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Microsoft’s Copilot push accelerated again this week with two related but distinct developments: the Copilot Studio extension for Visual Studio Code has been declared generally available, and Microsoft’s Copilot-powered partnership with Kenyan startup Zendawa is rolling out practical, revenue‑preserving AI tools for neighborhood pharmacies. Together these moves illustrate Microsoft’s two-track Copilot strategy — expanding developer tooling inside VS Code while exporting Copilot capabilities...

Microsoft’s migration and enterprise backup moves are tightening the lifelines for businesses and power users preparing to leave Windows 10 behind, but the convenience comes with operational caveats IT teams must plan for now. In recent weeks Microsoft and third‑party reporting have surfaced two related developments: a native migration/backup flow intended to make upgrading to Windows 11 simpler for end users, and a new enterprise‑oriented “Windows Backup for Organizations” feature that...

Microsoft has quietly given IT administrators a supported — if deliberately narrow — way to remove the consumer Microsoft Copilot app from managed Windows 11 devices through a new Group Policy, but the control is a one‑time, conditional cleanup tool rather than a fleet‑wide “kill switch.” Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot family now covers several overlapping experiences: the free, consumer‑facing Microsoft Copilot app that shows up on many Windows 11 images, the paid, tenant‑managed...

Microsoft has begun a staggered, OS‑level rollout of its AI assistant Copilot across Windows 11, turning what was once a sidebar experiment into a multimodal platform woven into the taskbar, Start menu, File Explorer and core update channels while other Windows 11 components—from Sticky Notes to Secure Boot certificate handling—receive smaller but important updates in the same wave. Background Since its introduction as a cross‑surface assistant, Copilot has evolved from an add‑on chat window...

Microsoft has quietly given administrators a supported—but deliberately narrow—way to remove the consumer Microsoft Copilot app from managed Windows 11 devices through a new Group Policy surfaced in the January 2026 Insider Preview. Background / Overview Windows 11’s Copilot ecosystem now includes a free consumer-facing Copilot app that many OEM images and provisioned images include, deep OS-level integrations (taskbar button, keyboard shortcuts, Explorer context menus), and a paid...

Microsoft has quietly pushed an out‑of‑cycle set of patches that touches a wide swath of Windows platforms — from legacy desktop builds to server editions and even Windows RT — and includes cumulative fixes for Internet Explorer that close severe, remotely exploitable bugs. The releases, which arrived outside the normal monthly Patch Tuesday cadence, bundle a mix of non‑security stability updates and security patches that address memory‑corruption and remote‑code‑execution vectors, including...

Microsoft's recent Windows- and OneDrive-related headlines — from OneDrive offline quirks on mobile to a WinUI 3.0 roadmap and the long-rumored "Sun Valley" redesign — paint a clear picture: Microsoft is juggling major design and platform work while still patching evergreen stability and compatibility problems. The week’s BetaNews dispatches and accompanying community threads make a useful snapshot of where Windows, the Microsoft Store ecosystem, and OneDrive are today — and where they might...

Windows 11 quietly packs a surprising number of productivity tools and accessibility features that many users never discover — and a recent guide highlighting five “hidden” Windows 11 features surfaced both the conveniences and the gotchas worth knowing. The roundup we reviewed (which emphasized Focus Sessions, a window‑shake declutter gesture, clipboard history, Dynamic Lock, and voice control) is a useful starting point, but a closer look shows where the guide hits the mark, where it...

Windows 11 is quietly maturing into an operating system of many small revolutions: tucked-away productivity tools, expanding AI services that surface in unexpected places, and a steady stream of updates that shift the platform toward a more managed, security-first posture. Over the past year the conversation among enthusiasts and IT pros has split into two themes — discoverability and control. On one hand, Microsoft keeps adding genuinely useful, low-friction features hidden in Settings and...

The collision between generative AI and everyday systems has a new, uncomfortable rhythm: productivity promises followed by governance headaches, surprise design choices, and in at least one high‑stakes case, a policing decision that collapsed under the weight of an AI hallucination. Over the last months the same supplier — Microsoft — has sat at the center of multiple headlines: a Copilot misstep that helped trigger a political crisis for West Midlands Police, code artifacts and Insider...

Microsoft has warned that a recent update branch that includes KB5019509 can cause enterprise endpoints using DirectAccess to get stuck in a perpetual “Connecting…” state after a temporary network interruption or when roaming between Wi‑Fi access points, and the company has issued mitigation guidance including a Known Issue Rollback (KIR) and an enterprise Group Policy workaround while advising a simple reboot as a short‑term fix. Background DirectAccess is a legacy Microsoft remote‑access...

Microsoft’s engineering rhythm rarely produces big-bang surprises; instead, the company advances in a steady cadence of focused improvements across developer tooling, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise modernization services — a pattern that’s visible in three recent pieces of Microsoft-related coverage. Windows Terminal Preview 1.11 adds a set of pragmatic, productivity-focused refinements that tidy long-standing UX gaps and pane workflows for power users. Industry commentary on...

Windows 10’s story in recent coverage is one of steady momentum and stubborn resilience: adoption metrics and corporate milestones show the platform remaining a dominant, pragmatic choice for millions, while legacy holdouts — notably Windows 7 users — continue to cling to familiar environments even as Microsoft nudges the ecosystem with UI changes, new search behavior, and periodic service hiccups. At the same time, a string of smaller but visible incidents — from a widely reported Windows...

Windows 10’s era of free, vendor-supplied security updates ended with a clear calendar cut‑off on October 14, 2025, and Microsoft’s replacement path is a time‑boxed, security‑only Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that shifts the burden — and in many cases the cost — of staying protected onto users and organizations. Background Microsoft published a firm lifecycle timeline for Windows 10 that culminated in the end of mainstream servicing on October 14, 2025. After that date, ordinary...

Microsoft’s move to make Copilot a native checkout surface — with PayPal supplying catalog sync, branded in-chat checkout, guest payments and card acceptance — marks a decisive shift: conversational assistants are no longer limited to recommendations, they are becoming transactional endpoints where discovery and payment happen in the same conversation. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout initiative folds discovery, product exploration and payment into a single conversational...

Microsoft’s January servicing wave has left a larger-than-usual trail of operational headaches: a cumulative update that upended Microsoft Defender for Endpoint onboarding, emergency, out‑of‑band patches to repair a Kerberos authentication regression that broke domain sign‑ins, and follow‑on fixes for Cloud PC and AVD authentication failures — all appearing within days of each other and forcing administrators into hard choices between security and availability. Background Enterprise Windows...

Microsoft’s recent flurry of announcements and product moves—spanning sensorized meeting-room displays, stronger protections for “data in use,” a commercial tie-up to bring Box storage tighter into Azure, and a problematic Windows 11 cumulative update that disrupted Azure Virtual Desktop sessions—makes clear that Microsoft’s enterprise story in 2026 is simultaneously expansive and operationally brittle: big platform promises, real technical progress, and an urgent need for clearer...

Global PC shipments closed out 2025 with an unexpectedly strong holiday push: fourth-quarter volumes rose 9.6% year‑over‑year to 76.4 million units, capping a full year of recovery that saw roughly 284.7 million PCs ship worldwide. The surge — confirmed by multiple industry trackers — was driven by a convergence of forces rarely seen together: the formal end of support for Windows 10 in October, early‑year tariff fears that prompted vendors to front‑load inventory, and an emerging...

Windows 10 Education machines are still a common host for the same Bluetooth headphone headaches that frustrate home users and IT teams alike: devices that pair but play no audio, stereo collapsing to a low‑quality mono whenever the mic is used, or headsets that refuse to connect at all. These problems are rarely caused by a single bug; they arise from the interaction of headset firmware, the PC’s Bluetooth radio and drivers, Windows services and audio routing, and—crucially on Windows...

The holiday quarter of 2025 delivered a shock to pundits and procurement teams alike: global PC shipments surged as the Windows 10 end‑of‑support deadline collided with tariff fears and an accelerating vendor push for AI‑capable PCs, producing a late‑year spike that is already reshaping vendor strategies, channel inventories and IT migration plans. Background / Overview Microsoft formally ended mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, a hard calendar cutoff that removed routine...