Windows 10

Microsoft first introduced its Your Phone app late last year, and Windows Insiders running a 19H1 build can now try out a brand new feature -- screen mirroring.

This new addition lets users mirror an Android phone’s screen directly on a Windows 10 PC, but -- as you might expect -- this feature isn’t available to all.

Anyone who is still using Windows 7 doesn't have much longer until the operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft. Come January 14, 2020 only those enterprise customers who are willing to pay for Extended Security Updates will receive any kind of support.

Microsoft has already done a lot to encourage Windows 7 diehards to make the move to Windows 10, and now it is stepping things up a gear. Throughout 2019, the company will show pop-up notifications in Windows 7 about making the switch to the latest version of Windows.

Updates to Windows are supposed to fix problems and improve security, but sometimes they do the opposite. Many Windows 10 users will have experienced startup problems after installing an update to the operating system, and this is something that Microsoft is looking to address.

Rather than leaving it down to users to seek out the problematic update and uninstall it, Windows 10 could start to automatically uninstall updates that have caused issues. If this happens to you, you'll be greeted by the message: "We removed some recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure."

Windows Insider builds for the next big feature update of Windows 10 are coming thick and fast now, with the focus on fixing bugs and improving performance.

Today Windows 10 19H1 Build 18353 arrives on the Fast ring with quite a long list of fixes -- including many for Windows Sandbox -- and a dwindling amount of known issues.

The install base of Windows 10 has topped the 800 million mark according to the Microsoft Story Labs site. Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi tweeted the news yesterday.

This is an increase of 100 million since September last year and it seems likely that the increase has been partly driven by the impending end of support for Windows 7.

Three-hundred-and-twenty-five 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.

Windows 10 admins who run Windows 10 version 1809 can enable Retpoline to improve performance on these devices. Microsoft integrated the improvement to Windows 10 version 1809 but not in earlier versions of Windows.

Google is warning users of Windows 7 that they are at risk from a privilege escalation zero-day bug -- and the advice is to upgrade to Windows 10 as there is no patch currently available for the actively exploited vulnerability.

The problem stems from two vulnerabilities being exploited in combination -- one in Chrome, and one in Windows. Having pushed out a patch to its Chrome web browser, Google is warning that Windows 7 users are still exposed until such a time as Microsoft develops a patch.

It's been a while since we heard much about Spectre, the speculative execution exploit that sent the security world into a frenzy. Cast your mind back a little while and you'll probably remember that the various fixes that were produced to mitigate against the exploits all had one thing in common -- they resulted in a performance hit.

To help address the reduced performance experienced on older AMD and Intel systems, a new mitigation technique called Retpoline was developed. This new Spectre patch is currently included in Insider builds of Windows 10, but you can install it and enable it right now -- regardless of whether you are signed up for the Insider program -- and enjoy a speed boost for your computer.

Intel's NUC computers are impressively little, but they are hardly the smallest personal computers. There are PCs shoved into HDMI dongles, for instance, that look like USB flash drives.

ECS has long been making diminutive desktop computers with its "LIVA" line, and today, it announces the latest model. Called "LIVA Q2," this tiny desktop computer is shockingly small, with very few ports -- two USB-A, one HDMI, one Ethernet, and a micro SD port. Plug in a wired mouse and keyboard, for example, and you now cannot plug in a USB flash drive without a hub. While ECS only lists Windows 10 as being supported, it should make an excellent Linux machine too.

The Windows Insider program is a mess. It used to be as an Insider you got to test just early versions of the next big OS feature update, but now -- depending on which ring you’re in -- you might be testing versions for the first Windows 10 update of 2020, due out over a year from now.

As if that’s not bad enough, Fast ring Insiders are currently receiving new builds at a rate of two a week -- which hardly provides enough time to install and test them -- while Slow ring Insiders get only very occasional updates. It’s no wonder some of Microsoft’s loyal legion of unpaid testers are confused.

Not many Windows 10 users have upgraded to the October 2018 Update yet, but Microsoft is still hard at work on finishing the next big feature update, codenamed 19H1, which is due out next month.

New builds are coming out thick and fast, and today sees the release of Build 18351 to Fast ring Insiders.

There are lots of ways to measure Windows share including StatCounter and Steam. Like most other tech sites, BetaNews has always focused on NetMarketShare, and at the start of the year the analyst firm finally reported that Windows 10 had overtaken its main rival, Windows 7 (a move that was a long time coming seeing as others had reported this happening months earlier).

In January, the new OS consolidated its lead, but in February things were far less rosy for Windows 10.

The idea behind the Windows Insider program is members get to test out preview versions of forthcoming Windows 10 builds.

However, quite how much actual testing can get done when the builds are rolling out thick and fast is a matter for debate. Windows 10 Build 18348 is the second 19H1 build to be rolled out this week, and the fourth build in total, when you factor in Slow and Skip Ahead releases. If it's Microsoft's aim to confuse people, the software giant is doing a bang up job here.

Three-hundred-and-twenty-four 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.

Microsoft released new builds of the upcoming Windows 10 version 1903 and the Skip Ahead Windows 10 version 2003 this week.

Being a Windows Insider can be very confusing these days. It used to be there was only one Windows 10 preview version to test -- the next feature update of the OS -- but now there are Skip Ahead flights rolling out which let users test versions of Windows 10 that won’t see the light of day for another year. Crazy.

On Tuesday Microsoft released Windows 10 19H1 Build 18346 to the Fast ring, and today we get Windows 10 20H1 Build 18845 for Skip Ahead Insiders. To access this build you will need to have opted in to Skip Ahead. That branch is now closed, but it's still possible to get access should you wish to. Follow the instructions here.