10 years, support for Windows 7 is nearing the end".

In what will come as something of a disappointment to many, Microsoft seems to have decided to abandon the Sets feature of Windows 10. This highly-anticipated feature was to bring tabs to apps, making it easier to work with multiple instances of the same program.

In the middle of last year, though, Microsoft removed Sets from Insider builds of Windows 10,  promising that the feature would return in a future build. But a tweet from senior program manager Rich Turner suggests that Sets is no more... although that might not mean that app tabs are completely off the agenda.