Articles about Windows

Windows Update has long been pushed as the way to make sure that Windows is fully patched and secure as possible. It is recommended that it be left in Automatic mode so updates are downloaded as they are released. Samsung, however, has different ideas.

The company has been found disabling Windows Update on a number of the computers it sells, channeling people to use its own SW Update tool instead. Microsoft MVP Patrick Barker noted the activity when he found a program called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe on his computer. The culprit was Samsung's crapware.

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USB hubs are commonplace and, let's be honest, not especially exciting pieces of kit. Inateck’s HB4009 is a three-port USB 3.0 hub, but it also has an extra trick up its sleeve. It has a Magic Port, allowing you to link two systems together for file transfers or establish a client/host link using the USB On-The-Go (OTG) standard.

This makes it a versatile little device as you can link Windows, Mac OS and Android devices to their own kind or to each other. You can also attach another USB device like a flash drive or camera to a system, such as a tablet, that might not otherwise have a suitable port.

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Microsoft is a company in a constant state of evolution, and today this is perfectly demonstrated by a huge shakeup at the top. Satya Nadella wrote to employees to explain a number of changes to the Senior Leadership Team -- including the departure of Stephen Elop.

The former Nokia CEO and Nadella "agreed that now is the right time for him to retire from Microsoft". A question that can be heard echoing through the company is "did he jump, or was he pushed?" Mark Penn is also leaving the company to form a private equity fund. The reorganization additionally sees the company dividing into three distinct teams to "deliver better products and services our customers love at a more rapid pace".

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There is lots of talk surrounding the level of protection offered by leading mobile operating systems Android and iOS. Whether it is about a new vulnerability, or new security features, it does not take you long to find an authoritative comment assessing their security capabilities.

That is, however, not the case with Windows Phone, which is hardly -- if ever -- given similar levels of attention. It can be argued that this is due to the low popularity of the tiled smartphone operating system, which borders on 3 percent market share, making it a significantly less-attractive target. Nonetheless, there is now an assessment of Windows Phone's security that we can rely on, coming from Eugene Kaspersky.

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If you’re running Windows 7 or 8.x you should by now see a small Windows 10 icon in the system tray. Click this and you can reserve your free Windows 10 upgrade in advance of the operating system’s launch on July 29.

Once you’ve reserved the upgrade, Windows 10 will download as soon as available and you’ll be able to install it at your convenience. However, for some reason this icon isn’t appearing on all systems. It wasn’t on mine for example. If you want to summon the upgrade icon, this is what you’ll need to do.

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If you’re certain you don’t want to upgrade to Windows 10, or you want to do so at your own pace without being nagged into it, the upgrade notification that appears in Windows 7 and 8.x can be viewed as an unwanted annoyance.

There are plenty of reasons why you might not want to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as it becomes available -- you might be more than happy with your existing OS, or you may wish to wait until Windows 10 has been out for a while and all of the big issues have been patched. After all, you have a year to upgrade for free. If you want to remove the upgrade notification, there’s a simple tool for the job.

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As the launch of Windows 10 draws ever-nearer, we're hearing more about Microsoft Edge and less about Internet Explorer. Edge (formerly known as Project Spartan) may be the default browser in the upcoming version of Windows, but the browsing stalwart that is IE will live on nonetheless.

Anyone using the Windows 10 preview has had a chance to use the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) in Microsoft Edge, and today the security feature comes to Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. This security protocol protects against man-in-the-middle attacks and is being delivered to users of older versions of Windows through an update in the form of KB 3058515.

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Social integration is a key aspect of Microsoft's vision for its most prominent consumer-facing products. For instance, on Outlook.com you can have a Skype conversation, on Skype you can chat with Facebook friends, and on Windows Phone you can see your contacts' social updates, like tweets, in People hub. This is one of my favorite things about the software giant's products. It is also a standout feature that its rivals are not yet offering.

A core component is Facebook integration, which is present in Windows and Windows Phone, as well as Office 365, OneDrive and Outlook.com. But, thanks to an update to Facebook's Graph API, integration with the most-popular social network is going away in all currently-supported products.

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Wow. What a wicked week it is for Microsoft platforms. As May closed, Insider Preview Build 10130 dropped, followed by a preorder page for OEM versions. Then came the big reveal just five days ago: Windows 10 will be available on July 29th. System requirements are out now, though. On June 3rd, the company showed off devices designed for the operating system. A day later, Office 2016 Preview updated with new features, many tapping cloud services. Yesterday, Build 10135 release notes leaked.

Fitting with the "beta" in BetaNews, it's time to pose the big question for those of you daring enough to grab Windows 10 now ahead of next's month's big release. Most of the BN writing team runs the operating system. I'm late to the upgrade party but will join the gang later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, I ask: What do you like about Windows 10? If you must: What don't you like -- and, related, what do you still want?

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Windows users who want to access another device via SSH (Secure Shell) have to rely on third-party tools to get the job done, as there is no built-in support for it in the popular operating system. Azure CTO Mark Russinovich has revealed that he uses PuTTY for such tasks, which is also the SSH tool of choice for plenty of other folks, myself included.

As such, the fact that SSH support is one of the most popular feature requests that the PowerShell team has received should not surprise any Windows power users. And since Microsoft is actively trying to cater to its users' needs, it just announced that it is currently working on making the much-requested feature a reality.

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After months of not really doing much, Windows 8.x finally gained a decent amount of usage share in May, according to web analytics firm NetMarketShare.

This gain came at the expense of Windows 7 and Windows XP, which both lost share, resulting in Windows 8.x leapfrogging XP for the first time in six months. The last time the tiled OS was more popular than XP was in December 2014. At the time a run of usage gains lead me to predict it was on course to break the 20 percent barrier. Yeah, talk about being overly optimistic.

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At its developer conference I/O 2015, Google today unveiled Android M, the latest iteration to its mobile operating system. The update brings with it a handful of interesting features and other improvements. The full-fledged version of Android M will roll-out sometime later this year, but for those who want a sneak peek a developer preview version of Android M for select Nexus devices is out now. Here’s how you can install it on your smartphone or tablet.

Android M comes with a number of interesting features including Chrome custom view, built-in fingerprint scanning feature, and permission manager. The company says that with the new update it is going back to the basics -- offering bug fixes and performance improvements to the users. For instance, Android M-powered devices will have twice as much battery life compared to Lollipop-powered devices, the company claims.

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Security company Secunia has released its latest quarterly Vulnerability Update covering the period from February to April 2015.

It looks at the top 20 products with the most vulnerabilities each month and finds that there have been a total of 1,691 new vulnerabilities appearing in the top 20 over the three month period.

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If you like the idea of trying out the next version of Windows before it is officially launched, Microsoft has made the Windows 10 Technical Preview available for everyone to use. There are various ways to get the preview installed on your computer, but since the release of build 9926, it is possible to upgrade your current Windows 7 or Windows 8 installation to Windows 10 using Windows Update.

This is a much simpler option than downloading the ISO image, but it is an upgrade route that almost encourages people to install the preview build on their everyday computer -- don’t forget that this is not a finished product! We've already looked at how to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine, but if you have a spare machine running Windows 7 or 8, using it as a test bed for Windows 10 just got a whole lot easier.

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Gmail might be the most popular email service in the world, but even the biggest players fall sometimes, and once that happens, the little guys will be there to cheer.

Server outages and crashes have happened before, and even though Gmail is generally seen as a solid, well-built and stable product, it too can crash, leaving you without all those precious emails you’ve been saving.

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