Featured content

For the first time in years of user grumbling and forum posts, the Start menu’s long‑promised “Update and shut down” command finally does what it says: install pending updates and then power off the PC. Microsoft documented the correction in Insider release notes and packaged the same servicing change into the October 28, 2025 optional preview cumulative update (KB5067036), which produces OS builds 26200.7019 for Windows 11 25H2 and 26100.7019 for 24H2. Background / Overview For many users...

A recent optional preview update for Windows 11 is producing a frustrating and easily reproducible regression: closing Task Manager with the window “X” can leave the underlying taskmgr.exe process running, and each reopen spawns a new visible Task Manager instance while earlier instances persist invisibly in the background — producing duplicate, accumulating processes that can consume memory, CPU cycles, and battery over time. Background Microsoft released the October 28, 2025 non‑security...

Microsoft has begun previewing a built‑in Windows 11 capability that can stream the same audio feed to two Bluetooth devices at once, using Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio to enable simultaneous listening on two pairs of headphones, earbuds, speakers, or even hearing aids from a single PC. Background Bluetooth LE Audio — the modern Bluetooth audio architecture built around the LC3 codec and the Auracast broadcast model — was designed to address long‑standing limitations of classic Bluetooth...

Sky has quietly decided to pull the plug on Sky Live: the Kinect-esque camera that turned Sky Glass into a motion-tracking fitness coach, a motion-controlled games console, a Zoom-capable TV and a “watch together” social screen will stop functioning on 4 December 2025, and Sky says anyone who bought one — either outright or on monthly payments — will receive a refund. The company is also offering purchasers a complimentary 12‑month Mvmnt subscription in the app’s non‑motion‑tracking form...

Sandeep Walunj, the Group Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd (MOFSL), has stepped down from his role, with his last working day reported as October 31, 2025 — ending an 18‑month tenure that included a high‑profile brand refresh and intensified digital marketing efforts. Background Sandeep Walunj was appointed Group Chief Marketing Officer of Motilal Oswal Financial Services on April 4, 2024, joining the storied Indian financial-services...

Microsoft has quietly reversed course on one of the more contentious UI experiments in Windows Update: after removing the long‑standing year‑and‑month prefix from update titles, the company says it will restore the YYYY‑MM date token to the visible update names in Settings and Update history. Background For decades Microsoft’s visible update titles in Settings → Windows Update and Update history included a verbose, catalog‑style string that gave immediate operational context — most notably a...

Microsoft Azure has pushed the limits of cloud inference performance: Microsoft reports an aggregated throughput of 1.1 million tokens per second from a single NVL72 rack running the new ND GB300 v6 virtual machines built on NVIDIA’s GB300 (Blackwell Ultra) hardware, a milestone that resets the practical ceiling for large-scale inference in public cloud. Background / Overview Microsoft’s ND GB300 v6 offering is the cloud-exposed packaging of NVIDIA’s GB300 NVL72 rack-scale system. Each NVL72...

Speccy puts a clear, no-nonsense snapshot of your PC in front of you within seconds — and on Windows 11 that simplicity can save time when you’re diagnosing temperature spikes, planning an upgrade, or preparing a support ticket. Background / Overview Speccy is a lightweight system-information utility originally developed by Piriform that collects and displays hardware and operating‑system details in a compact, readable interface. It reports everything from CPU model and per‑core temperatures...

Microsoft has quietly closed one of Windows’ most persistent little annoyances: the Start menu option labeled “Update and shut down” will now, in the scenarios Microsoft targeted, actually power the PC off instead of rebooting it — a fix that arrived first in Insider preview flights and was folded into the October 28, 2025 optional preview cumulative package (KB5067036). Background For many users the Start menu’s Update and shut down command is a simple convenience: apply pending Windows...

Microsoft’s October preview patch that finally fixed the long-running “Update and Shutdown” restart bug has introduced a surprising new regression: closing Task Manager with the window’s Close (X) button can leave behind live taskmgr.exe processes that accumulate in memory and may degrade performance. Background / Overview Microsoft published the optional preview cumulative update KB5067036 on October 28, 2025, shipping OS builds 26100.7019 and 26200.7019 for affected Windows 11 branches...

Microsoft has added built‑in passkey saving and cross‑device synchronization to Microsoft Edge’s Autofill (Microsoft Password Manager), enabling Windows desktop users to create, store and sync FIDO2/WebAuthn passkeys across Windows PCs signed into the same Microsoft Account — a change rolling out with Microsoft Edge 142 that folds cloud‑backed passkeys into Edge’s password‑management surface while preserving Windows Hello for local user verification. Background Passkeys are the standardized...

Microsoft has quietly opened the door for MSI Claw owners to run Microsoft's Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) on Windows 11 handhelds, rolling the feature out through the Windows Insider program and giving handheld gamers an opt‑in, console‑style launcher that aims to reduce background overhead and improve sustained gaming performance. Background Microsoft first introduced the Xbox Full Screen Experience as a handheld‑focused UI and runtime posture designed to make Windows 11 behave more...

If your screen suddenly flashes bright red, it feels like an emergency — but in many recent reports the culprit is not a dying monitor or failing GPU, it’s a software-side colour/rendering regression introduced by a Windows update and how Windows applies colour profiles and compositing. The immediate reaction — panic, unplugging cables, blaming hardware — is understandable. The safer, faster path is a short checklist of diagnostic steps, followed by measured fixes and an understanding of why...

Microsoft Teams is everywhere — installed, licensed, and often paid for at enterprise scale — yet many organizations still struggle to extract measurable business value from it. What started as a rapid chat-and-meetings rollout frequently stalls at day-to-day basics, leaving expensive licensing under‑utilized, integrated voice and contact‑center features untried, CRM and automation links under‑deployed, and AI capabilities like Copilot rarely harnessed. The result is a sharp adoption gap...

Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 roadmap additions this week sketch a near-term roadmap packed with practical productivity tweaks and a heavy dose of governance controls — from Outlook and Edge usability fixes to major Copilot expansions and Purview-driven audit and DLP controls that IT teams will need to plan for now. Background Microsoft publicly tracks upcoming Microsoft 365 features in its roadmap, and the latest wave of entries (dozens added in recent updates) reveals two concurrent themes...

IPT’s practical push to turn Microsoft Copilot into a team of specialised, role-based AI agents reframes AI from an experimental chatbot into a production-ready set of digital employees — and it arrives with clear promises, manageable engineering patterns, and governance headaches that every CIO should budget for today. Background South African systems integrator IPT is marketing a structured approach to Microsoft Copilot that treats AI as agentic — a collection of role-focused agents that...

Microsoft’s announcement that it will expand Azure into Johor Bahru with a new cloud region — branded Southeast Asia 3 — marks a deliberate next step in the company’s Southeast Asia expansion and signals a renewed push to host AI‑ready infrastructure closer to the region’s largest markets. The new Johor Bahru region is presented as a complement to the Malaysia West region already operating near Kuala Lumpur and is explicitly framed as part of Microsoft’s strategy to accelerate AI...

Canonical has locked in the development timetable for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS — codename Resolute Raccoon — and the schedule sets a clear path to a final desktop and server release on April 23, 2026, with a public beta in late March and the customary point release in August that enables upgrades from older LTS installs. Background The Ubuntu project follows a time-based cadence: a six-month development cycle ending in April or October, with every April release that is an LTS (Long Term Support)...

Microsoft has acknowledged a display bug that causes the Settings > Windows Update page to show a misleading banner — “Your version of Windows has reached the end of support” — after installing the October 14, 2025 cumulative update KB5066791, and it has published short‑ and mid‑term remedies while promising a permanent correction in an upcoming update. Background / Overview Windows 10’s October 14, 2025 Patch Tuesday shipped the cumulative update identified as KB5066791, advancing supported...

Microsoft has confirmed that the Visio Data Visualizer add‑in for Excel will be retired: it will be removed from the Excel add‑in store on December 8, 2025, and the cloud service that powers the add‑in will be shut down on March 2, 2026, after which embedded Data Visualizer diagrams in Excel will no longer load. Background The Visio Data Visualizer add‑in launched as an accessible way to turn structured spreadsheet rows into flowcharts, cross‑functional flowcharts, and organization charts...