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Microsoft has quietly handed many Windows 10 users a one‑year safety net: a consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that can deliver critical and important security patches through October 13, 2026 without the per‑device fee originally expected — but only if users meet strict technical prerequisites and accept account‑centric conditions that raise privacy, cost, and long‑term support questions. Background / Overview Microsoft set a firm end‑of‑support date for Windows 10: October...

The clock is now unmistakable: free servicing for Windows 10 stops on October 14, 2025, and with that deadline looming Microsoft’s push toward Windows 11 just got another major tailwind — amplified today by Qualcomm’s unveiling of the Snapdragon X2 Elite family, a next‑generation PC chipset that promises notable performance, dramatic efficiency gains and new on‑device AI — the kind of hardware upgrade that gives many users a compelling reason to replace aging Windows 10 machines rather than...

Microsoft has quietly made official Windows 11 version 25H2 installation media available for download — Release Preview ISOs for the 26200 build family are now hosted on Microsoft’s servers (x64 and Arm64) alongside a lean enablement package (eKB) that upgrades fully patched Windows 11 24H2 systems with a much smaller download and a single reboot. Background / Overview Windows 11’s annual feature update cadence has evolved into a servicing-first model: most feature work is shipped inside...

Microsoft has quietly turned a previously single‑vendor Copilot architecture into a multi‑model orchestration platform by adding Anthropic’s Claude models — Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 — as selectable backends in Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher agent and in Copilot Studio, with the rollout announced on September 24, 2025. Background Microsoft 365 Copilot began as a tightly integrated productivity assistant built around a close partnership with OpenAI. That relationship delivered...

Google’s formal complaint to Brussels ratchets up one of the most consequential regulatory fights in cloud computing: the search giant says Microsoft’s cloud licensing practices lock customers into Azure, harm competition and security, and should prompt fast antitrust action from the European Commission and other regulators worldwide. Background Microsoft and its cloud business have been the subject of repeated regulatory scrutiny in recent years. The European Commission opened a market...

Microsoft’s AI strategy quietly leaped forward this week as the company rolled OpenAI’s GPT‑5‑Codex into Azure AI Foundry at general availability and opened a public preview of the same model for GitHub Copilot inside Visual Studio Code — and, in a parallel move, broadened Microsoft 365 Copilot’s model choices by adding Anthropic’s Claude family to Copilot Studio and the Researcher agent, a clear signal that Microsoft is doubling down on model choice and developer-first tooling across its...

Microsoft’s Copilot quietly shed another layer of vendor lock‑in on September 24, 2025, when the company announced that Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 would be selectable model options inside Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Researcher reasoning agent and within Copilot Studio, moving Copilot from a primarily OpenAI-powered experience toward an explicit multi‑model orchestration platform. Background / Overview Microsoft 365 Copilot launched as a flagship example of embedding large...

Microsoft has quietly removed the compatibility block that kept thousands of machines off the Windows 11 24H2 pipeline by finally fixing a long-standing interaction between the integrated camera stack and Windows Hello facial recognition — a fix that closes a year‑long chapter of upgrade holds and awkward workarounds for affected users. Background Microsoft ships major Windows feature updates gradually and cautiously; when widespread instability is detected Microsoft applies targeted...

Microsoft has quietly given millions of Windows 10 users a one‑year safety net: a consumer-focused Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that lets qualifying Home and Pro devices keep receiving critical and important security patches through October 13, 2026 — but that lifeline is narrow, account‑centric, and comes with trade‑offs many users should understand before they enroll. Background Windows 10’s scheduled end of mainstream support is October 14, 2025. After that date Microsoft will...

Microsoft quietly turned Microsoft 365 Copilot from a single‑vendor assistant into a multi‑model orchestration platform by adding Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 as selectable back‑ends in Copilot’s Researcher agent and Copilot Studio, while making clear that OpenAI models will remain part of the default mix. Background / Overview Microsoft 365 Copilot launched as an integrated LLM assistant across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, historically leaning heavily on...

A new, tightly controlled study of tournament chess players delivers a blunt—and at times unsettling—reminder: overconfidence is resilient, even in a domain built to punish it. The researchers surveyed thousands of rated players who get continuous, precise feedback on performance and still found systematic overestimation of skill, a pronounced Dunning–Kruger pattern among lower-rated players, and a striking mismatch between what players say they can do and what their ratings actually...

Microsoft has quietly redefined the boundaries of Copilot: Microsoft 365 Copilot users can now select Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 as backend engines for key Copilot surfaces, a deliberate shift from a single‑vendor dependency to explicit multi‑model orchestration within the workplace assistant. Background Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot as an LLM-driven productivity assistant embedded across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. For most of Copilot’s...

Corning will manufacture Microsoft’s Hollow Core Fiber for Azure at scale, adding a major industrial partner to the cloud giant’s bid to remake the physical underpinnings of low‑latency AI and cloud networking worldwide. Background Microsoft’s effort to commercialize hollow core fiber (HCF) for Azure began with its acquisition of Lumenisity in December 2022 and has accelerated through internal research and field deployments that the company says already carry live traffic. Microsoft’s...

Microsoft’s decision to stop routine security and feature updates for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 has forced a hard decision for millions of households and organizations: upgrade to Windows 11 where possible, buy a new PC, enroll in a short one‑year Extended Security Updates (ESU) bridge, or accept rising security and compatibility risk. Background / Overview Windows 10 launched in 2015 and went on to become the dominant desktop OS for a decade, but its lifecycle was never indefinite...

Windows runs a quiet orchestra of background services: some are essential, others are convenience features, and a few are plain background overhead that quietly eat CPU, memory, disk I/O, and — sometimes — your internet bandwidth and battery life. After pruning a small list of nonessential services I stopped seeing unexplained slowdowns, background network spikes, and occasional battery drain, and the machine simply felt snappier. The changes are not magic, but they are real: disabling a...

Systems Limited has been named to Microsoft’s AI Business Solutions Inner Circle for 2025–2026, marking a fifth consecutive inclusion in the program and reaffirming the company’s standing as a leading Microsoft systems integrator across the Middle East, Africa and beyond. Background Systems Limited’s announcement confirms it was selected for the 2025–2026 Microsoft AI Business Solutions Inner Circle, an invitation-only cohort Microsoft reserves for its highest-performing partners in the...

Lenovo’s newest SMB-focused infrastructure bundles promise to make AI-ready IT solutions for SMBs more accessible by combining validated server hardware, partner software stacks, cloud-enabled management, and consumption-based pricing — but the real value for small teams will depend on careful trade-offs between convenience, ongoing cost, and long-term flexibility. Background Small and medium businesses (SMBs) face a convergence of pressures: the need to modernize aging on‑premises...

If your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick has turned into a sluggish slideshow, the problem is almost always a stack of small issues adding up: background services, accumulated cache, automatic updates, autoplaying previews and ads, and a handful of feature toggles that chew CPU or memory on every boot. I tested and changed ten settings across two Fire TV devices and a Fire TV Stick, and the result was instant responsiveness and fewer maddening pauses — without buying new hardware. Below I explain...

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 family promises to reshape the premium Windows laptop market by pushing ARM-based silicon into territory long dominated by Apple’s M-series and high-end x86 chips — and on paper the company’s flagship, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, looks built to do exactly that. Background At Qualcomm’s Summit 2025 the company unveiled two new laptop-focused SoCs: the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. Qualcomm framed these chips as the next step in...

Medicat USB comes pre-packaged as a complete, bootable Windows rescue environment that can turn a blank flash drive into a one‑stop toolkit for troubleshooting, data recovery, malware removal, password reset, partition management, and more — a practical alternative to building a custom WinPE stick by hand. Background Medicat is distributed as a single, large archive that extracts to a Ventoy-formatted USB drive and exposes a full Mini Windows 10 (WinPE-style) desktop plus a raft of portable...