Featured content

Xbox’s January update takes a major step toward making Windows on Arm a first-class gaming platform by bringing the Xbox PC app — including Game Pass installs — to Arm-based Windows 11 PCs, while adding a long-requested Game Save Sync Indicator and widening the Xbox Cloud Gaming footprint to select Hisense and V home OS smart TVs announced at CES 2026. Background Windows on Arm has been a slow-burning story for PC gaming. Arm-powered devices promise impressive battery life, thin-and-light...

Microsoft quietly pushed a pair of modest but strategically significant updates to two of Windows’ most familiar utilities, Notepad and Paint, making both apps slightly smarter and notably more AI-capable for Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels. Notepad gains tighter Markdown parity, a first‑run welcome experience, and improved streaming support for its AI writing tools, while Paint adds a precision-focused fill tolerance slider and an AI‑generated Coloring book workflow — the...

Microsoft 365 users across major U.S. cities experienced widespread disruptions on Wednesday as reports of outages for Outlook and Teams surged, leaving thighousands unable to send mail, join meetings, or access cloud-hosted collaboration tools for parts of the day. Background Microsoft 365 is the backbone of modern workplace productivity for millions of organizations worldwide, bundling cloud-hosted email (Outlook), collaboration and conferencing (Teams), file storage (OneDrive...

A newly disclosed and patched flaw in Windows Admin Center’s Azure Active Directory Single Sign‑On integration undermined a fundamental trust boundary in cloud management: a local administrator on a single WAC‑managed VM could combine a stolen access token with a forged Proof‑of‑Possession (PoP) token to impersonate privileged users and execute commands across every Windows Admin Center instance in the same Azure tenant. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE‑2026‑20965, stems from improper token...

GPD’s high‑power Win 5 “Strix Halo” handheld is now showing signs of official Bazzite OS support — a development that could materially change the software options for owners of one of the most ambitious AMD‑APU handhelds yet — but the path between community ports, vendor blessing, and a polished, supported image remains complex and conditional. Background / Overview The GPD Win 5 (“Win 5”) is GPD’s flagship, Strix Halo APU‑powered handheld: a 7‑inch, 1080p, 120 Hz machine that targets...

Windows 11 users are again facing a fresh wave of patch-related breakage: a January 13, 2026 cumulative update (KB5074109) introduced a regression that can make apps unresponsive or fail when opening or saving files on cloud‑backed storage such as OneDrive and Dropbox — and the fallout has already reached everyday productivity apps like Outlook, forcing Microsoft into emergency fixes and sparking renewed questions about update quality and the role of AI in modern software development...

Fourteen years after the original concept first surfaced, a small hardware outfit has released a phone that tries to do something most mainstream vendors have avoided: ship a pocketable Android smartphone that can also boot a full WindWindows 11 desktop and run a real Linux desktop — all from the same piece of hardware. Background / Overview Nex Computer’s NexPhone is positioned as a “PC in your pocket”: a single device that claims to function as an Android phone, a Linux desktop (Debian)...

Micrunosoft has quietly completed a major compatibility milestone for Windows on Arm: the Xbox app is now available across Arm-based Windows 11 PCs, unlocking native access to the Xbox storefront, Game Pass downloads, and cloud streaming on devices powered by Arm silicon. Background Over the last three years Microsoft has pushed hard to make Windows on Arm a first-class platform. That effort accelerated with the Copilot+ PC program and the arrival of Arm-focused silicon in premium laptops...

NexPhone arrives promising a single-device future — Android at hand, Linux for desk work, and even Windows 11 in your pocket — but the engineering compromises behind that ambition make it a curiosity more than a practical laptop replacement for most users today. Background The team behind NexDock — the lapdock shell that turned smartphones into laptop-like workstations — is now selling a smartphone designed specifically to act as a portable PC: NexPhone. The device is pitched as a “PC in...

Windows 11 users woke up to two very different but equally important stories this week: a sudden wave of built‑in and Store‑delivered apps — including Notepad and Snipping Tool — failing to open with Microsoft Store error 0x803F8001, and an Xbox platform update that expands the Xbox PC app to Arm‑based Windows 11 PCs, opening a new growth vector for Game Pass and native PC downloads on Qualcomm and other Arm silicon. The first story is a real‑world outage and troubleshooting headache for...

The novelty of AI has faded into the everyday scramble of the blank prompt box — but the practical difference between a wasted Copilot session and one that saves hours is almost never the model and almost always the instruction you give it. Background / Overview Microsoft has firmly positioned Copilot as a productivity layer inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, embedding generative AI across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and other apps so the assistant can act on the data you...

Microsoft's cloud productivity stack experienced a disruption on January 21, 2026, with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams reporting widespread problems early in the U.S. workday and recovery messages appearing within a few hours as Microsoft traced the impact to a third‑party networking incident. Background Microsoft 365 (the subscription service that bundles Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and other cloud services) is foundational to modern office workflows. When it falters, the interruption...

MicMicrosoftt shipped an emergency out‑of‑band update this week to repair credential prompt and authentication failures that blocked Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365 connections after its January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday rollup — a fast, narrowly scoped remediation that restores remote‑session availability while preserving the security fixes already issued. rosoft’s regular January 2026 security rollup (released January 13) delivered fixes for more than 100 vulnerabilities across...

Microsoft has rolled the Xbox PC app out to Arm-based Windows 11 devices, making local Game Pass installs and a larger slice of the Xbox PC catalog available on Snapdragon and other Arm-powered laptops and handhelds — a shift built on Prism emulator upgrades, new anti-cheat support, and closer cooperation with silicon partners. Background / Overview For years Windows on Arm has been a niche within the PC ecosystem: attractive for battery life and thin form factors, but hamstrung by...

Microsoft has rolled the Xbox PC app out to Arm-based Windows 11 machines, a pragmatic milestone that shifts many Arm laptops and handhelds from “streaming-first” curiosities to devices capable of local Game Pass installs and true offline play—while leaving important caveats about performancerformance, anti‑cheat, and per‑title validation in place. Background Arm-based Windows PCs have long promised a compelling mix of battery life, thermals, and mobility, but gaming on those devices has...

When a sector’s wiring runs across continents and under oceans, a single act of geopolitics can ripple from the diplomatic backrooms to the redundant power feeds under your office floor — and the data center industry is precisely that kind of transcontinental project, fragile at the seams and relentless in its scale. Background The recent opinion that circulated under the headline "Preparing for stupid" frames a stark, if hyperbolic, premise: the worst realistic geopolitical outcomes —...

Microsoft has quietly pushed another pair of incremental but strategically significant updates to two of Windows’ most familiar tools — Notepad and Paint — rolling new Markdown and AI improvements out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels today, January 21, 2026. Background / Overview For the past two years Microsoft has steadily transformed Windows’ in‑box utilities from tiny, single‑purpose apps into lightweight creative and productivity surfaces that also serve as testbeds...

Microsoft’s latest PowerToys release, v0.97.0, delivers a conspicuous mix of ergonomic polish and ambitious UI expansion: a brand-new mouse utility called CursorWrap that “teleports” the pointer across screen edges, and a sweeping overhaul of Command Palette that pushes the feature toward becoming a true control center for PowerToys. The update also widens command-line control across modules, brings a handful of thoughtful quality-of-life fixesxes, and continues the project’s ongoing...

Nex Computer’s NexPhone is the latest attempt to turn a single handset into a genuine pocket‑sized workstation, promising three distinct operating environments—Android for daily mobile use, a full Debian Linux desktop available as an app, and a separately bootable Windows 11 partition—at a mid‑range $549 with refundable preorder deposits and shipments slated for Q3 2026. Background The idea of a phone that becomes a desktop is not new, but NexPhone is notable for trying to deliver three...

Almost a decade after Microsoft quietly exited the smartphone market, a small Hong Kong company has put a provocative idea back on the table: what if a single pocket device could genuinely be a phone, a Linux workstation, and a full Windows 11 PC? Nex Computer’s NexPhone promises exactly that — a midrange handset that ships with Android and a Debian-style Linux desktop, and can reboot into Windows 11 on ARM to become a full Windows machine when you plug it into a monitor. The pitch is...