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A sudden, unsettling development in the handheld‑PC world has put owners of several high‑end Windows 11 devices on alert: multiple reports and OEM responses suggest AMD has stopped delivering new driver updates for the Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU. If that reporting is correct, it would leave a cluster of popular handhelds — including the original Asus ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and some factory configurations of the Legion Go S and ROG Ally X family — without fresh validated graphics and...

Microsoft’s own list of “best productivity apps in Windows” places Copilot at the top — and that choice tells us as much about Microsoft’s product positioning as it does about real‑world productivity gains for users. Background / Overview Microsoft published a promoted Windows page titled “Best productivity apps in Windows for getting more done,” and it lists nine built‑in Windows tools with Microsoft Copilot sitting in the number‑one slot ahead of long‑established utilities like To Do...

If you booted a Windows 11 PC in 2025–2026 and found an ever-present Copilot icon, a Copilot entry in Edge, Notepad, Paint, File Explorer’s right‑click menu, and even a dedicated Copilot key on your laptop, you’re not imagining things—Microsoft has intentionally layered Copilot across the OS, and removing it reliably now requires a methodical, multi‑layer approach rather than a single toggle. Background Microsoft’s Copilot is no longer a small sidebar experiment; it is a family of features...

Shopify’s latest push — turning AI from a feature into a commerce surface — is more than marketing flourishes: it’s an attempt to re-architect how discovery, negotiation and checkout work in an agent-driven world. By combining a merchant‑grade catalog, an embedded merchant AI assistant (Sidekick), an open commerce standard co‑developed with Google (the Universal Commerce Protocol), and what Shopify calls Agentic Storefronts to distribute those capabilities across major AI channels, Shopify...

Advertising is moving into the very place users now expect authoritative, conversational answers: AI-driven search and chat interfaces are becoming ad surfaces, and that shift rewrites measurement, creative, privacy and publisher economics at once. Background / Overview The rise of AI search engines — conversational assistants and generative “answer engines” that synthesize web content into a single response — has created a new discovery layer between users and the open web. Where...

Reltio’s recent Microsoft Azure certification is more than a marketing feather in its cap — it’s a practical acceleration point for enterprises looking to feed high‑quality, governed data into AI and analytics workloads on Azure, and it changes the procurement and deployment calculus for data teams building enterprise AI...

Linux’s fingerprints are all over modern Windows — not just in the developer tooling that lets engineers run containers and build apps, but in everyday features millions of users now take for granted. What started as a set of pragmatic, open-source approaches on UNIX and Linux systems has seeped into Windows over the past decade: virtual desktops for sane multitasking, package managers for one-command installs, the Windows Subsystem for Linux for native Linux workflows, a built‑in OpenSSH...

Microsoft’s long, slow migration away from the classic Control Panel hit a new milestone this week when Windows Insiders spotted a user-account rename option appearing inside the modern Settings app — a small change on the surface, but one that underscores a decade-long strategy to consolidate legacy configuration into a single, touch-friendly interface. ade of dual UIs and gradual consolidation The first hint that Microsoft wanted a single configuration experience arrived with Windows 8 in...

Microsoft’s February firmware for the Surface Pro (11th Gen) is more than routine housekeeping: it plugs several high-impact holes that affected cellular connectivity, video conferencing, docking, and HDR playback — and it arrives at a moment when Microsoft is actively promoting 5G Windows laptops through enterprise partnerships. Background / Overview The Surface Pro (11th Gen) sits at the center of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC strategy: premium hardware, optional mobile broadband, and a...

Intel’s customer-facing support model has shifted sharply: the company is routing most inbound requests through a new AI front end called Ask Intel and has removed public inbound phone lines in the majority of countries, a move that signals a broad, structural shift to a “digital‑first” support model and raises practical, technical, and operational questions for both consumers and channel partners. Background Intel’s Ask Intel rollout arrives at the end of a year in which the company...

Four of the industry's best-known large-language models have been placed on a short, official leash for classroom use in the United Arab Emirates: the Ministry of Education’s new guidance authorises OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude — but only under tight, teacher-led conditions designed to protect academic integrity, privacy, and cultural norms. Background / Overview The announcement comes as part of a broader Ministry publication titled Safe and...

Windows 11’s AI pivot didn’t arrive slowly — it arrived as a tidal wave: Copilot, Copilot+ hardware, Recall, AI Actions, Click to Do, in‑app generative tools and a monthly “continuous innovation” cadence that has left many users and IT teams struggling to keep pace. The early chapter excerpt from Paul Thurrott’s De‑Enshittify Windows 11 captures that dizzying, sometimes reckless acceleration and gives practical, usable guidance for what to keep, what to disable, and how to reclaim control of...

Microsoft’s gaming business turned a page this week when Satya Nadella tapped Asha Sharma — a senior Microsoft AI executive — to run Microsoft Gaming, a move that immediately reshuffles the leadership deck, elevates longtime studio chief Matt Booty, and leaves Xbox’s future squarely focused on reconciling creative craft with platform-scale economics. Background Microsoft’s relationship with games is long and complicated: from early PC hits like Flight Simulator to the launch of the original...

Aramco’s newly announced memorandum of understanding with Microsoft, signed on February 12, 2026, signals a deliberate push by two industry giants to accelerate the industrialization of artificial intelligence across Saudi Arabia’s energy sector—while simultaneously attempting to square capability-building, data sovereignty, and commercial co‑innovation into one strategic package. The MoU is explicitly exploratory and non-binding, but its scope—covering cloud deployment roadmaps with...

On February 23, 2026 the question “Is Microsoft Azure down?” trended in forums and community threads after a wave of user reports and frustrated admins posted errors and timeouts. The short answer for most customers: no — Microsoft’s public status systems and multiple independent monitors showed Azure operational on February 23, 2026, but localized and service-specific impacts continue to cause confusion. This article dissects what happened, explains how to verify whether Azure is genuinely...

Microsoft quietly elevated its own AI assistant to the starring role in a new Windows promotional roundup — placing Copilot at the top of a “Best productivity apps in Windows for getting more done” post — and the move has touched off a predictable mix of admiration, skepticism, and privacy worry across IT teams and user communities. The promotion comes at a sensitive moment: Copilot’s capabilities have broadened rapidly from chat and summarization into document creation, cross‑account...

A large, noisy wave of AI announcements has crashed into the consumer device market — but a surprising shoreline remains untouched: more than a third of U.S. adults say they don’t want AI on their devices at all. That gap between vendor enthusiasm and buyer appetite isn’t just a footnote; it poses a strategic and ethical problem for device makers, platform owners, carriers, and the software ecosystem that’s betting on AI as a new revenue engine. Background The consumer AI story since late...

Windows 11’s long-standing battery and power-management tools have finally extended a meaningful hand to desktop users: Energy Saver (often referred to in early previews as Power Saving Mode) can now be enabled on systems that never leave the wall socket. The switch — exposed in Settings and Quick Settings — lets you force Windows into a persistent, lower-power state that trims background activity, reduces display and platform power, and caps certain performance behaviors. For users and...

WhatsApp’s long-running push to make messaging as seamless on the desktop as it is on the phone may be about to get a fresh boost: evidence in recent Windows Insider builds suggests WhatsApp could be the next third‑party app to adopt Windows 11’s Cross‑Device Resume functionality, a platform feature that surfaces your active Android app sessions on the PC and — with a single click — lets you pick up where you left off. The toggle has appeared briefly in some preview builds and on a handful...

Microsoft’s Paint just gained the one small, stubborn feature that’s stood between it and everyday, no-fuss image editing: freeform rotation of shapes, text, and selections — now rolling to Windows Insiders as part of Paint version 11.2601.391.0. The change is deceptively simple: select an object, drag the rotate handle that appears above it, and the object will rotate to any angle; for exact work there’s also a Custom rotate box where you can type a numeric degree value. This functionality...