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Unless you’ve actively blocked them, Windows 10 is very likely installing updates automatically — and if you like to know exactly what changed and when, there are several built‑in ways to inspect the update history, along with more powerful administrator tools for deep forensic checks and exportable audit records. Background / Overview For most users the quickest route to see what Windows 10 has installed is the Settings UI: open Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → View update...

Microsoft’s weekly roundup of noteworthy Windows apps and platform moves landed with two headline items this week: Microsoft reopened the Windows 10 Beta Channel for Insiders and the “new Outlook for Windows” gained offline mail and compose support — while NVIDIA pushed a major update to its desktop software that adds AV1 recording and one‑click GPU tuning. These developments matter for two distinct but overlapping audiences: everyday Windows users who will notice improved offline...

Microsoft’s latest preview for Windows 11 — delivered as KB5015882 — brings a mix of user-facing options, stability fixes and enterprise-focused adjustments that are worth attention despite the update being labeled “non-security.” What began life as a Release Preview-channel build (22000.829 / build 22000.832 in rolling channels) introduces an out-of-box experience (OOBE) upgrade prompt, grants new control over urgent notifications while Focus Assist is active, and patches a number of File...

The PC industry's boldest marketing bet of the last 18 months—the idea that “AI PCs” would ignite a fresh upgrade cycle—has run into a stark reality check: the silicon is arriving faster than the clear, everyday use cases that would make consumers and IT buyers actually pay a premium for it. Background: the promise, the spec sheet, and the pivot When Microsoft and OEM partners introduced the Copilot+ and AI PC narrative, they anchored the story to a concrete-sounding hardware bar: a...

Windows 95’s quarter‑century anniversary resurfaced an unlikely piece of nostalgia: a packaged Electron app that boots the original OS — complete with WordPad, FreeCell, Calculator and Media Player — on modern Windows 10/11, macOS, and Linux systems, letting you play era‑classic games such as Doom and Wolfenstein 3D while offering a fast, browser‑style trip down the 1990s memory lane. Background / Overview Windows 95 was released to retail on August 24, 1995, and it changed the expectations...

This week’s Microsoft Store roundup centers on a compact but useful mix of new games, productivity utilities and platform-level tweaks: from a VR-ready mini‑golf sim and a Lego robotics companion, to sensor diagnostics and a Microsoft-supplied media codec extension that fills a long-standing web playback gap. The short list of highlights also landed against bigger platform milestones — Microsoft reported that Windows 10 was running on more than 600 million devices at the time — and the...

StatCounter’s November snapshot showed a fight that almost mattered: Windows 10 inched forward but did not topple Windows 7, narrowing the gap to roughly one percentage point — a shift that is meaningful for commentators but, on closer inspection, little more than a snapshot in an imperfect measurement system. Background / Overview StatCounter’s monthly “Desktop Windows Version Market Share Worldwide” figures have long been a focal point for coverage of the Windows upgrade race. In October...

If a recent Windows 10 preview update left your taskbar scrambled — icons overlapping, disappearing, or hiding behind the clock — there's a high chance it’s the KB5003214 cumulative preview and, fortunately, there are straightforward workarounds you can apply right now. Background / Overview Microsoft released KB5003214 as a May 25, 2021 optional cumulative preview for Windows 10 (applies to versions 2004, 20H2, and 21H1) and one of its headline features was the rollout of News and Interests...

The NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M is a decade‑old mobile workstation GPU that still appears in HP and other OEM spare listings, and while it can be made to run on modern Windows 10 systems, the compatibility and driver story is complex: OEM‑tuned drivers or archived NVIDIA Quadro/R340 family packages are usually required, Windows Update may only provide a basic signed adapter, and relying on third‑party repackagers carries real security and stability risks. This article verifies the Quadro FX 880M...

Microsoft has quietly pushed an optional, non‑security preview cumulative update—KB5003690—to supported Windows 10 branches, packaging a string of quality fixes aimed at smoothing gaming performance, restoring crisp taskbar text, and resolving several stubborn input and sign‑in regressions that have plagued some users. Background Microsoft issued KB5003690 through the Windows Insider Beta and Release Preview channels before widening the rollout to broader Windows 10 systems running versions...

Cisco’s move into servers marks one of the most consequential product launches in the company’s history: the Unified Computing System (UCS) bundles compute, networking, storage access, and virtualization into a single, policy-driven platform and it arrived with an unusually broad ecosystem of heavyweight partners — Microsoft, Red Hat, Accenture, VMware, EMC, Intel and others — signaling Cisco’s intent to compete beyond switches and routers and into blades, virtualization, and cloud...

Hertz’s experiments with Microsoft Power Platform show how a global mobility business can turn frontline pain points into measurable automation and AI wins — a pragmatic, low-code pathway from tactical fixes to strategic modernization that’s already delivering employee productivity gains and faster customer support responses. Background / Overview Hertz is a global mobility and vehicle rental business operating the Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, and Firefly brands across roughly 11,000–11,400...

This week’s Microsoft Store roundup spotlights a handful of small-but-useful arrivals and platform-side moves that matter to power users: the open-source RoundedTB taskbar tool, a new Microsoft-delivered Speech Pack entry appearing in the Store, and a batch of incremental Sysinternals updates that quietly improve diagnostic tooling on Windows. Background BetaNews’ weekly “Best Windows 10 apps this week” column continues to serve as a discovery feed for compact utilities, games and...

Aquantia's release of the AQtion AQN-107 "Gamer Edition" 10G PCIe network card repackages multi‑gig iron for a gaming audience — a $90, single‑port 10GbE adapter bundled with Windows-only traffic‑prioritization software, and with Linux kernel support on the driver side — and it raises the familiar question: is a 10G NIC a practical, latency‑reducing upgrade for everyday gamers, or a prestige purchase better‑suited to LAN rooms, streamers, and future‑proofers? Background / Overview Aquantia...

Microsoft’s decision to add a lightweight keep‑awake utility to PowerToys marks a small but pragmatic win for power users: the Awake tool—briefly known in development as “Espresso”—lets you prevent Windows from going to sleep without rewriting power plans, and it ships with a simple UI, CLI support and timed modes that suit both one‑off tasks and scripted workflows. This addition addresses a long‑standing, low‑friction pain point (long downloads, presentations, CI builds) while raising...

SymphonyAI’s rollout of eight purpose‑built industrial AI applications for the CPG food and beverage sector signals a major push to move beyond generic “manufacturing AI” and into line‑speed, domain‑aware solutions that target the unique constraints of high‑velocity beverage and food production. Background / Overview Food and beverage manufacturing is an unforgiving environment for automation and analytics: packaging lines can operate at hundreds of units per minute, thermal processes...

BetaNews’s latest weekly Microsoft Store roundup keeps the steady cadence of small, useful arrivals and incremental updates that make the Store worth checking each week: this edition (four‑hundred‑and‑one in the series) highlights a handful of practical utilities — an Instagram grid slicer, Norton’s URL‑safety Edge extension, a macOS Mojave–style dynamic desktop port, plus modest updates to mainstream apps such as Dropbox and Microsoft Whiteboard — while also noting the backdrop of the...

The AMD Radeon HD 7340 is a modest integrated GPU found in low‑power APUs and entry laptops from the 2012 era, and getting the best driver for Windows 10 is less about chasing the newest Catalyst or Adrenalin package and more about choosing the safest, most compatible option for stability, security, and the features you actually need. Practical experience from long‑running Windows and driver communities shows that Microsoft’s Windows Update driver or a vendor‑supplied OEM driver is the...

Microsoft's ongoing push to make Copilot a first‑class assistant on Windows 11 has taken a conspicuous new turn: preview build artifacts and Insider sleuthing show an invisible “Chat with Copilot” trigger inside File Explorer, along with a “Detach Copilot” affordance that points to a docked, detachable chat pane living directly in the file manager. The discovery—based on resource strings and a hover‑only UI hotspot found in Windows Insider build 26220.x—signals Microsoft is testing a more...

Windows administrators must treat the Windows Deployment Services (WDS) hands‑free deployment change as an immediate operational imperative: Microsoft’s January 13, 2026 guidance closes a long‑standing insecure channel used by unattended installations and forces organizations to choose security over convenience in provisioning workflows. Background Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a network‑based provisioning role that many enterprises use to PXE‑boot target machines and deliver Windows...