Articles about Microsoft

With Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 in just a few short months, the company is busy trying to get users to either upgrade directly to Windows 11, or purchase a new system -- ideally a Copilot+ PC.

It is obvious that Microsoft would prefer Windows 10 users to move to Windows 11, but this is far from being the only option available. A team of Linux enthusiasts has come together in the End Of 10 project, the aim of which is to promote Linux as a logical replacement for unsupported Windows 10.

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Windows 10 is set to reach its end of life later this year, meaning Microsoft will stop providing free security updates and support for the popular operating system. While extended security updates will be available for a fee, most users will need to choose between upgrading to Windows 11 or waiting for the long-rumored Windows 12.

Despite its continuous widespread use, Windows 10’s retirement marks a significant shift, pushing users toward a newer, AI-enhanced Windows experience -- whether they’re ready for it or not.

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The Start menu in Windows 11 has proved to be one of many divisive components of the operating system, with many users unhappy about the appearance and lack of customization options. This is now changing.

Early last month, signs that Microsoft was planning to give the Windows 11 Start menu an overhaul were uncovered. Now these changes have been confirmed by Microsoft; the company says that “Start is getting personal”. But what does this mean?

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Artificial intelligence is now all but unavoidable, and Microsoft is taking every opportunity to crowbar more AI features into Windows 11. Copilot+ PCs are a big part of the company’s AI vision and now powerful new AI agents have been unveiled.

Described as being part of a “new generation of Windows experiences”, Microsoft has revealed new agents that use on-device AI to interpret natural language input to help a user find and change system settings. What could possibly go wrong?

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Well, it has finally happened. Fedora Linux is now officially available as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution! That’s right, folks, following prior testing, you can now run Fedora 42 natively inside Windows using WSL. As someone who considers Fedora to be my favorite Linux distribution, this is a pretty exciting development.

Installing it is simple enough. Just open up a terminal and type wsl --install FedoraLinux-42 to get started. After that, launch it with wsl -d FedoraLinux-42 and set your username. No password is required by default, and you’ll automatically be part of the wheel group, meaning you can use sudo right out of the gate.

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Microsoft is back with two new Surface devices for 2025 -- the 13-inch Surface Laptop and the 12-inch Surface Pro. Both are “Copilot+ PCs,” which essentially means they’re built around Microsoft’s AI. These new portable computers promise better performance, better battery life, and yes, you guessed it -- more Copilot.

The new 13-inch Surface Laptop is a sleek-looking device. Microsoft says it’s thinner and lighter than any Surface Laptop before it. The aluminum chassis comes in Ocean, Violet, and Platinum. There’s also a matching Surface Arc Mouse if you’re really committed to the aesthetic.

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We wrote about Winhance 4 just a matter of days ago, telling you how it can debloat and optimize Windows 10 and 11, and keep it that way.

The tool was originally a PowerShell GUI application, but with version 4 it transformed into a standalone app that can be installed or uninstalled easily. It was also made available in portable form. The app has now been updated to version 5, and it fixes a number of problems and introduces new functionality.

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Static Windows wallpapers can often feel a little, well, uninspiring -- especially if you don’t change them regularly. Sucrose is a free and fully open-source solution that brings a dynamic, customizable approach to desktop backgrounds.

This versatile wallpaper engine allows you to animate and personalize your desktops with interactive wallpapers, and it supports both light and dark themes. Sucrose works across multiple screens and supports a range of resolutions, making it compatible with various display configurations.

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The rollout of Windows 24H2 has been a slow and bumpy road. We’re not far from entering 25H2 and Microsoft has just announced that the Windows 11 2024 Update is now “broadly available”.

The shift to broad availability means that anyone with a compatible system will now be able to download the update, but many people are likely to find that they are automatically upgraded without having to do anything. Despite entering the final stage of rollout and availability, Microsoft says there are still compatibility holds in place that will block access to the upgrade for some users.

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I’ve got some bad news for you, email administrators -- your Monday may be getting a lot worse. You see, starting today, Microsoft has officially begun rejecting high-volume emails that don’t meet its new authentication rules.

Here’s the deal. If you send more than 5,000 messages per day to Outlook.com addresses (including hotmail.com and live.com) and you’re not properly set up with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, your emails may never arrive. Yikes.

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After the release of updates for Windows 10 in February, users started to complain of problems with jump lists. More than this, Start menu issues, and an inability to view recent files plagued systems after the installation of the KB5052077 update and later.

Affecting both Windows 10 Home and Pro, Microsoft found that the problems stemmed from the rollout of a feature that integrates account control experiences in the Start Menu in Windows 10 22H2. A fix has been issued, and Microsoft has advice for anyone still experiencing the problem.

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Marking the end of an era, May sees the retirement of Skype, Microsoft’s loved and loathed messaging app. The death of Skype has been a long time coming, with the aged platform struggling to keep pace with the competition, and now the last rites can be read. Today, May 5, is the day Microsoft pulls the plug.

The writing was on the wall for Skype as soon as Microsoft started development of Teams, and this is precisely where the company is hoping ex-Skype users will move to. But while paying and non-paying users of Skype will have to find a new home, Skype for Business lives on... for now.

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It is a year since Microsoft embraced passkeys for user accounts, and now the company is taking things further. With passkeys having been conceived as a replacement for passwords, any newly created Microsoft account will be passwordless.

This is not just a change that is about improving security (passwords having been shown time and time again to be highly fallible), but also user experience. The passkey-by-default approach now being adopted is part of a streamlining of UX for sign-ins.

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You’ve possibly seen people online try to use ChatGPT to generate valid product keys for paid software, including different versions of Microsoft Windows.

YouTuber Gameboy Hub set out to test how successful ChatGPT is at generating, or sourcing, product keys to activate various versions of Microsoft Windows -- starting from Windows 95 and working up to Windows 7 (from where, in theory, it could be possible to upgrade to Windows 10 and Windows 11).

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

The optional update for Windows 11 brings the controversial Recall AI feature along with it, at least on Copilot+ PCs. Microsoft seems ready to launch it to all Copilot+ PCs next month as part of the cumulative security update.

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