Articles about Windows

The modern workplace can be an increasingly fragmented place, with employees on multiple sites or working from home. Delivering the systems that they need is therefore a challenging task.

Cross platform solutions specialist Parallels is launching a new version of its Remote Application Server which allows businesses to deliver Windows applications and desktops to employees on any device, anywhere in the world.

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Now that Microsoft is forcibly downloading Windows 10 onto unsuspecting Windows 7 and 8.1 users’ PCs there’s going to be a lot of unhappy customers faced with a new OS they never asked for nor wanted.

You can prevent this from happening by making sure the "Recommended Update" setting is unchecked on your PC, but if you fail to do this and accidentally allow the installation to go ahead (or maybe you tried Windows 10 and didn’t like it), the good news is it’s easy to roll things back to your original operating system.

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Microsoft has changed the Windows 10 update from "Optional" to "Recommended". And by "Recommended" it means "You’re getting it whether you want it or not".

If your Windows 7 or 8.1 PC is set to install recommended updates automatically (because -- more fool you -- you just wanted it to be up to date and safe) then Microsoft will cheerfully download the new OS and start the installation process for you. Don’t want that to happen? Here’s how to stop it.

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Microsoft has been accused of pushing Windows 10 rather aggressively, and the company's latest move is going to do nothing to silence these accusations. For Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, Windows 10 just became a 'recommended update' in Windows Update.

This is a change from the previous categorization of the upgrade as an 'optional update' and it means that there is renewed potential for unwanted installations. After the launch of Windows 10, there were numerous reports of not only the automatic download of OS installation files, but also unrequested upgrades. The changed status of the update means that, on some machines, the installation of Windows 10 could start automatically.

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As you’ll have seen earlier, according to figures from NetMarketShare, Windows 10 overtook Windows 8.1 in January, taking just six months to do so. StatCounter, which also measures operating system usage, shows Windows 10 achieving the same feat in that month, although its figures are slightly different.

To mark this achievement it seems only right to compare Windows 10’s growth with that of past Windows releases to see how the new OS is really doing.

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When it comes to supporting older operating systems (or not), it is usually Microsoft that we are talking about. But this week Apple took its users by surprise by releasing an update to Snow Leopard -- the lengthily-named Mac App Store Update for OS X Snow Leopard.

If you are wondering why an OS update should come as a surprise, it is because support for Snow Leopard came to an end in the latter half of 2013. It is an update that is ostensibly about ensuring continued access to the Mac App Store, but it also helps to give Snow Leopard users an easier path to upgrade to El Capitan.

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Lenovo has issued updates to address a hard-coded password flaw and other security issues with its file sharing utility SHAREit.

Lenovo has addressed a serious flaw in its PC and Android versions of SHAREit, which enabled anyone on a LAN or wireless hotspot to potentially view and copy files from another computer or device running the SHAREit application. Though that was always the intention of the application -- to make file sharing painless -- it was probably not intended to be so open to anyone.

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Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows XP on April 14th 2009 and extended support came to a halt on April 8th 2014. Windows Vista faced a similar fate, only the dates were different -- April 10th 2012 for mainstream support, while extended support has an end date set for April 11th 2017.

Most products have ended support already, though many continue to work on both operating systems. Now one program is calling it quits on the antiquated Microsoft platforms.

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Data Privacy Day may not sound like the most exciting event to add to your calendar, but it serves as a hugely important reminder of the value of security. January 28 is the big day, and there has never been a better time to ensure that you are following best practice -- and there's no reason not to get started ahead of time.

35 years ago, Data Protection Day was launched, and over the years this evolves into Data Privacy Day. The aim is to improve privacy and security awareness online, on mobile, and on computers in general. Whatever you use your phone, computer and other devices for, there's plenty you can do to increase your security and privacy.

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Brace yourselves: I'm about to stick up for Microsoft. While I'm happy to criticize the company for its failings (and maybe kick it when it's down from time to time), complaints that cropped up over the weekend seem completely unjustified. I'm talking about this weekend's NFL playoffs.

I'm far from being a football (or indeed sport of any description) fan, but my news timeline has been filled with headlines about how Microsoft suffered embarrassment when its Surface tablets (now famously used on the sidelines and mistakenly referred to as iPads) failed during the Broncos-Patriots game. Except the problems that led to an information blackout was absolutely not the fault of Microsoft, or its Surfaces.

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Windows 8.1 is old, Windows 7 is all but decrepit, and Microsoft is now all about Windows 10. The somewhat aggressive pushing of Windows 10 to consumers has been criticized, and this reached something of a head last week when Microsoft announced that nextgen CPUs will only support Windows 10.

Building on this announcement, Microsoft has published a list of more than 100 Skylake systems that will offer Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support -- until July 17, 2017, that is. In spite of Microsoft's eagerness to push consumers and businesses to Windows 10, there are still dozens of systems from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC that can be configured with the older operating systems.

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Fed up of Microsoft aggressively pushing Windows 10 on you? Happy to stick with Windows 7 or 8.1? You’re not alone.

Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to say no to Windows 10 (wouldn’t it be great if there was a "no thanks" button you could click to make the upgrade message and installation files simply go away?) but you can reject it using a Group Policy Setting or a registry tweak.

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Products, no matter how much we may like them, don't last forever. You don't want to be the person keeping a batch of Palms in the freezer for future use -- and there are people who do that. Product cycles run their course and technology moves forward.

Microsoft customers, in some cases, move forward very grudgingly. That's especially true of business, particularly ones who had to be dragged off of IE 6 -- they now need to be dragged even further from that comfort zone.

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Cross-platform viruses and malware are something of a rarity, but now there's a first-in-its-class JavaScript-based ransomware that can infect Mac, Windows and Linux. Ransom32 uses the Node.js runtime environment running on the NW.js platform to burrow into the target operating system and hold files to ransom.

While on the face of it, this is just another example of ransomware that encrypts files and seeks Bitcoin payments to decrypt them, it is more than that. The NW.js framework not only allows for cross-platform infections, but also means it is harder to detect. Ransom32 bears some resemblance to CryptoLocker and has been dubbed Ransomware-as-a-Service.

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Microsoft has announced the hardware requirements needed to run its Azure Stack – the upcoming on-premise hybrid version of the Azure cloud.

The Azure Stack first gets installed on a server and delivers Azure services in a customer’s datacentre, enabling developers and IT professionals to build, deploy and operate cloud applications using consistent tools, processes and artifacts.

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