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Microsoft is testing an AI-powered Auto‑Categorization feature in the Windows 11 Microsoft Photos app that scans local photo libraries and automatically groups images into four focused buckets — Screenshots, Receipts, Identity documents, and Notes — with the preview currently rolling out to Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs. Background / Overview Microsoft has been steadily embedding AI into core Windows experiences and native apps, and the Photos app has moved from a basic image viewer into...

Microsoft’s search engine briefly dressed up as its rival and added a charitable carrot — a move that reveals as much about modern product marketing as it does about the ethics of nudging users inside an operating system. Background In early January 2025, Bing began serving a special results page when users typed “Google” (or similar queries) into the address bar while using Microsoft Edge. The page replaced Bing’s usual header with a large, centered search box and an illustrated hero...

Microsoft's Surface Pro 11 still feels like the most sensible Swiss Army knife in Microsoft's hardware shed: a powerful tablet that will happily masquerade as a laptop when you need it, and an excellent drawing surface when you want it. The flagship 13-inch model—available with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus or the higher-end Snapdragon X Elite, and with either an LCD or an OLED panel—delivers genuinely impressive battery life, class-leading ARM performance, and a PixelSense display that...

Microsoft’s revelation this week that it has “ceased and disabled a set of services” for a unit inside Israel’s Ministry of Defense marks an extraordinary moment where a major cloud provider publicly acknowledged that commercial infrastructure had been used in ways that correlate with investigative reporting alleging mass surveillance of Palestinians. Background In August a joint investigative package led by The Guardian alongside +972 Magazine and Local Call documented an intelligence...

Microsoft’s official support clock for Windows 10 is winding down, and a growing cottage industry of community tools now offers a practical — if unofficial — path forward: build a pared-back Windows 11 installer with Tiny11, then write it to USB with Rufus to bypass Microsoft’s hardware checks and deploy a lean, fast system on older machines. This piece explains how those tools work, verifies the key technical claims, weighs the benefits, and lays out the risks for anyone considering a...

The Yoga Pro 9i 16 (Gen 10) lands as an unexpectedly pragmatic answer to the 16‑inch workstation question: a thoughtfully equipped, port-rich powerhouse that prioritizes everyday usability and creative performance over design gymnastics — and at a price that undercuts many direct rivals while still delivering flagship-level features and a premium OLED experience. Background The 16‑inch laptop market in 2025 has bifurcated into two broad strategies: extreme minimalism and design theater on...

Microsoft’s long-standing habit of routing Windows Search and several shell-driven links into Microsoft Edge — regardless of the user’s chosen default browser — may be closer to ending than many thought, but the change comes with caveats and new technical complexities that power users and IT pros need to understand now. A recent update to Microsoft Edge Canary exposed a group of experimental flags that strongly suggest Windows 11’s Start/taskbar search and related “Windows Search Bar”...

Microsoft’s vice chair and president, Brad Smith, confirmed that the company has “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense” after an expanded review concluded elements of investigative reporting that pointed to large‑scale use of Microsoft Azure for the storage and AI‑assisted analysis of intercepted Palestinian communications were supported by Microsoft’s business records and telemetry. Background and overview The action follows a coordinated...

Windows users who are planning an upgrade to Windows 11—or who want to keep modern games and anti‑cheat systems working—need to know whether their PC has a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and whether it’s enabled; the checks are quick, the fixes are usually straightforward, but a few important caveats can cost you encrypted data or an unbootable system if you rush. This guide walks through every practical method to verify TPM presence and state on Windows, explains how to enable TPM (and the...

Microsoft’s Photos app for Windows 11 is getting an AI-powered tidy-up: a preview of Auto‑Categorization that automatically sorts images — screenshots, receipts, identity documents, and handwritten notes — into dedicated folders on supported machines, and Microsoft is currently testing the feature with Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs. Background / Overview For several releases Microsoft has been expanding AI capabilities inside core Windows experiences, turning the Photos app from a passive...

A surprising number of Microsoft 365 tenants keep paying for licenses that are never used, and the short, practical PowerShell approach highlighted in a recent German post on BornCity underscores how simple discovery can unlock real cost savings — but also how easy it is to make mistakes if you rely on one metric alone. The script described inspects assigned licenses, cross-checks users’ last successful sign-in activity and flags accounts that are disabled or that have never logged in; it’s...

SURF’s updated Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) has moved two of four previously flagged high privacy risks for Microsoft 365 Copilot in education down to medium, but important hazards — notably AI inaccuracy (hallucinations) and an 18‑month retention window for pseudonymized telemetry — remain unresolved and carry material implications for universities and research institutes across Europe. Background SURF, the Dutch cooperative that manages IT services and policy for universities...

I followed the method described in the XDA walk‑through and used DISM to build a fully provisioned Windows installer that carries my apps and a generalized system image — the result is a bootable Windows PE installer and a WIM image that, when applied, reproduces a ready‑to‑use Windows installation on other PCs. Background / Overview Windows image capture with DISM is a proven, low‑level approach that IT pros and power users use to create reference images for deployment, recovery, or quick...

EA SPORTS FC 26 launched to big fanfare on September 26, 2025, but for many PC players that excitement has been tempered by random crashes, launch freezes, and mid-match disconnects — problems that are usually solvable with a methodical approach. This feature walks through the verified system requirements, the most effective quick fixes, deeper troubleshooting steps, and the risks you should be aware of when applying them so you can get back on the pitch as quickly and safely as possible...

Microsoft’s surprise course correction gives many Europeans a soft landing: the company will provide one year of free Extended Security Updates (ESU) for consumer Windows 10 devices in the European Economic Area (EEA), stretching security coverage past the October 14, 2025 end-of-support deadline and through mid‑October 2026. The change removes previously controversial enrollment requirements for EEA users — most notably the mandatory cloud backup condition — while keeping a Microsoft...

If Windows Update throws the stubborn error 80072efe while you’re trying to check for or download patches, it usually means the update client on your machine cannot complete a stable connection to Microsoft’s update servers — and on older installs of Windows that can quickly turn into a long, frustrating slog. This guide explains what 80072EFE is, why it appears, which fixes work (and why), step-by-step instructions you can follow now, and an honest appraisal of recovery tools and risks so...

Windows 11’s 25H2 update is finally arriving as a low‑friction enablement package just as Windows 10’s support window closes — a quietly consequential moment for millions of consumers, IT teams, and hardware vendors that shifts the conversation from “what’s new” to “what needs to be validated.” Background Windows feature releases have matured into a cadence focused on operational stability rather than spectacle. Microsoft now stages feature binaries inside the active servicing branch and...

Space42’s announcement at the Dubai World Congress marks a bold upgrade in the UAE’s mobility playbook: the company will build what it calls the nation’s first Sovereign Mobility Cloud, a sovereign-enabled platform powered by Core42’s Sovereign Public Cloud and Microsoft Azure that is intended to host HD mapping, fleet telematics, traffic management, digital twins and other critical services — all with data residency and regulatory compliance guaranteed inside the UAE. Background The UAE...

Microsoft’s Photos app will now sort your messy camera roll for you — but only on select Windows machines and with a handful of important caveats. Background Microsoft announced an AI-powered Auto‑Categorization feature for the Windows 11 Microsoft Photos app in a Windows Insider post by senior product manager Ronnie Myers. The feature automatically scans a user’s local image library and groups items into four focused categories: Screenshots, Receipts, Identity documents, and Notes...

Microsoft’s new Auto‑Categorization for the Windows 11 Photos app begins a modest but practical assault on one of the most persistent annoyances of modern digital life: a chaotic photo library full of receipts, screenshots, IDs and scrawled notes. The feature—rolling out to Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs—uses on‑device AI to detect and sort images into four fixed categories (Screenshots, Receipts, Identity documents, and Notes), exposes them as a new Categories pane in Photos, and promises...