Featured content

Newman’s Own has quietly weaponized generative AI to squeeze enterprise-grade productivity out of a 50-person operation — using Microsoft 365 Copilot to close the capability gap with multinational consumer packaged goods (CPG) rivals and, critically, direct more dollars to the Newman’s Own Foundation’s work for children in need. Background Newman’s Own began as a simple idea: actor Paul Newman sold his homemade salad dressing and pledged that all profits would be donated to charity. That...

QNAP’s new TS-h2477AXU-RP arrives as a large-capacity, cost-conscious 4U rackmount NAS that pairs an 8‑core Ryzen-class CPU with DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen5 M.2 support and ZFS-based QuTS hero features — a combination aimed squarely at storage-hungry businesses that need both scale and enterprise-grade data protection. Background QNAP has expanded its TS-hx77 family with the TS-h2477AXU-RP, positioning the device as the 24-bay flagship for customers who want high density without stepping up to...

Craft Studio’s OmniOne Pocket PC lands like a familiar idea in a new form: a compact, thumb-typed handheld that runs full Windows 11, packs an Intel N‑series APU, and promises to deliver a real desktop experience you can carry in a jacket pocket — or at least in a small bag. Background / Overview The OmniOne revives a category that tech-watchers remember as UMPCs and pocketable PCs: devices that aim to deliver a full desktop OS in a truly portable package. Unlike the recent wave of handheld...

I moved two non‑technical family members off an out‑of‑support Windows 10 install and onto Zorin OS, and the result has been quietly transformative: they lost almost none of the muscle memory from Windows, their day‑to‑day tasks run faster on old hardware, and I can manage updates and backups without daily handholding. Background / Overview Windows 10 reached end‑of‑support on October 14, 2025, which forced many households and small setups to decide between paying for extended support...

Microsoft’s latest Copilot update is a clear product push: AI-generated answers that are explicitly grounded in the web, with more visible, clickable citations, an aggregated “Show all” sources pane, and a dedicated Search mode built directly into Copilot across web, mobile, and Edge—changes Microsoft says are intended to deliver faster answers while putting provenance and user control front and center. Background / Overview Microsoft has been steadily evolving Copilot from a chat-first...

Pasco County Schools plans to unlock supervised, limited student access to Microsoft Copilot for high‑school accounts on December 1, moving from teacher‑only pilots to a phased classroom rollout that ties access to managed district accounts, age gating (13+), and teacher discretion over assignment‑level use. Background Pasco’s decision reflects a broader shift in K–12 districts away from blanket bans on consumer chatbots toward managed, tenant‑grounded deployments that pair technical...

October’s string of announcements left the AI industry with a clear theme: vendors are shifting from raw capability showmanship to operational maturity—shipping observability, governance, and compute at scale so enterprises can run AI reliably, securely, and at lower latency. Background / Overview The last month saw major platform, chip, and national-scale compute news that together change the practical picture for developers, IT leaders, and power users. Vendors are not only releasing...

Infosys’ newly announced AI Agent for the energy sector aims to convert the industry’s sprawling, heterogeneous operational data — from well logs and SCADA telemetry to downhole images and compliance PDFs — into real‑time, conversational guidance for field crews and control‑room teams, packaging that capability on top of Infosys Topaz, Infosys Cobalt and Microsoft’s Copilot/Azure AI Foundry stack. Background / Overview Infosys unveiled the energy‑sector AI Agent in a corporate release dated...

Microsoft has taken a decisive step beyond “research assistant” with Researcher by adding Computer Use — a capability that lets the agent spin up an ephemeral, sandboxed cloud PC to act on a user’s behalf: open browsers, sign in with secure handover, click and type in interactive UIs, run short terminal commands, and return an auditable visual record of what it did. This change converts Researcher from a sophisticated synthesizer into a governed, observable operator for tasks that previously...

If you love GarageBand’s simplicity but run Windows, you don’t have to abandon the intuitive “sketch‑to‑song” workflow — several mature, Windows‑friendly DAWs give you the same approachability with more power and flexibility. This feature walks through five of the best GarageBand alternatives for PC, verifies the most important claims about each product, compares workflows and costs, and highlights practical risks and trade‑offs so you can pick the DAW that fits your goals on Windows...

Windows 11 users are seeing a puzzling and persistent context‑menu entry — “Edit in Notepad” — appear for virtually every file type in File Explorer, from plain text to JPEGs and even .exe binaries, and a simple registry tweak can hide it; the fix works, but it also exposes broader design and maintenance issues with the modern Windows 11 File Explorer context menu and how system apps register themselves. Background Since Windows 11's launch, Microsoft redesigned File Explorer’s right‑click...

Microsoft is quietly redirecting the Phone Link app’s built‑in photo gallery to File Explorer, replacing the in‑app “Photos” surface with a File Explorer–based workflow that mounts your paired phone as a virtual device inside Windows 11. Background Phone Link (formerly “Your Phone”) has been Microsoft’s bridge between Windows and mobile devices for several years, surfacing notifications, messaging, calls, app mirroring (Android) — and until now — a lightweight photo gallery that aggregated...

Microsoft’s Canary-channel build has made one thing abundantly clear: Windows 11 version 26H1 is a platform branch, not the next mass‑market feature update, and most users—home consumers and enterprise fleets alike—do not need to change course today. The Windows Insider team pushed Build 28000 to the Canary Channel and explicitly updated the visible version to “Windows 11, version 26H1,” while adding a short but decisive clarification: “26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2 and only...

Microsoft released a new Insider Preview for Windows 11 today that refines the Widgets experience, eases Smart App Control management, streamlines Quick Machine Recovery, and reintroduces people activity indicators in File Explorer — all delivered under update KB5070300 which moves qualifying systems to Build 26220.7070. Background Windows 11’s ongoing evolution inside the Insider program continues to favor small, iterative improvements that target usability and manageability across consumer...

Microsoft has quietly opened the door to a new Windows 11 platform branch: Insider Preview Build 28000 has landed in the Canary Channel and updates the visible version string to Windows 11, version 26H1, but Microsoft stresses this is a platform-focused flight for specific silicon and not the next consumer feature release for 25H2. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Insider channels serve different engineering goals, and the Canary Channel is the earliest place Microsoft tests low‑level...

Microsoft’s latest Insider update for Windows 11, delivered as Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300) to the Dev and Beta channels, quietly undoes one of the most frustrating constraints of Smart App Control while also polishing the system’s recovery path and a handful of desktop conveniences. The change that will get the most attention is the new flexibility around Smart App Control (SAC): a feature that previously required a clean Windows install to enable or disable can now be toggled from inside...

Microsoft’s latest Insider package, delivered as Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7070 (KB5070300), is a concentrated, practical update rather than a headline-grabbing feature release — but it contains several small changes that materially affect how users and IT teams interact with File Explorer, security controls, Widgets, and recovery tools. The package re-enables the people icons in File Explorer’s Activity column for some testers, temporarily pulls back a set of cloud-integration...

In a striking snapshot of enterprise generative AI in late 2025, Wharton Human‑AI Research finds that roughly three in four companies report positive ROI from generative AI projects, and survey respondents name OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most widely used tool — while Anthropic’s Claude registers far lower enterprise usage than many observers expected. Background Wharton Human‑AI Research (WHAIR) has transitioned its questions to business leaders from curiosity-driven adoption to measured...

Microsoft Clarity’s new analysis shows AI assistants and large language models are still a tiny slice of referral traffic but are already producing materially higher conversion rates than traditional channels — a signal that discovery and attribution are shifting beneath publishers’ and advertisers’ feet. Background / Overview Microsoft Clarity’s November 6, 2025 study analyzed activity across more than 1,200 publisher and news domains and reported a dramatic growth trajectory for AI-driven...

MakeUseOf’s cheeky experiment—installing a Windows 11-style launcher on an Android phone—is more than a novelty: it’s a useful case study in how far Android’s customization model can push a mobile device’s identity, what it can convincingly emulate, and where the approach breaks down in the real world. Background / Overview Customization has long been Android’s signature strength: launchers, icon packs, widgets and deep system tweaks let users remap the feel of their phones. The MakeUseOf...