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For years Dell’s PC business has been sliding into a slow-motion identity crisis; Jeff Clarke’s reassignment to run the division is the clearest signal yet that the company intends to stop drifting and start rebuilding the hardware culture that once made Dell synonymous with premium Windows laptops. erview Dell’s CES 2026 reset — a practical re-embrace of the XPS brand and a new “One Dell Way” operational push — reads like a public admission that the company lost its way after the EMC merger...

The chief constable of West Midlands Police, Craig Guildford, has retired after an independent review and parliamentary scrutiny found that his force’s recommendation to bar away supporters from Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Europa League visit rested in part on a fabricated item generated by Microsoft’s Copilot — an AI hallucination that slipped into operational intelligence and precipitated a political crisis. ice.uk](]) Background West Midlands Police advised Birmingham’s multi‑agency Safety...

IBM’s new Enterprise Advantage consulting service marks a deliberate push to turn the promise of agentic AI into a repeatable, governed delivery model for large organizations, offering a packaged playbook, reusable agent libraries, and a platform approach that claims to work across major clouds and model providers. Background IBM announced Enterprise Advantage on January 19, 2026 as an asset‑based consulting service that combines IBM Consulting expertise with technology derived from IBM’s...

Opera GX’s official X post on January 14 signalled what many Linux gamers have been asking for: a native Linux build of the gaming-focused Opera GX browser, with the company setting a Q1 2026 release window — a move that places a mainstream, feature-rich gaming browser squarely into the Linux ecosystem and onto devices such as the Steam Deck. Background / Overview Opera GX launched in 2019 as a distinct, gamer-oriented spin on Opera’s Chromium-based browser. It bundled a visual identity...

Microsoft pushed an emergency out‑of‑band (OOB) Windows update on January 17, 2026 after its January 13 Patch Tuesday rollup introduced two disruptive regressions—one that caused certain Windows 11 machines to restart instead of shutting down or hibernating, and another that broke Remote Desktop/Cloud PC authentication flows—prompting rapid fixes and a suite of remediation steps aimed primarily at enterprise and managed-device customers. Overview Microsoft’s normal monthly security rollups...

Microsoft’s January Patch Tuesday produced a narrow but painful regression: after installing the January 13, 2026 cumulative update (KB5073455) some Windows 11 systems configured with System Guard Secure Launch refused to power off or enter hibernation and instead restarted — a problem Microsoft acknowledged and patched with an out‑of‑band update (KB5077797) on January 17, 2026. Background / Overview Windows’ monthly servicing process bundles a large number of security fixes and reliability...

Microsoft has pushed emergency out‑of‑band (OOB) fixes for Windows 11 after its January Patch Tuesday rollup introduced several high‑impact regressions — most notably broken Remote Desktop authentication that blocked cloud and AVD sign‑ins, and a Secure Launch–related power‑state bug that caused some machines to restart instead of shutting down or hibernating — following an earlier October OOB that repaired a separate Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) USB input failure. Background /...

Acer’s new Veriton lineup lands with a compact, AI‑first mini workstation — the Veriton RA100 — that pairs AMD’s Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 APU, a beefy on‑chip neural engine and high‑bandwidth LPDDR5X memory to deliver Windows 11 Copilot+ experiences and on‑device model inference for prosumers, creators and small studios. Overview Acer is expanding its Veriton desktop family with multiple new business‑focused systems, headlined by the Veriton RA100 AI Mini Workstation (model VRA100). The RA100 is...

Microsoft’s October cumulative for Windows 11 has produced a wave of headaches for gamers and creative pros after widespread reports of dramatic frame‑rate drops, stuttering and occasional black screens — a regression that appears tied to KB5066835 and that prompted NVIDIA to ship a targeted GeForce Hotfix (581.94) while AMD and Intel responses remain uneven. Background The October 14, 2025 cumulative update for Windows 11 — published under the package ID KB5066835 and rolling into OS builds...

Windows 11 quietly hides a toolkit of oddball, useful and occasionally risky features inside the Settings app — a mix of modern conveniences, accessibility advances and legacy relics that reward exploration but demand caution. The recent tour of these options highlights ten particularly surprising items — Dynamic Lock, Nearby Sharing, Storage Sense, Project to Your PC, Clipboard Sync, an End Task button on the taskbar, Game Mode, Eye Tracking, Title‑Bar Window Shake and Device Portal — and...

Microsoft’s January servicing cycle produced an unexpected and high‑profile reliability issue: a Patch Tuesday rollup released on January 13, 2026 caused some Windows 11 machines to restart when users attempted to shut them down or hibernate, and it also introduced credential‑prompt failures that blocked remote sign‑in flows — problems Microsoft patched with emergency, out‑of‑band updates on January 17. Background Windows monthly cumulative updates bundle security fixes, servicing‑stack...

Microsoft pushed an emergency out‑of‑band patch after its January Patch Tuesday rollup left some Windows 11 machines refusing to stay powered off and caused Remote Desktop sign‑in failures, forcing administrators and users into a rapid mitigate‑and‑patch cycle over the course of a few days. Background Microsoft’s regular January 2026 security rollup for Windows shipped on January 13, 2026 and included cumulative updates across multiple Windows servicing branches. Within days, telemetry and...

Microsoft is quietly rolling out a practical — and potentially game-changing — update to Windows Backup for Organizations: a new first sign-in restore flow that gives users a built-in “second chance” to restore their Windows settings, Start menu pins and Microsoft Store app list at the first interactive desktop sign-in if they missed or dismissed the restore prompt during OOBE (Out‑Of‑Box Experience). Background Windows Backup for Organizations launched to address a narrow but recurring...

Microsoft’s Copilot has moved from helpful search box to a more human‑like companion: an orchestrated global push that pairs a selectable “Real Talk” conversational style with an expressive avatar, expanded voice languages, group collaboration, and persistent memory—changes that make Copilot feel more social and opinionated while raising new questions about privacy, governance and trust. Background Microsoft unveiled a broad consumer refresh of Copilot—frequently called the “Fall...

ASUS’s new ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial solves a perennial headache for PC builders by shipping with Wi‑Fi drivers pre‑installed on the motherboard itself — a small, practical innovation that could make the difference between a frustrated first boot and a smooth Windows setup for many users. Background Motherboard design has always been about trade‑offs: more features, more complexity; more polish, more cost. For long‑time PC builders the most mundane friction point has been drivers — and...

Artificial intelligence is no longer a feature add‑on to digital advertising — it is remaking the very architecture of discovery, measurement, and monetization, and the Boston Consulting Group’s recent briefing frames that shift as the most important tectonic event in advertising since paid search first rewired the web. Background / Overview For the past decade advertising operated on a familiar playbook: audiences navigate the web via links, feeds, and store pages; platforms intermediate...

The best way to fix a system is to stop blaming the people who run it — and to make it safe for them to tell you when something’s gone wrong. Background / Overview The Computing.co.uk page you supplied (IT Essentials: No blame, no shame) appears to be unavailable; the publisher returns an error for that specific URL. Given the broader coverage in the IT Essentials series and recent Computing reporting about cyber culture, the missing piece sits inside a recurring editorial thread urging a...

WKD has appointed Liverpool-based brand agency Continuous as its lead creative partner for a multi-year programme that will underpin the RTD’s 30th‑anniversary relaunch in 2026 — a campaign backed by a reported investment north of £10 million and positioned as the brand’s most ambitious moment in recent memory. Background WKD launched in the mid‑1990s and rose to household recognition across the UK as a high‑profile ready‑to‑drink (RTD) brand with a distinctive, irreverent personality...

Microsoft has begun enforcing a long‑announced tightening of mobile app security inside Microsoft Intune’s Mobile Application Management (MAM) service, and the change is already producing visible disruption for organizations and end users that did not update their managed apps and app‑management tooling in time. The enforcement centers on minimum Intune SDK and wrapper versions for iOS apps and a required Intune Company Portal version for Android, with non‑compliant apps being prevented from...

Microsoft appears to be preparing a free, ad‑supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let non‑Game Pass owners stream digital Xbox games in time‑limited sessions — an experiment built to widen reach, squeeze more value from Azure capacity, and offer a low‑cost alternative for players priced out of high‑end hardware. Early evidence surfaced in the form of an in‑app message reading “1 hour of ad‑supported playtime per session,” and multiple independent outlets report the feature is...