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When a veteran technology reporter says they’ve stopped leaning on a single assistant and now stitches together a best‑of‑breed AI toolkit, it’s worth paying attention — not because the reporter abandoned ChatGPT entirely, but because their workflow shift underscores a larger truth: models are specialists, applications are the vehicles that make them useful, and the smartest productivity move right now is to pick the right engine for the job, not a single all‑purpose assistant. Background /...

Google bringt Gemini direkt in die Chrome-Oberfläche und macht daraus auf Chromebook‑Plus‑Geräten einen permanent verfügbaren, kontextbewussten Assistenten — inklusive einer persistierenden Seitenleiste, In‑Browser‑Bildbearbeitung (intern „Nano Banana“ genannt), und einer agentenhaften Auto‑Browse‑Funktion, die für zahlende Abonnenten mehrstufige Aufgaben autonom ausführen kann. Background / Überblick Google hat in den letzten zwei Jahren seine Gemini‑Modelle schrittweise in Search...

Il Rappuso’s recent “clearance” listing for a Dell XPS 15 9570 — advertised with an Intel Core i9-8950HK, 15.6-inch 3840×2160 display, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti — has started circulating on bargain-hunting forums and marketplaces, promising a high-end XPS 15 at a steep discount. The listings (two copies of the same post) present the configuration plainly — “DELL XPS 15 9570 Intel Core i9 8950HK 2900 MHz 15.6 3840x2160 32GB 1024GB SSD DVD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti...

Paul Thurrott’s early chapter on “De‑Enshittify Windows 11: Microsoft Edge” is blunt but necessary: Microsoft Edge is not just a browser you can ignore — it’s an infrastructural vector that shapes privacy, defaults, and the behavior of many Windows 11 components, and getting Edge configured (or contained) is a core step in reclaiming a private, predictable desktop. rview Windows 11 ships with a growing set of web‑powered surfaces — widgets, news feeds, Copilot/Bing integrations and in‑box...

Windows 11 can feel instantly modern and oddly slow at the same time — and for many users the culprit is not CPU cores or GPU throughput but a single, decades-old registry value that introduces a tiny, stubborn hesitation into cascading menus. Change that one number and the desktop feels sharper, right-click menus respond like reflexes, and a small but constant source of friction disappears from everyday tasks. ps://www.howtogeek.com/250998/how-to-speed-up-menu-animations-in-windows/)...

Microsoft's blunt new advisory — “Stop your PC from restarting when you don’t want it to — set your active hours in Windows” — arrived at an awkward moment: users are still digesting the fallout from January’s security rollups, which produced a narrow but painful string of regressions for some Windows 11 configurations and, separately, apparent gaming issues that prompted vendor troubleshooting. The guidance is simple and useful: you can reduce surprise reboots by configuring Active Hours...

Microsoft’s February 2026 Windows 11 update is less a splashy feature roll‑out and more a deliberate quality push: Microsoft has bundled targeted usability refinements, performance and stability work, deeper but gated Copilot/AI improvements, and several under‑the‑hood security and manageability hardenings that together aim to make everyday Windows 11 noticeably smoother for both consumers and enterprise fleets. Background / Overview Windows 11’s servicing approach in 2025–2026 has shifted...

Microsoft’s Copilot now reads, writes, draws, and even fumbles its way through 3D — and the result is an impressive grab-bag of generative features that deliver convenient wins for everyday Windows users while exposing persistent rough edges that matter to creators, IT teams, and legal/compliance officers. Background / Overview Microsoft has stitched generative AI into the fabric of Windows and Microsoft 365, surfacing Copilot across Notepad, Photos/Designer, Paint, Office apps, and the...

Eric Frydenlund’s recent column arguing that “AI lacks the authenticity of human experience” landed as both a provocation and a practical warning: provocative because it challenges a booming tech narrative that smarter models equal better judgement, and practical because the failures Frydenlund highlights — in tone, provenance and moral judgment — are already shaping how people read, trust, and use digital content. s://muckrack.com/eric-frydenlund) Background Where the debate began (and who...

If you own a laptop with an AMD Radeon HD 8750M and you’re running Windows 10, the single most important takeaway is this: pick the driver that matches your goal—and prioritize safety and vendor compatibility over chasing “the newest” package. The safest, most reliable path for daily use is the Microsoft-signed driver from Windows Update or the OEM driver from your laptop maker; only escalate to AMD legacy installers when you understand the risks and need legacy features that the...

Linux desktop momentum that felt incremental in 2024 and 2025 has gone mainstream — and the six distributions a ZDNET veteran singled out as likely to “rule 2026” are worth more than a casual look for anyone planning a migration from Windows or evaluating a modern desktop OS in 2026. Background / Overview The trigger for renewed interest in desktop Linux is obvious: Windows 10 reached end of standard support on October 14, 2025, pushing many households and small organizations to choose...

Microsoft’s virtual desktop feature has quietly existed since Windows 10, but for many power users the experience never evolved into the fluid, context-aware workflow macOS users enjoy — and small, focused community tools are now filling that gap. The new MaximizeToVirtualDesktop (MTVD) utility credited to Scott Hanselman promises one of those small, high-value improvements: a single action that creates a new virtual desktop, moves the active window there, and maximizes it — then removes the...

Winhance gives you a practical, one-tool path to a bloat-free Windows 11 installer — it builds a custom autounattend-driven ISO, injects drivers and settings, and packages everything so your next clean install skips the busywork and the apps you never wanted. Background / Overview Windows 11 ships with a growing set of inbox apps, optional features, and default settings that many power users call "bloat." For professionals, enthusiasts, and admins who repeatedly deploy or reinstall Windows...

Microsoft has quietly started surfacing Copilot inside the Windows 11 Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE) so that new users can open and try the assistant while the installer downloads and applies updates. Background / Overview The Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE) is the guided setup flow you see the first time a PC boots after a fresh install or reset: language, region, keyboard, network, account choices and a handful of initial personalization and privacy prompts. Traditionally OOBE has also been a...

If your PC feels sluggish, the program you installed to keep it safe could be doing more harm than good. Background / Overview Antivirus software is one of the first things many people install on a new Windows PC. It promises constant protection — real‑time scanning, web and download filtering, ransomware shields — and for the most part it delivers useful defenses. But over the last decade security suites have grown into full ecosystems: VPNs, password managers, system optimizers, browser...

Google’s Chrome is quietly changing how it greets Windows 11 — and one of those changes is small in code but large in perception: Chrome Canary now contains an optional “start with Windows” toggle and an in-product prompt that asks users to let Chrome launch at sign‑in so browsing can “begin instantly.” At the same time, a low‑level Chromium change originating from Microsoft engineers fixes a longstanding annoyance: dragging large files out of ZIP folders used to freeze the browser, and that...

Microsoft’s chip partner just gave us a hard timing marker: AMD CEO Lisa Su told investors that development of “Microsoft’s next‑gen Xbox featuring an AMD semi‑custom SoC is progressing well to support a launch in 2027,” a cautious but unmistakable signal that the company’s engineering timeline is targeting that year if everything goes to plan. Background / Overview Microsoft and AMD announced a strategic, multi‑year partnership to co‑engineer silicon across a family of devices last year...

Microsoft’s staged end-of-servicing for legacy V3 and V4 printer drivers in Windows 11 has begun to roll out — and while Microsoft frames this as a security and reliability win, the change carries real operational consequences for home users, small businesses, schools, and IT teams that still rely on older printers and multifunction devices. Background / Overview Microsoft announced the deprecation of legacy third‑party printer drivers in September 2023 and published a multi‑year roadmap...

Winslop’s latest build doubles down on the project’s promise: a tiny, local, no‑telemetry utility that exposes the exact changes it will make to Windows and gives users simple, reversible controls to remove what the developer calls “system slop.” The 0.50.125 release focuses less on flashy UI and more on practical rescue tooling — adding drop‑in PowerShell extensions for recovery and install tasks while keeping the core app intentionally lightweight and deterministic. Background / Overview...

Microsoft’s quiet, staged decision to stop publishing new legacy printer drivers (the V3 and V4 models) to Windows Update for Windows 11 marks one of the most consequential — and least understood — shifts in the Windows device ecosystem in years. Effective January 15, 2026, Microsoft moved the distribution and servicing of new third‑party V3/V4 printer drivers out of Windows Update and into a vendor‑managed model, with follow‑on milestones that will prefer Microsoft’s inbox Internet Printing...