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Valve has quietly added a small but consequential check to the Steam client on Windows: the Steam beta now reports whether a machine’s Secure Boot is enabled and whether a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is present and which version it exposes — surfacing firmware-level compatibility details that have become central to modern anti‑cheat and platform-security policies. Background Modern PC platform integrity increasingly depends on two firmware‑anchored features: Secure Boot (a UEFI mechanism...

Microsoft’s last-minute regional U-turn over Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) hands a short but meaningful victory to European consumers: residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) will be able to receive the one-year post‑end‑of‑support security updates without the backup/Microsoft Account or payment conditions Microsoft originally required. This concession follows pressure from consumer groups and regulatory scrutiny under the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) and changes how...

The Geekom A9 Max AI arrives in the small‑form‑factor ring as an unapologetically powerful mini PC — and a recent hands‑on test that ran the DeepSeek model locally exposed both the promise and the practical limits of packing modern on‑device AI into a palm‑sized chassis. Background / Overview The Geekom A9 Max AI is built around AMD’s new Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 APU, pairing Zen 5 CPU cores with an RDNA 3.5 iGPU and a dedicated XDNA NPU. The vendor positions the platform as a compact desktop...

If your Windows 11 PC is feeling sluggish, cluttered, or simply a few GB short of the space you know should be free, a targeted cache cleanup can deliver a surprisingly large performance payoff — faster boots, snappier apps, and fewer odd errors caused by corrupted temporary data. Windows ships with multiple built-in tools to identify and remove cache and temporary files; when used correctly they’re safe, effective, and often reversible. This deep-dive explains what Windows caches, why they...

If your PC is still running Windows 10, the calendar is no longer a distant concern — it's a deadline with real security consequences: Microsoft will stop delivering routine security updates, feature fixes, and standard technical support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, and that shift raises the immediate practical choice every Windows 10 user faces today. The local WCPO marketplace piece and wider community guidance make the point bluntly: upgrade an eligible PC to Windows 11 (often...

Microsoft has quietly but decisively shifted Microsoft 365 Copilot from a single‑backend assistant into a managed, multi‑model orchestration platform by adding Anthropic’s Claude family — specifically Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 — as selectable engines inside Copilot’s Researcher agent and the Copilot Studio agent‑builder, with availability beginning through opt‑in early‑release channels. Background / Overview Microsoft 365 Copilot transformed Office apps into AI‑augmented...

Google’s decision to keep the pressure on Microsoft over cloud licensing turned into a public reminder this week that the fight over how Windows and SQL Server licenses move into the cloud is far from settled—and that regulators, competitors and customers are still picking through the consequences. Background Microsoft’s licensing for server and database software has long been a business-as-usual part of enterprise IT procurement: companies buy Windows Server and SQL Server licenses under...

OpenAI, SAP and Microsoft have announced a three‑way initiative — marketed as OpenAI for Germany — that promises to deliver OpenAI’s foundation models inside a German‑operated sovereign cloud run by SAP’s Delos Cloud and built on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, with an initial capacity target of roughly 4,000 GPUs and a staged public rollout aimed at government and research customers beginning in 2026. Background Germany has elevated digital sovereignty to a core public‑policy goal for...

EaseUS’ timed push of backup and migration tools lands squarely on one inescapable fact: Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, and users who haven’t prepared will face rising security and compatibility risk unless they act now. Background / Overview Microsoft’s lifecycle calendar sets a firm deadline: Windows 10 (including Home, Pro, Enterprise, Education, and IoT variants) will stop receiving regular security updates and technical assistance after...

Microsoft’s Copilot Vision is already one of those features that sounds like science fiction until you actually point a camera at a menu, or ask an AI to “read” two app windows at once and find the dates when you’re free for a baseball game — then it suddenly feels like tomorrow’s productivity tools arrived today. In a recent hands‑on walk‑through, a PCMag Australia reviewer demonstrated how Copilot Vision on iPhone and Windows can identify objects, translate menus, summarize manuals...

Valve has quietly added a small but consequential check to the Steam client on Windows: the Steam beta now reports whether a PC has Secure Boot enabled and whether a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is present and which version it exposes, surfacing firmware‑level compatibility details that have become central to modern anti‑cheat and platform security policies. Background Modern PC security and platform integrity increasingly rely on two firmware‑anchored features: Secure Boot (a UEFI feature...

Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon push aims to turn Windows 11 on Arm from a niche productivity story into a credible PC gaming platform — and the company brought partners, performance claims, and AI-forward demos to make the case. The keynote unveiled the Snapdragon X2 Elite family (including an 18‑core X2 Elite Extreme), dramatic NPU upgrades, and a string of ecosystem commitments: Epic’s anti‑cheat is moving to Arm, Razer will bring Synapse to Snapdragon PCs, and several gaming and audio apps...

New Windows laptops arriving full of preinstalled trialware, OEM utilities, games and marketing apps is still one of the fastest ways to turn a promising new machine into a sluggish, cluttered experience — and the cure is simple in concept: remove what you don’t need, stop what you don’t want running in the background, and tighten a few settings. The advice below distills a modern, practical debloating workflow for Windows 11 laptops, explains the technical tools (from Settings to PowerShell...

EaseUS’ timed product push aims to give Windows 10 users a practical, single‑vendor toolkit to protect data and simplify moves to Windows 11 ahead of Microsoft’s support cutoff on October 14, 2025 — but the offer is only as good as the process you use around it. Background / Overview Microsoft has set a fixed end‑of‑support date for Windows 10: October 14, 2025. After that date Windows 10 will continue to boot, but routine security updates, feature updates, and standard technical support...

Microsoft’s Windows ML platform has moved out of preview and into general availability, positioning Windows 11 as a mainstream host for local, on-device AI inference and giving developers a managed, system-level inference runtime that automatically leverages the best silicon on a PC — CPU, GPU, or NPU — via vendor-supplied execution providers. The announcement frames Windows ML as a production-ready, ONNX Runtime–based stack and says the platform is supported on devices running Windows 11...

Microsoft’s Copilot has officially joined the multi‑model era: Anthropic’s Claude models — Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 — are now selectable backends inside Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher agent and available as engine choices in Copilot Studio, letting enterprises toggle between OpenAI and Anthropic models for specific workloads starting with opt‑in early releases on September 24, 2025. Background For the past two years Microsoft 365 Copilot has been synonymous with...

Microsoft’s Copilot Vision promises a simple idea with big implications: let your AI assistant “see” what you see and turn that visual context into immediate, voice-driven help — from identifying a hat in your hands to cross‑checking calendars on your desktop — and the real-world results are already useful and, in some cases, transformative. Background Microsoft has threaded visual understanding into its Copilot ecosystem to make interactions more multimodal: you can point a phone camera at...

Microsoft’s Copilot has taken a decisive step away from single‑vendor dependency by adding Anthropic’s Claude models — notably Claude Opus 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4 — as selectable backends inside Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher feature and the Copilot Studio agent‑builder, a change Microsoft began rolling out in late September 2025 that formalizes Copilot as a multi‑model orchestration platform rather than a single‑provider assistant. Background Microsoft 365 Copilot launched as a deeply...

Microsoft and Curated for You (the technology behind REVOLVE’s “Curated for You”) have quietly rolled out a live, AI-driven fashion discovery layer inside Microsoft Copilot, turning natural-language wardrobe questions into visually composed, shoppable outfit edits and linking those looks to participating merchants including REVOLVE, Steve Madden, Tuckernuck, Rent the Runway and Lulus. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot has shifted from a productivity tool into a broader...

A stealthy, long-running espionage campaign that researchers have named BRICKSTORM has quietly infiltrated high-value organizations across the technology and legal sectors, maintaining extremely long dwell times and using novel techniques to hide on devices that traditional defenses often ignore. Security teams at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant have linked the activity to the cluster tracked as UNC5221, and their analysis shows the backdoor is optimized to live on...