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Microsoft has begun widening the rollout of the biggest Start menu overhaul Windows 11 has seen since the OS launched, delivering a single‑page, mobile‑inspired launcher, a denser app grid for large monitors, an automatically generated “Category” app view, and an integrated Phone Link sidebar — all arriving as part of the January cumulative update (KB5074109) that shipped on January 13, 2026 (OS Builds 26100.7623 and 26200.7623). Background / Overview For years, the Windows Start menu has...

Microsoft’s decision to fold System Monitor — Sysmon from the Sysinternals suite — into Windows 11 as an optional, inbox feature marks one of the most consequential changes to desktop monitoring in years. The functionality has begun appearing in Windows 11 Insider Preview builds (notably the Dev build 26300.7733 / KB5074178 and companion Beta builds) and delivers the familiar Sysmon event model natively inside the OS: disabled by default, exposed as an Optional Feature, installed via...

Microsoft’s cash-generation engine looks like the safest seat in a very expensive stadium: BNP Paribas told clients this week that Microsoft’s free cash flow (FCF) is the most resilient among the major hyperscalers, a conclusion that landed across finance and tech wires and re-ignited a practical question for IT leaders and investors alike — can Microsoft’s recurring software annuities and platform bundling truly offset a record wave of AI datacenter capex? Background The hyperscalers —...

Classrooms across the globe are quickly filling with AI tools — and many educators now warn that the technology itself may be part of the problem it was meant to solve. Background / Overview The arrival of generative AI and large language models into day‑to‑day education has been remarkably fast. Surveys and institutional reports from 2024–2025 show that a large majority of college‑age learners and growing shares of K–12 students use AI tools for drafting, summarizing, tutoring, and...

The hyperscalers are no longer hedging their bets: they are front‑loading an industrial‑scale build‑out of data centers, power infrastructure, and GPU fleets that will define where AI runs, who pays for it, and how enterprises consume it for the next decade. Amazon’s recent pledge to invest roughly $200 billion in 2026, Alphabet’s CFO flagging a $175–185 billion capex envelope (commonly reported as ~$180 billion) for the same period, and Microsoft’s blistering pace of quarterly capital...

The UAE’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MoHESR) has entered into a formal collaboration with Microsoft to design, research and prototype a set of AI-driven agents that aim to reshape the higher‑education experience — from student learning and career navigation to faculty course co‑creation and research alignment with national missions. This programme will leverage Microsoft Azure and Microsoft cloud AI capabilities and pursues a participatory, stakeholder‑centred...

Microsoft has quietly begun enforcing a long‑announced cleanup of Windows’ printing stack: starting with January 2026 updates, Windows 11 will stop servicing legacy V3 and V4 printer drivers through Windows Update and will prefer Microsoft's modern IPP inbox class driver and Print Support Apps instead. That change — the culmination of a deprecation plan announced in September 2023 — is deliberate, security‑first, and staged over multiple years, but it also creates real compatibility work for...

Valve’s monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey has quietly become one of the clearest early indicators of how the PC ecosystem is shifting—and the most recent snapshots show Windows 11 firmly in the lead on Steam while Windows 10 still keeps a meaningful foothold among active gamers. ) Background / Overview The Steam Hardware & Software Survey is a voluntary, anonymized telemetry snapshot Valve publishes every month to show what operating systems, GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other components...

NVIDIA has confirmed it is investigating a wave of gaming problems that began after Microsoft’s January 13, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11 (KB5074109), as users report intermittent black screens, visual artifacts, and measurable frame‑rate drops when playing graphically demanding titles. The pattern is striking: in many reproducible cases, uninstalling KB5074109 restores prior behavior, and Microsoft’s optional follow‑up preview update (KB5074105) appears to address some—but not...

Windows 11’s long-standing one‑output‑only Bluetooth audio world has finally been challenged — but the new Shared audio (preview) is a pragmatic first step, not a cure‑all. Microsoft’s Insider Preview build 26220.7051 surfaces a Quick Settings tile that can stream a single audio feed to two Bluetooth LE Audio devices simultaneously, but the feature is gated by hardware, drivers, and accessory firmware in a way that will frustrate many users who expected “two headphones” to be a simple...

Microsoft’s January preview cumulative update KB5074105 changes how Storage cleanup works in Windows 11: it introduces a UAC elevation boundary for the Settings > System > Storage pane that intentionally hides administrator-only cleanup buckets (including the familiar Windows Update Cleanup) unless Settings is run elevated, and that behavioral change has immediate consequences for everyday cleanup workflows, automation, and help‑desk procedures. Background / Overview Windows 11 preview...

Microsofts plötzliche Kurskorrektur bei der Integration von KI‑Funktionen in Windows hat in den letzten Wochen für Aufruhr gesorgt: nach massivem Nutzer- und Admin‑Widerstand zieht das Unternehmen einige der sichtbarsten Copilot‑ und Kontexthilfen zurück oder verschiebt ihre Einführung, während gleichzeitig die grundlegenden KI‑Plattforminvestitionen unangetastet bleiben. Hintergrund / Überblick Microsoft hat Windows in den letzten Jahren konsequent in Richtung eines „agentischen“...

The past two weeks have cemented a clear regulatory pivot: policy‑makers are trimming the volume of mandatory ESG datapoints while simultaneously demanding stronger, auditable evidence for the datapoints that remain — and supervisors are building operational tooling to make climate risk a routine input to finance and credit decisions. /www.efrag.org/en/news-and-calendar/news/efrag-provides-its-technical-advice-on-draft-simplified-esrs-to-the-european-commission) Background / Overview Policy...

Microsoft’s OneDrive has quietly flipped a switch on how teams find and act on the documents that drive everyday decisions: as of February 3, 2026, Agents in OneDrive are generally available for commercial customers, enabling Copilot-powered assistants that can reason across a bounded set of files, surface decisions, extract owners and deadlines, and keep a persistent project context—without opening every file manually. Background / Overview Microsoft’s Copilot strategy has steadily evolved...

Microsoft has given administrators a hard, non-negotiable runway: beginning October 1, 2026, Exchange Web Services (EWS) will be disabled by default in Exchange Online tenants, and the platform will be completely and permanently shut down on April 1, 2027. That phased shutdown—combined with new tenant-level controls, license enforcement for frontline/kiosk SKUs, and Microsoft’s plan to run short “scream tests” to surface hidden dependencies—makes EWS retirement one of the most operationally...

The UAE’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MoHESR) has launched a formal R&D collaboration with Microsoft to design and test prototype agentic AI agents aimed at transforming higher education across the Emirates, signalling a move from pilot projects to a coordinated, ministry‑level programme that ties AI-driven learning directly to national priorities and workforce planning. Background / Overview The announcement, made on 6 February 2026 and signed on the sidelines of...

I was locked out of Notepad by a Microsoft service error, and the experience revealed a larger problem: parts of Windows that used to be predictably local now depend on cloud services, accounts, and packaged app behavior in ways that surprise — and sometimes strand — users. Background: why a simple text editor became a political fault line Notepad has been the archetypal "tiny, local" Windows app for decades: open it, type, save, done. That implicit guarantee — that an OS-provided utility...

As Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape industries, the race to acquire credible, job‑ready AI skills has become a defining element of professional development in 2026. BusinessDay’s roundup highlights a practical shortlist of globally recognised certification programmes — from cloud vendor role exams to university professional certificates and vendor-backed generative‑AI credentials — that professionals are using today to move into roles like machine learning engineer, MLOps...

The AI surge of 2025 didn’t just reshape product roadmaps — it reordered the hierarchy of the world’s biggest tech brands, pushing a once-niche chipmaker into the upper echelon of “Big Tech” and forcing every incumbent to reprice strategy, capital allocation, and reputational risk for a future where compute is the new oil. Background The technology landscape entering 2026 is defined less by a single product cycle and more by an arms race: hyperscalers and platform companies are building vast...

NVIDIA Optimus remains the practical bridge between battery life and performance on notebooks, but in 2026 the conversation around which driver to install, where to download it safely, and how to preserve Optimus functionality on Windows 10 has shifted from “which build” to “which risk profile.” This feature explains, verifies, and walks you through a conservative, technician-grade Optimus driver workflow for Windows 10 in 2026, calls out the real dangers of third‑party “discount” driver...