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A week before Microsoft stops shipping security updates, roughly half a billion Windows PCs face a hard choice: upgrade, pay to stay patched, switch operating systems, or keep running an increasingly risky, unsupported platform. Background On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will officially end support for Windows 10 — a milestone the company has been warning consumers and IT departments about for months. After that date Microsoft will stop issuing security patches, non-security updates, and...

The approaching end of support for Windows 10 has turned routine hardware refresh conversations into a time‑boxed migration problem—and many small and medium businesses are answering that problem by buying into a new category of Windows 11 machines marketed as AI PCs or Copilot+ PCs that promise hardware‑accelerated on‑device AI, stronger hardware‑rooted security, and modern manageability for the hybrid workplace. Microsoft’s deadline — October 14, 2025 — is the fixed event driving this...

Microsoft has quietly resolved a long-running annoyance in Windows that left the “Update and shut down” option behaving like “Update and restart” — applying updates and then bringing the PC back to the lock screen instead of powering it off. Background For many Windows users, the small-but-frustrating disparity between what the UI promises and what actually happens has been a recurrent pain point. The Start menu and Windows Update offer two obvious choices when updates are pending: Update...

I expected a cleaner, faster Windows 11 after a single run of a popular debloat tool — what I got instead was a lesson in how many small pieces of Windows are quietly connected: the Microsoft Store stopped installing apps, cumulative updates began failing or rolling back, and subtle shell and security behaviors started misbehaving. What began as a satisfying cleanup turned into a fragile system that required careful undo work and a rethink of what “debloating” should mean for everyday users...

Microsoft has quietly corrected a long‑running Windows update annoyance: the “Update and shut down” command that sometimes installed updates but left PCs powered on instead of actually shutting them down has been fixed in Insider preview builds, marking the end of an intermittent but widespread problem that has frustrated users for more than two years. Background For many Windows users the choice between “Update and restart” and “Update and shut down” is straightforward: one reboots now, the...

For years the little clock on a secondary display was a tease — visible but mute — and with the September 29, 2025 preview update Microsoft finally restored the ability to open the Notification Center and calendar flyout from any monitor in a multi‑monitor Windows 11 setup, delivering a long‑requested usability fix that many power users have been demanding since Windows 11’s first release. Background / Overview Windows 11’s redesigned taskbar made a lot of visual and interaction changes when...

A fast-moving, self‑replicating supply‑chain worm dubbed Shai‑Hulud has poisoned hundreds of npm packages and is actively targeting developer credentials and cloud service keys tied to Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure — a campaign so severe that national and vendor security teams have issued high‑severity advisories and emergency mitigations. Background / Overview The vulnerability surfaced in mid‑September when multiple security vendors detected malicious package...

ZainTECH’s listing of Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute on the Azure Marketplace — delivered in partnership with Zain Kuwait and Zain Omantel International (ZOI) — marks a clear inflection point for cloud connectivity in Kuwait, promising private, low-latency links to Azure regions in the UAE and Europe while aiming to simplify procurement for government and enterprise customers and to accelerate the country’s digital modernization goals under Vision 2035. Background Kuwait’s public- and...

ZainTECH’s new ExpressRoute listing on the Azure Marketplace marks a practical turning point for Kuwait’s cloud strategy: by packaging private, low‑latency links to Microsoft Azure as a Marketplace SKU, ZainTECH — together with Zain Kuwait, Zain Omantel International (ZOI) and Microsoft — has removed a major procurement and operational barrier for government and enterprise customers that need secure, compliant, and high‑performance cloud connectivity. Background / Overview Kuwait’s public...

Windows 10 will reach its official end of support on October 14, 2025, but Microsoft has carved out a one‑year lifeline for consumers in the European Economic Area (EEA) through its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program — with important caveats that make this relief narrower than many headlines suggest. Background Microsoft launched Windows 10 in 2015 with a roughly ten‑year servicing expectation; that schedule culminates in the termination of mainstream security servicing in mid‑October...

Microsoft’s decision to end mainstream support for Windows 10 on 14 October 2025 has created a high-stakes, time-sensitive problem for tens of millions of users and thousands of organisations — from home PCs in living rooms to entire enterprise fleets — forced to choose between hurried upgrades, paid stopgap fixes, or continued exposure to growing cyber risk. Background / Overview Windows 10 launched in 2015 and became the world’s dominant desktop operating system, but Microsoft’s lifecycle...

TeamViewer’s recent snapshot of its remote‑support traffic paints a stark picture: a substantial portion of endpoints that still receive help via TeamViewer are running an operating system that reaches end of vendor support in days, and the vendor’s Digital Employee Experience (DEX) tooling is being positioned as a pragmatic way to manage the mass migration to Windows 11. Background / Overview Microsoft has set a firm end‑of‑support date for Windows 10: after October 14, 2025, mainstream...

Kaspersky’s telemetry snapshot landed like a warning siren for IT teams and home users: more than half of monitored devices in the vendor’s dataset were still running Windows 10 as Microsoft’s official end-of-support deadline approached, leaving a large population of endpoints exposed the moment routine security updates stop. Background Windows 10 has been the dominant desktop operating system since its 2015 launch, but its lifecycle is finite and plainly scheduled: Microsoft’s support for...

Microsoft’s latest Insider preview explicitly removes the easy tricks that let users create a purely local account during Windows 11 setup, steering the Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE) toward an internet‑connected, Microsoft Account (MSA)–first path and forcing anyone who wants a truly offline/local profile to use supported provisioning, temporary MSAs with post‑setup conversion, or custom imaging workflows. Background / Overview Windows setup has been steadily moving toward an account‑first...

Microsoft has quietly closed the last easy doors that let enthusiasts, refurbishers and privacy-conscious users set up Windows 11 without an internet connection or a Microsoft account, effectively making an online, Microsoft Account–first Out‑of‑Box Experience (OOBE) the default path in current Insider preview builds. This change—explicitly described in the Windows Insider release notes as “removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE)”—appears...

If your PC’s text looks faint, fuzzy, or otherwise off-kilter, spending a couple of minutes running the built‑in ClearType tuner can make a dramatic, immediate difference — and it’s one of the easiest fixes for reducing eye strain on Windows machines. Background ClearType is Microsoft's long‑standing font‑rendering technology that uses subpixel rendering to sharpen text on LCD panels. Instead of treating each pixel as a single monochrome dot, ClearType takes advantage of the red/green/blue...

Microsoft’s latest Insider releases deliver a pair of practical, long-overdue fixes for File Explorer and a small but meaningful taskbar flyout tweak — improvements that polish daily Windows use but also underline how incremental and staged modern OS evolution has become. Overview In early October 2025, Windows Insider preview builds introduced two distinct threads of work aimed at making File Explorer feel finished and less annoying. A Dev‑channel flight (build 26220.6772) brings a much...

Microsoft Loop isn’t a mere Notion clone — it’s a living, cross‑app collaboration layer inside Microsoft 365 that quietly solves practical pain points many teams still wrestle with: keeping shared information current, reducing app‑switching, and turning conversations into tracked action. The MakeUseOf piece arguing that “Loop is underrated” captures that practical magic — templates that start projects fast, portable live components, smart workspaces, and Copilot assistance — but the real...

Oracle and Microsoft’s multicloud marriage just took another step into the Middle East: Oracle Database@Azure is now available in the United Arab Emirates, bringing Oracle-managed database services into Azure’s UAE Central (Abu Dhabi) and UAE North (Dubai) regions and giving customers local access to Exadata, Autonomous Database, Exascale options, and Oracle’s Zero Data Loss recovery capabilities alongside Azure’s AI, analytics, and application services. Background Oracle Database@Azure is...

Kuwait’s public‑sector digital push gained fresh momentum this year as Microsoft and local telco partner ZainTECH announced a strategic partnership to accelerate government digital transformation — a programme built around an AI‑capable Azure Region, localized cloud services, secure private connectivity, Copilot enablement and Centers of Excellence aimed at delivering measurable public‑service outcomes. The announcement frames a multi‑party stack — Microsoft’s hyperscale platform, ZainTECH’s...