Articles about Windows 10

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

The next feature update for Windows 10 will reserve about 7 Gigabytes of storage for the system on new installations to improve reliability.

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If you have upgraded to Windows 10 version 1903 -- or Windows 10 19H1 as you may know it -- you will find that a portion of your hard drive has been set aside thanks to the new "reserved storage" option.

Microsoft introduced this Storage Reserve (as it is also known) to "ensure proper performance and successful updates of your device", but not everyone is happy about it. You may be running low on disk space, or you just might like to remain in control of how your hard drive is used -- in which case, read on to find out how to disable reserved storage.

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If you're on a tight budget, or you're looking for a cheap "throw-away" laptop you can pop into a bag when you're travelling, Chuwi's HeroBook could be for you. Aimed at students and "low-income workers", the HeroBook's specs are nothing to get too excited about, but this is not the point of this particular laptop.

What the HeroBook is about is giving users a reasonable experience and above-acceptable hardware for a super-low price. For $199 you could kit yourself out with a laptop that is capable enough for day-to-day computing, or could serve as a secondary laptop for travelling with -- at this price, you won't mind too much if you lose or damage it!

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We’re only nine days into 2019, and Microsoft is rolling out the second 19H1 build of the new year to Insiders on the Fast ring.

Build 18312 gives users access to the new 'reserved storage' feature which we covered yesterday. This reserves around 7GB of storage on Windows 10 systems to guarantee day-to-day smooth running, and also to ensure that large updates don't fail on systems with limited free space. To try it out though, you will need to run through this quest which will give you access to it in the next flight. If you run the quest before upgrading to this new build, you will get access to the feature when you do upgrade.

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Previous feature updates for Windows 10 tended to fail if you didn’t have enough free storage for the task. The onus was on users to free up the required space manually before the update could go ahead, but that’s about to change.

In the next big feature update, version 1903 (codenamed 19H1), due out in the spring, Windows 10 will automatically reserve enough space to ensure the update can complete without problems. This might be 7GB, but it could be more, "based on how you use your device".

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The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show hasn't officially started yet (it begins tomorrow), but there are already tons of new products being announced in anticipation. Quite frankly, there is too much stuff being unveiled lately, making it not much more than a bunch of noise. Trying to keep up with all the new products is an exercise in frustration -- I wouldn't be mad if CES was canceled forever.

There are so many new Windows 10 laptops this year, for instance, that it can be hard to get excited over them. And yet, one has managed to tickle my fancy. No, it isn't some hardcore gaming machine. It doesn't have a unique form factor or any bells and whistles. Actually, I am attracted to its affordability and cute design. Called "Notebook Flash," it is a basic laptop from Samsung with a textured body, rounded keys (Samsung calls them "typewriter"), and speckled paint-job on the rear. It makes me smile for some reason.

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The next big feature update for Windows 10 will offer tweaked visuals, but most people probably won’t notice the difference. It’s all about evolution rather than revolution with Microsoft these days.

If you are hoping for a more modern Start menu then you’re going to have to look beyond Redmond for that, and a brand new concept shows us just what the tiled menu could look like.

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

Google is working on a dark mode for Chrome on Windows; you can enable it right now if you run Chrome Canary on any supported version of Windows.

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According to AdDuplex, the problematic October 2018 Update is currently on just 6.6 percent of all Windows 10 PCs. It’s doubled its share since November, but still pales in comparison to the April 2018 Update which is on 83.6 percent of systems.

Despite this, Microsoft is hard at work on the next big feature update, expected this spring, and has just rolled out the first build of 2019 for Insiders on the Fast ring.

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Python is a great programming language. It’s powerful, yet easy to learn, and comes preinstalled on most Linux distributions.

It’s more of a pain to get it on Windows though, as Microsoft’s OS doesn’t include a native Python installation. However, Windows 10 users can now download an official Python package from the Microsoft Store.

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An increasing number of apps and websites are gaining dark modes, often simply for the sake of aesthetics, but also because of power-saving considerations. Having added eye-saving dark modes to numerous Android apps, Google has confirmed that it is doing the same for the Windows 10 version of Chrome.

While there is no particular time frame in which we can expect to see Chrome's dark mode, a Chrome developer has confirmed that the feature is in progress.

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Windows 10 is hardly a perfect operating system, but it is undeniably the best option for business users -- especially when paired with the excellent Microsoft Office. True, some professional users can get by with a traditional Linux workstation and LibreOffice (or a Chromebook with web-based productivity apps), but if business success is your goal in 2019 -- computing ideology be damned -- you can't go wrong with Windows.

Acer has a new business laptop that is sure to delight professionals. The "TravelMate X3410," as it is called, is svelte and beautiful while having all the ports a pro will need, such as USB-A, USB-C, Ethernet, HDMI, and VGA. While home users may no longer need VGA, it is handy to have for business users -- many offices still utilize VGA-only projectors, for instance. Best of all, it offers incredible battery life while having an affordable starting price.

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If you have enabled Windows 10's built-in administrator account, and upgrade from build 1803 to 1809 -- that is, the April 2018 Update to the October 2018 update -- you will find that a bug has been introduced that disables the account.

Microsoft says that it is aware of the problem, but the company does not plan on releasing a fix for it until the end of the month.

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It’s been a long time coming. While other analyst firms, such as StatCounter, have shown Windows 10 overtaking Windows 7 sometime ago, NetMarketShare has consistently shown the new OS to be lagging way behind the aging fan favorite.

In December though, NetMarketShare finally has Windows 10 taking pole position.

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A security researcher has released proof-of-concept code for a zero-day exploit in Windows 10. The bug was revealed by SandboxEscaper, a researcher who has exposed Windows vulnerabilities in the past.

The latest bug makes it possible to overwrite files with arbitrary data, and while there are numerous criteria that must be met in order for the vulnerability to be exploited, it is still potentially serious. SandboxEscaper warned Microsoft about the problem on Christmas day, before publishing the PoC a couple of days later.

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