Microsoft’s Windows 11 Start menu can be customized today through Settings > Personalization > Start, where users can change the layout, reduce recommendations, show or hide recent items, add quick-access folders, and rearrange pinned apps. That sounds like a modest how-to tip, but it also points to a larger Windows story. The Start menu remains the most politically sensitive square of real estate in Microsoft’s operating system, and every new toggle is really a negotiation over who controls...
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On May 15, 2026, Microsoft published a customer story saying Italian retail operator Multicedi modernized its data platform with Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQL Database in Fabric, OneLake, Spark, and AI-assisted analytics to accelerate decisions across more than 600 stores. The headline number is simple: a reported reduction in ETL processing from about six hours to about two. The more interesting story is not the stopwatch, but the architectural wager behind it. Multicedi is becoming a...
Windows 11 includes dozens of underused features, from Snap Layouts and virtual desktops to passkeys, PowerToys, Phone Link, File Explorer tabs, Windows Backup, Copilot, and Copilot+ PC tools, that can make Microsoft’s current desktop operating system faster, safer, and less irritating to use.
That is the practical answer hiding inside yet another “hidden features” roundup: Windows 11 is not short on capability, it is short on discoverability. Microsoft has spent the last few years bolting...
Microsoft’s May 2026 Power Platform update, published May 14, makes Power Fx user-defined types generally available, expands Copilot-connected app experiences, adds context-aware generative pages, introduces AI-assisted InfoPath migration, and advances several modern Power Apps controls from preview toward production readiness. The release is not a single blockbuster feature so much as a signal that Power Platform is becoming more typed, more agent-aware, and more developer-adjacent. That...
Windows 11 still includes Microsoft’s old Phone Dialer utility, launched in the Windows 95 era to place calls through a modem and telephone line, even though most modern PCs lack the hardware it expects and Microsoft now steers users toward Phone Link. That small executable is not important because many people use it. It is important because it shows how Windows ages: not by clean replacement, but by sediment. Microsoft’s flagship operating system still carries tools built for a world of...
Microsoft has put writeback for cloud-managed remote mailboxes into public preview in May 2026, letting Exchange Online push selected Exchange attributes back into on-premises Active Directory through Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync. That sounds like a plumbing change, and in a sense it is. But for hybrid Exchange shops, plumbing has always been the problem. This preview is Microsoft’s most concrete move yet toward ending the awkward era of keeping one Exchange Server alive simply because Active...
Microsoft is reportedly canceling most internal Claude Code licenses in its Experiences and Devices division by June 30, 2026, and directing thousands of employees working on products such as Windows, Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, and Surface toward GitHub Copilot CLI instead. The move is not just another procurement reshuffle inside Redmond. It is a revealing moment in the AI-coding wars: Microsoft invited a rival tool into its own engineering culture, watched developers adopt it...
NTT DATA has signed a definitive agreement to acquire WinWire, a Santa Clara-based Microsoft partner with delivery centers in India, to expand its Azure, data engineering, cloud-native development, and agentic AI capabilities for enterprise customers. The transaction, still subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, is less a conventional services tuck-in than a signal about where the Microsoft partner economy is moving. The race is no longer about who can demo the best chatbot...
Microsoft’s May 12, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11, KB5089549, is reportedly failing to install on some Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 systems, while a smaller set of users says the same patch has reduced internet performance after installation. The important word is reportedly, because Microsoft’s own release notes still say the company is not aware of any known issues with the update. That gap between community reports and official acknowledgement is where Windows servicing gets messy...
On Windows 11 version 24H2 and the current 25H2 release, Microsoft’s old systemreset command is no longer present in System32, so Command Prompt cannot factory-reset a PC the way years of tutorials still claim it can in 2026 with one line. That is the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of stale Windows advice still floating around the web. The reset feature is not gone, but the old shortcut into it effectively is. For home users, this is mostly an annoyance; for administrators, it is another...
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s EVP for Copilot, Agents and Platform, appeared on CNBC’s Fortt Knox on May 15, 2026, to argue that Microsoft’s AI future is not a single giant model but an orchestrated system that routes work across multiple models, agents, data sources, and human workflows. The pitch is deceptively simple: stop worshiping model size and start measuring useful work. For Windows users and enterprise IT, that is more than a product-management slogan. It is Microsoft’s attempt to...
NTT DATA signed a definitive agreement in May 2026 to acquire Santa Clara-based WinWire, a Microsoft-focused cloud and AI consultancy with delivery centers in India and more than 1,000 Azure engineers and AI specialists. The deal is less about buying another systems integrator than about buying scarce implementation muscle for the next phase of enterprise AI. Microsoft has built the platform vocabulary around Fabric, Foundry, Copilot, Azure, and agents; customers now need someone to turn...
Microsoft’s latest Windows performance push, discussed in Paul Thurrott’s May 15 mailbag and now surfacing in preview builds, centers on faster Windows 11 app launches, a less web-heavy Start experience, and a broader reckoning with Microsoft’s long, messy dependence on cross-platform app frameworks. The easy headline is “native apps are back.” The more interesting story is that Microsoft is trying to make Windows feel immediate again without pretending the last decade of web-first...
At Pwn2Own Berlin 2026 on May 14, security researchers demonstrated successful zero-day exploits against Microsoft Edge, Windows 11, LiteLLM, NVIDIA software, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and other modern targets, earning $523,000 across 24 unique vulnerabilities on the contest’s first day. The headline is not simply that Microsoft got hacked onstage; that is practically a Pwn2Own tradition. The sharper story is that the attack surface Windows shops now defend has sprawled from browsers and...
Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia’s public open and distance-learning university, said on May 15, 2026 that it has built a Microsoft Azure-based digital learning foundation using Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Foundry, Kubernetes, databases, and security tooling to support large-scale AI-assisted education. The announcement is not just another cloud customer win dressed up as an AI story. It is a revealing case study in how universities are trying to industrialize personalized learning without...
Microsoft said on May 13, 2026, that it is retiring Copilot Mode in Microsoft Edge and moving its AI browsing features directly into Edge on desktop and mobile, including multi-tab reasoning, Voice and Vision, Journeys, study tools, writing help, and tab-to-podcast features. The important word is not “retiring.” It is “directly.” Microsoft is not backing away from AI in the browser; it is dissolving the boundary between the browser and the assistant.
That makes this update less like a...
Microsoft’s May 2026 Edge update brings Copilot-powered tab summaries, browsing-history recall, AI-generated podcasts, quizzes, writing help, and mobile Vision features to Edge on iOS and Android, moving several desktop-only browser AI tools onto phones. The update is not just another Copilot button; it is Microsoft’s clearest attempt yet to make the browser itself feel like an assistant. For Windows users and IT pros, the interesting part is not whether Copilot can summarize a recipe page...
NTT DATA has signed a definitive agreement in May 2026 to acquire WinWire, a Santa Clara-based Microsoft cloud and AI consultancy, adding more than 1,000 Azure engineers and Microsoft specialists to its global enterprise AI services business. The deal is not just another services roll-up. It is a bet that the next phase of generative AI will be won less by demos than by the armies of engineers who can wire agents, data, governance, security, and legacy applications into production. For...
Microsoft is reportedly preparing to wind down most Claude Code licenses inside its Experiences + Devices organization by June 30, 2026, moving developers working on Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, and Surface toward GitHub Copilot CLI instead. The decision looks, on paper, like ordinary platform consolidation. In practice, it exposes the awkward middle phase of Microsoft’s AI strategy: the company wants developers to trust AI coding agents, but not necessarily the ones its own...
On May 15, 2015, Microsoft clarified that PCs running non-genuine Windows would not receive the standard free Windows 10 upgrade, but said it and OEM partners planned “very attractive” offers to help those users move to legitimate Windows 10 installations. That was not amnesty, and it was not quite generosity. It was Microsoft admitting, in public, that Windows licensing enforcement had become less important than getting the world onto a safer, more current, more serviceable version of...