Featured content

The tectonic plates of desktop computing are shifting—quietly, cumulatively, and in ways that matter to IT leaders. What began as curiosity and opportunistic testing in 2025 has become a set of measurable signals: a wave of distro downloads timed to Windows 10’s end of support, rising Linux usage in web and gaming telemetry, clearer OEM engagement, and an approaching Ubuntu LTS that tightens the enterprise story. Together these forces make 2026 the year when more Linux desktops could...

The January 13, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11 (KB5074109) delivers a heavy-duty security and quality package — but it also created a sharp trade‑off for some users: critical CVE mitigations and an NPU-related battery fix arrive alongside a client-side regression that can break Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and a cluster of community‑reported display and gaming problems. This feature unpacks what KB5074109 changes, what’s actually verified, the tangible risks for different user groups...

Microsoft’s January baseline for Windows 11, rolled up as KB5074109 on January 13, 2026, delivered a heavy dose of security hardening and platform fixes — and an inconvenient surprise for some enterprise users: a client‑side regression that can break Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365 Cloud PC sign‑ins. At the same time, the wider Windows and gaming ecosystem saw positive signals: the Wine compatibility layer moved closer to Wine 11 (promising benefits for Proton and SteamOS), and a...

Microsoft’s push to fold agentic AI into standard developer workflows took a decisive step forward this week as the Microsoft Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code reached general availability, bringing “agents as code” into the mainstream and creating a new developer-centric path for building, testing, and governing autonomous AI agents. Overview: what shipped and why it matters The core change is simple but profound: Copilot Studio agents—previously authored primarily inside a...

Microsoft and Dubai-based Pacific Controls have formalized a cloud-first play for large-scale Internet of Things deployments by bringing Pacific Controls’ Galaxy 2021 platform onto Microsoft Azure — a move that packages device gateways, big‑data telemetry and managed services into a single enterprise offering aimed at smart cities, telecom operators and heavy asset owners. Background Pacific Controls (sometimes styled Pacific Control Systems or PCS) has built its business around managed...

This week’s BetaNews roundups deliver a compact but useful pulse-check of the Microsoft Store: a handful of standout app picks (including a native YouTube client and a commercial photo editor), practical single-purpose utilities, and two platform-level items—an updated Windows 10 SDK and a Surface Pro 3 UEFI firmware release—that matter to developers and administrators alike. Background BetaNews’ weekly “Best Windows apps” and “Best Windows 10 apps” columns are short-form curations that...

Michał Kiciński’s blistering dismissal of Windows 11 as “such poor‑quality software” has done more than provoke headlines — it has crystallized a strategic inflection point for PC gaming in 2026, with GOG announcing that Linux is now a strategic priority and the company preparing concrete workstreams to make DRM‑free gaming and preservation play more cleanly on non‑Windows platforms. Background / Overview GOG’s rebirth as an independently owned storefront is the immediate catalyst for the...

If your Windows 11 laptop or desktop takes too long to reach a usable desktop, the most likely culprit is a crowded startup — dozens of apps and background services competing for CPU, disk and memory the instant you sign in. Trimming that list, and pairing it with a few housekeeping steps, can turn a sluggish boot into a snappier, more responsive start in minutes. Background Windows 11 is designed to be convenient: apps, cloud sync, and background services make features feel instantaneous...

Windows users and PC gamers face a shifting landscape this winter: incremental but meaningful fixes and insider tweaks promise faster launches and a less cluttered File Explorer, while a growing chorus of industry voices — including the new owner of GOG — is openly questioning Windows 11’s direction and nudging players and stores toward Linux-friendly strategies. At the same time, compatibility tools like Wine 11 have reached a new level of maturity, making Windows applications run more...

Microsoft has pushed Copilot Studio deeper into developer workflows by making the Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code generally available (GA), a move that folds agent authoring, versioning, and deployment into the same toolchain teams already use for application code. Background Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s low‑code/no‑code platform for building, testing, and governing AI agents that can answer questions, act on tenant data, integrate with Microsoft Graph and connectors, and...

IP Fabric’s latest update promises to remove a long-standing blind spot for hybrid teams by deepening native visibility into Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) constructs—adding Azure Firewall, Private Link and Private Endpoint context, multi‑project GCP discovery, and improved hybrid pathing—features the vendor says will make network assurance truly multi‑cloud and easier to operationalize. Background Enterprises have steadily moved to hybrid and multi‑cloud architectures, and...

Microsoft is rolling out a small but long-requested usability fix in Windows Insider builds — a visible battery percentage in the taskbar — alongside broader under-the-hood update delivery improvements that aim to make Insider builds leaner and faster to install. Background Windows Insiders have long been the frontline for testing both conspicuous UI changes and deep platform optimizations. Recent Insider Preview flights have combined a string of incremental user-facing tweaks (taskbar and...

Microsoft’s recent flurry of Windows news—ranging from a behind-the-scenes overhaul of how Insiders receive builds to feature shifts in Cortana, Mail & Calendar, and enterprise security—signals a pragmatic shift: Microsoft is balancing visible feature work with infrastructure and privacy trade-offs that will determine long-term user trust and platform health. The announcements reviewed here are small on flash but large in consequence: they affect update reliability, bandwidth use, enterprise...

Microsoft has finally drawn a hard line under the Windows Vista code lineage: with Microsoft’s final paid support channel for the Windows Server 2008 / Vista family expiring in mid‑January 2026, the Vista-era codebase is effectively out of vendor‑backed security coverage and administrators must treat any remaining instances as unsupported, higher‑risk systems. Background Windows Server 2008 — the server sibling of Windows Vista and part of the NT 6.x family — shipped in 2008 and for nearly...

Alibaba’s consumer Qwen chat has quietly graduated from “research demo” to a transaction‑enabled assistant, and at the same moment the Wikimedia Foundation is re‑casting Wikipedia as a paid data partner for major AI labs — two linked developments that reveal how generative AI is evolving from conversational novelty into a commercial plumbing for search, shopping, productivity and training data. Background / Overview The past week produced two closely related stories: Alibaba rolled out a...

Microsoft has closed the final vendor‑backed update channel for the Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 codebase: the last Premium Assurance entitlements expired on January 13, 2026, and with them went Microsoft’s final promised security updates for the NT 6.x (Vista/Longhorn) lineage. Background Windows Server 2008 traces its roots to the Windows Vista (NT 6.0) client architecture and first shipped to manufacturers in early 2008. Microsoft’s standard lifecycle — mainstream support followed by...

Microsoft drew a hard line on January 13, 2026: the last vendor-backed update pathway for the Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 codebase has closed, leaving any remaining Server 2008 instances without official security patches from Microsoft. Background / Overview Windows Server 2008 — the server sibling of the Windows Vista (NT 6.0) family — arrived in 2008 and went on to power countless enterprise workloads for more than a decade. Microsoft supported the product through the standard...

Microsoft has reached a definitive end‑of‑service milestone for one of its longest‑running Windows families: the final vendor‑backed security update pathway for the Vista‑era Windows Server 2008 codebase expired on January 13, 2026, closing the Premium Assurance bridge and leaving Server 2008 and its Vista lineage without further Microsoft security fixes. Background Windows Server 2008 — the server sibling of Windows Vista and part of the NT 6.x family — shipped in 2008 and has survived a...

The modern inbox is quietly becoming a battleground for convenience, data, and trust — and Gmail’s newest Gemini-powered features are the latest front line in a wider AI scramble that touches Windows, Microsoft’s Copilot ambitions, developer consoles, and even the consoles you game on. Background Windows Weekly episode 966 framed this moment as more than product updates and release notes: it’s a snapshot of an industry shifting from “AI as novelty” to “AI as operating assumption,” and the...

Microsoft’s oft-repeated line that “Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows” is now a piece of historical context rather than a roadmap — a pivot point that helps explain how Microsoft’s strategy shifted from versioned releases to continuous service and then, unexpectedly, back to a new major release with Windows 11. The fallout from that shift — closing the Windows 10 Beta channel, the October 14, 2025 end-of-support deadline, new AI pushes like Copilot, ongoing subsystem...