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Microsoft’s rush into AI, a visual overhaul with Windows 11, and a drive to consolidate services under Microsoft 365 and Copilot have produced some undeniably bold moves — and a handful of casualties. Among the most nostalgic and useful losses are five apps that many users quietly relied on for years: Windows Movie Maker, Paint 3D, Mail (the built‑in Windows Mail app), Microsoft Lens, and WordPad. These apps weren’t just utilities; they were approachable tools that lowered the barrier to...

Microsoft’s Copilot is no longer a neat demo or a sidebar curiosity — it has become a deeply woven productivity layer across Windows, Microsoft 365 apps, OneDrive, and the Edge browser, and choosing whether to adopt it requires weighing clear time-saving gains against licensing, privacy, and accuracy trade‑offs. Background / Overview Microsoft uses the name Copilot as an umbrella for several AI-assisted offerings: the consumer Copilot experience, the Copilot app and Copilot Pro for...

Microsoft’s vice‑chair and president, Brad Smith, announced that the company has “ceased and disabled a set of services” used by a unit inside Israel’s Ministry of Defence after an expanded review found evidence supporting elements of investigative reporting that alleged Microsoft cloud and AI products were being used to store and process large volumes of intercepted Palestinian communications. Background / Overview The immediate trigger for Microsoft’s action was an investigative package...

Microsoft's scheduled end of support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, is no longer a distant deadline — it's a clear inflection point for IT teams and individual users alike, and it leaves an estimated hundreds of millions of devices exposed unless proactive steps are taken. The company will stop providing free security updates, feature updates, and technical assistance for Windows 10 after that date. For many organizations this is a binary strategic decision: upgrade to Windows 11 and...

Microsoft has quietly begun previewing an AI-driven tidy-up for Windows 11 photo libraries: the Microsoft Photos app will now automatically scan and group images into four focused, document‑like categories — Screenshots, Receipts, Identity documents, and Notes — and the capability is rolling out to Windows Insiders running the updated Photos build on Copilot+ PCs. Background / Overview Microsoft has been steadily reworking Photos from a simple viewer into a productivity surface, folding in...

Microsoft’s vice chair and president Brad Smith confirmed that the company has “ceased and disabled a set of services” to a unit inside Israel’s Ministry of Defense after an expanded internal review found evidence that parts of earlier investigative reporting were accurate, including the consumption of Azure storage in the Netherlands and the use of Microsoft AI services—moves prompted by media reports alleging large‑scale storage and AI processing of intercepted Palestinian phone calls...

Windows 10 reaches its official end-of-support threshold on October 14, 2025 — but Microsoft has provided a one-year safety valve through the Consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that lets many users keep receiving critical security patches through October 13, 2026 if they enroll now. Background / Overview Windows 10 launched in 2015 and has had a decade-long lifecycle; Microsoft’s lifecycle policy sets October 14, 2025 as the last regular support day for consumer editions. After...

Clipboard History is the kind of small, steadfast Windows convenience that quietly compounds into real productivity gains — and it deserves more attention than it gets. In everyday use the feature solves a trivial but frequent pain: the one-shot nature of Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V. Enabled once and learned, Windows Clipboard History turns the clipboard into a lightweight, searchable workspace that handles up to 25 items (including small images and formatted text), supports pinning, and can optionally...

Windows 10’s end-of-support date is no longer a distant calendar note — it is a real inflection point for millions of desktops and enterprise fleets — and the migration patterns unfolding now look strikingly different from the Windows 7 transition five years ago. StatCounter’s late‑summer 2025 snapshot shows Windows 11 narrowly leading web‑active desktops at about 49.0% while Windows 10 remains substantial at roughly 45.6%, leaving a small Windows 7 tail at under 4%. Microsoft’s lifecycle...

For many long-time Windows users, the tiny "Show more options" link in Windows 11’s abbreviated right‑click menu is more than an annoyance — it interrupts muscle memory, adds clicks to everyday tasks, and compounds into lost minutes across a workday. There are three practical ways to bring the full, classic context menu back: a quick keyboard shortcut, a third‑party shell mod (ExplorerPatcher), or a small per‑user registry tweak that restores the legacy menu by default. Each approach has...

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 announcement isn’t a modest refresh — it’s a full-throttle attempt to reposition Arm-based Windows PCs as contenders in the premium laptop and creator workstation markets, with jaw-dropping headline numbers (up to 18 cores, a record 5.0 GHz boost, an 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, and 3 nm process claims) and a new enterprise-grade manageability feature called Snapdragon Guardian that leans on built‑in 5G for out‑of‑band access. Overview Qualcomm used its Snapdragon Summit...

Anthropic’s decision to triple its international workforce and quintuple its applied AI team this year marks a dramatic acceleration in the company’s global strategy — a response to surging non‑U.S. demand for its Claude models and a broader shift in the geographic center of generative AI adoption. Background Anthropic launched in 2021 with a mission framed around safety-first large language models, and its Claude family of models has become a core product for enterprises seeking powerful...

Microsoft’s announcement that it has “ceased and disabled a set of services” for a unit inside a foreign defence ministry marks a rare, high-stakes intersection of cloud computing, corporate policy, and wartime intelligence — and raises urgent questions about how global cloud platforms police misuse, enforce terms of service, and manage the downstream human-rights risks of providing near‑limitless storage and AI tools to state actors. Background and overview A joint investigative reporting...

Anthropic’s decision to triple its international workforce and quintuple its applied-AI team before the end of 2025 marks one of the clearest signals yet that the generative-AI market has gone global—and that the company behind Claude is positioning itself to be a dominant international player. Background / Overview Anthropic, the San Francisco–based AI developer founded by former OpenAI researchers, announced on September 26, 2025 that it will dramatically scale its overseas headcount to...

Elon Musk’s public tease has become an actual project: xAI is building “Macrohard,” a self‑described, purely AI software company that aims to run the entire software lifecycle with cooperating AI agents — writing code, testing it, managing releases, and even emulating users — with the stated ambition of replacing human software engineers for many tasks. The reveal, framed on social media as tongue‑in‑cheek, has already generated a trademark filing, a hiring blitz at xAI, and a flurry of...

Microsoft reversed course for millions of users by agreeing to offer truly free Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows 10 consumers across the European Economic Area (EEA), removing several enrollment conditions that had provoked consumer groups and regulators — but the concession is limited, timeboxed, and carries caveats that every user should understand before deciding whether to stay on Windows 10 or upgrade to Windows 11. Background / Overview Microsoft has long signaled that...

When Windows refuses to upgrade—stalling at “Checking for updates,” rolling back with an opaque error code, or simply refusing to offer Windows 11 at all—the frustration is immediate and real. The four troubleshooting “secrets” popularized in a recent ZDNET guide—(1) update firmware and drivers, (2) check Microsoft’s release health for safeguard holds, (3) run a disciplined retry with dynamic updates disabled, and (4) analyze Setup logs with SetupDiag—are not just clickbait: they are a...

Cru Uncorked’s experiment—pitting three experienced sommeliers against Microsoft Copilot in a blind, guest‑voted tasting—did more than create a memorable dinner: it crystallized how AI wine pairing performs in the real world, where inventory, storytelling and human judgment matter as much as textbook matches. Background Cru Uncorked is a fine‑dining restaurant in a countryside chateau outside Cleveland with an extensive cellar and a public program of pairing events and blind tastings. The...

Microsoft has set a firm date: routine support for most editions of Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025 — after that date routine security and feature updates, plus standard Microsoft technical support, stop for the mainstream Windows 10 releases; Microsoft has offered a limited one‑year consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) bridge and, under recent pressure from European consumer groups, adjusted enrollment rules so residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) can receive that extra...

Microsoft has quietly pulled off a regional U‑turn: Windows 10 users who live inside the European Economic Area (EEA) will be able to claim an extra year of security updates at no charge, while users in the United Kingdom and many other markets will still face paywalls or product‑tie requirements to keep receiving patches after Windows 10’s October 14, 2025 end‑of‑support deadline. Background / Overview Windows 10 reaches its official end of support on October 14, 2025. After that date...