Windows

We've heard that 2015 could be the year of cryptocurrencies, and now it seems that Microsoft is getting in on the action ahead of the New Year. There is yet to be a formal announcement, but Microsoft now accepts Bitcoin as a form of payment for apps, games and other digital content.

The virtual currency can be used to make purchases in the Windows Stores, Windows Phone Store and the various stores that exist for Xbox. While Microsoft is yet to issue a statement about the acceptance of Bitcoin, a page has been added to its customer support site that gives some details.

One of the key reasons why businesses migrate their systems to the cloud is to make them easier to access from anywhere.

But that can create complications where office systems are Windows based and mobile devices are running a different OS. Cloud services provider dinCloud has an answer in the form of webHVD, its HTML5-based virtual desktop.

After last month's blizzard of patches tomorrow's last round of Windows updates for the year looks set to be rather quieter.

Only seven bulletins have been announced, of which three are rated Critical and four Important. Of the Critical patches one is for Internet Explorer, one for Office and one for Windows itself -- likely to be for a remote code execution vulnerability.

Microsoft has released Skype for Windows 7.0, unveiling a major redesign of its Skype desktop client in the process. Many of the new features debuted in a Preview pre-release that coincided with the release of Skype for Mac 7 back in October.

The final release adds several new features not present in the original preview build, including two new compact view options and support for touchscreen displays.

It still has plenty of haters, but Windows 8.1 is finally finding an audience. It may not be anywhere near as sizable as the audience Windows 7 commands, but after losing usage share earlier in the year, the tiled OS is finally headed in the right direction, and at speed.

Earlier today I reported on NetMarketShare’s figures which show Windows 8.1 as having 12.10 percent of the desktop OS market, but now StatCounter has released its own figures which show Windows 8.1 as having just hit a pretty special milestone -- overtaking Windows XP for the first time.

Last month Windows 8.x's usage share did something very surprising -- it went up. Massively, according to figures from web analytics firm NetMarketShare. The tiled OS had been losing share for months, but in October it suddenly took off like a rocket, packing on 4.54 percentage points share in a single month, mostly at the expense of Windows XP.

It wouldn’t have been a total surprise to see Windows 8.x's growth stop, or go back into reverse gear in November, but actually, both Windows 8 and 8.1 showed positive gains once again.

It’s the time of year when attention turns to buying gifts. Black Friday is now out of the way, but there's still Cyber Monday for you to stock up on low-cost presents for yourself and others. There are plenty of electronic devices vying for attention as companies try to tempt you into parting with your cash, but if you're the indecisive type, there's always the trusty fall-back of the gift card.

Keen to give you as many ways as possible to throw your money in its direction, Microsoft has launched Digital Gift Cards for Windows Phone. This is an app that does very much what you would expect, making it possible to buy and share gift cards from the comfort of your Windows Phone. But Microsoft isn’t stupid. The gift cards themselves are not limited to Windows Phone purchases -- they can be used to buy apps, games, movies and music from Xbox and Windows stores.

The tablet market could be slowing down after years of growth, according to industry estimates, with Apple's iPad set to be hardest hit.

Research firm IDC projects that total tablet shipments globally are set to increase by only 7.2 percent this year, compared with 52.5 percent growth in 2013.

It’s important to keep Windows up-to-date, and the easiest way to make that happen is to let the operating system handle everything. Set Windows Update to "automatic" and get on with something else.

But if you need more control, some way to install only your chosen updates, at a time that’s convenient for you, then it might be worth looking at ABC-Update.

Next week's round of Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft is set to be the biggest so far this year with 16 bulletins in total, five of which are rated Critical and nine as Important.

Most of the Critical bulletins are for Windows components and affect a range of supported systems. Karl Sigler, Threat Intelligence Manager at Trustwave says, "If you are currently running a supported version of Windows, you will want to update as soon as these updates become available. These are some of the nastier vulnerabilities we've seen in Windows in a while".

Hands up if you saw that coming? We’ve been so used to Windows 8 and 8.1 losing usage share month on month, that any kind of move in the right direction -- i.e. growth -- seems almost an anomaly. And when Windows 8.x does gain usage share, it’s usually pretty minimal.

Not in October. According to the latest usage share figures from web analytics firm NetMarketShare, Windows 8 use grew in that month, and Windows 8.1 (finally) took off like a rocket. In fact, Windows 8.1’s growth in that month is so impressive you’ve got to imagine the number crunchers at NetMarketShare spent a long time checking and re-checking their findings to make sure there wasn’t a mistake at their end.

NHS Trusts across the UK are risking a security meltdown due to the widespread presence of Microsoft’s outdated Windows XP OS with the government looking at another £5.5 million bill from Microsoft for support.

Citrix, the mobile workspace company, filed a freedom of information act request that found all the of 35 NHS Trusts questioned are still using Windows XP and that just five are utilizing desktop virtualization technology to handle migration away from it.

Just a few days ago Microsoft released its financial data for Q1 2015 (yeah, the timescale is weird) and we learned a little about where the company's money is coming from. According to data compiled by FactSet and published by USA Today Microsoft is in fact the tenth most profitable company in the world.

The list has been put together by taking into account companies' "net income before discontinued operations and extraordinary items for their latest fiscal year", and it finds Microsoft in interesting company. Sandwiched between oil giant BP and banking behemoth Wells Fargo & Company, Microsoft just managed to sneak into the top ten with $86.8 billion in revenue.

Kinect has moved on. Once a peripheral that encouraged gamers to dance manically in front of their consoles, it has now evolved into something rather more sophisticated. As part of Kinect's on-going development Microsoft today released Kinect SDK 2.0 following the developer preview program from last November. Developers not only have scores of improvements to enjoy, but they now have the ability to deploy Kinect apps to the Windows Store.

This news goes hand in hand with the release of a new Kinect adaptor. The adaptor makes it possible to take an Xbox One Kinect and connect it to a PC or tablet. There's no need to choose between a Kinect for Windows v2 and Kinect for Xbox One as they both now perform identically.

Moonchild Productions has released a major update to its Firefox browser variant for Windows with the release of Pale Moon 25.0 and Pale Moon x64 25.0, which sees the browser drop support for Windows XP.

Version 25.0 sees the version number jump for the first time since the browser forked away from its Firefox parent due to major changes in the way the browser identifies itself.