Articles about Windows 11

If your printer has been spontaneously printing at random, you’re not alone – and you can almost certainly blame a wonky Windows update from Microsoft.

The company has acknowledged a strange print issue affecting some users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 who installed recent updates for the operating systems. The peculiar behavior affects USB connected dual-mode printers that support both USB Print and IPP Over USB protocols and Microsoft has been forced to resort to a Known Issue Rollback (KIR).

Continue reading →

Few people would argue that Windows 11 is perfect; in fact, for many people the operating system has many flaws and failings. A lot of the weaknesses of Windows have been addressed by the developers of PowerToys, but this is far from being the only suite of utilities out there.

Stardock is a company with a history of producing handy tools for Windows, and Fences is a productivity, organization and workflow enhancing tool that can make Windows 11 work for you. To coincide with the release of the latest beta version of the utility, the company is giving 10 percent off Fences 6. Here’s what this incredible tool has to offer.

Continue reading →

The developers behind AcreetionOS have a few questions for you. “Have you been wanting to switch away from Windows? Are you looking for something that just works?” If the answer to both of those is yes, their brand new operating system might be just what you’re after.

We’ve been using the Arch Linux based AcreetionOS for a few days now, and while the user interface could use a bit of polish (it’s still very new, so that’s understandable), it’s a solid OS that’s easy to use and, yes, it really does just work.

Continue reading →

CodeWeavers has just released CrossOver 25 for macOS and Linux, and it’s packed with some seriously awesome improvements. Thanks to Wine 10.0 bringing over 5,000 changes, this update should make running both Windows games and apps on non-Windows systems smoother than ever. Could this finally convince gamers to dump Microsoft's OS?

Let’s be honest, Windows 11 hasn’t exactly won over everyone. Between forced updates, hardware restrictions, and Microsoft’s annoying obsession with AI features (that most people don’t even want), it has left many gamers looking for alternatives. That’s where CrossOver 25 comes in.

Continue reading →

Six-hundred-thirty-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released a new version of its Copilot app on Windows to the Microsoft Store for Insiders. This one, finally, is a native application and no longer a progressive web app. May take some time before it lands on stable though.

Continue reading →

With Windows 11, Microsoft tried to make the new OS look different from Windows 10, mainly by centering the taskbar and Start menu. This wasn’t the most popular change for a lot of people.

As we’ve covered before, there are a good number of third-party tools that you can use to put the Start menu and taskbar back to how they were, as well as tweak other areas of the newest operating system, including improving icons and updating File Explorer.

Continue reading →

Six-hundred-thirty-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

One option for Windows 10 users who do not want to pay Microsoft for extended support is to switch to Linux once Microsoft's operating system runs out of support. Linux veteran Brian suggests to try a dual boot or VM instead at the beginning, to test the waters.

Continue reading →

It's that time of the month when Microsoft releases preview versions of next month’s updates for Windows. For the eager -- and brave -- they provide a way to get early access to new features and options as well as fixes for problems.

Windows 11 users now have the KB5052093 update to download and install if they want to jump in ahead of Patch Tuesday, and this is a nice little update that not only patches a bunch of bugs, but adds a tasty selection of new bits and pieces. A highlight is the ability to use a single webcam in multiple apps.

Continue reading →

Every so often, we hear rumors about Microsoft’s next operating system, widely expected to be called Windows 12. The tech giant has been keeping quiet about its future plans, preferring instead to continue to update Windows 11, adding more AI features, and deprecating functionality it thinks we no longer need.

Although plenty of people still prefer Windows 10 to its successor, Windows 11 will be the only game in town in a matter of months when the older OS comes to its end of life later this year. Windows 11 isn’t bad -- far from it -- but it could be better, as evidenced by Windows 11 2025 Edition.

Continue reading →

For a lot of people, the biggest, most noticeable difference between Windows 10 and 11 is the centered taskbar and Start menu that Microsoft introduced to its latest operating system.

The software giant made the change to give Windows 11 a fresh, modern look and set it apart from its predecessor, but Windows has had a left-aligned taskbar and menu since Windows 95, and as the company proved when it gave us a tiled Start screen in Windows 8, change isn't always good -- or welcome.

Continue reading →

Over the years, I have suggested leaving Windows for Linux many times, with some readers saying I sound like a broken record. In hindsight, however, that was arguably a foolish thing to suggest (in some cases, at least). No, that doesn’t mean I have soured on Linux -- quite the contrary. Actually, I am as enthusiastic as ever!

So, have I changed my tune? Well… not entirely. I still think people should install Linux, but instead of replacing Windows, I would suggest dual-booting instead. This way, you get the best of both worlds -- Linux and Windows on one machine. I suppose if you find you don’t ever use Windows, you could get rid of it down the line. But even if you don’t use Windows, why bother getting rid of it? You might find having a Windows installation handy one day. Hey… you never know.

Continue reading →

Six-hundred-thirty-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft is working on a new app. Currently in development, Migration App is designed to help users smoothly transfer files from one Windows PC to another.

Continue reading →

Snipping Tool is one of the most useful apps to be found in Windows 11, making light work of grabbing on-screen content. Primarily concerned with taking screenshots, it has developed over the years to include a handy OCR component for extracting text.

And now this feature is in line for an upgrade. Microsoft is improving the text extraction capabilities of Snipping Tool so that text can be grabbed without the need to take a screenshot first.

Continue reading →

I appreciate calling Windows XP “Microsoft’s greatest OS” will elicit snorts of derision from a good number of you. That honor probably belongs to Windows 7, or maybe even Windows 10 (once Microsoft ironed out the many problems that plagued it from the start). But certainly, Windows XP was a classic, and a huge step up from the operating systems that preceded it.

If you miss XP but aren’t crazy enough to run an OS that (mostly) hasn’t had security updates in over a decade, FreeXP might be just what you’re looking for. It’s not XP, and it’s not from Microsoft, but it looks and feels just like it.

Continue reading →

The last round of security updates saw Microsoft release the KB5051987 update for Windows 11. As this patch addresses a number of security issues with the operating system, it is a mandatory update that will be automatically installed for most people.

As we’ve seen time and time again, the automatic installation of security updates is a good thing... until it isn’t. And with the KB5051987 update, there are numerous problems that raise the question of whether it is advisable to have Microsoft pushing out obligatory patches that can wreak havoc.

Continue reading →