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Microsoft has quietly started testing a built‑in video wallpaper feature for Windows 11, letting users set ordinary video files (MP4, MKV, AVI and more) as their desktop background in current Insider preview builds — a deliberate revival of the long‑loved DreamScene idea that once shipped with Windows Vista. Background For nearly two decades Windows has lacked a first‑party way to make a video the desktop wallpaper. Enthusiasts filled that gap with third‑party tools such as Wallpaper Engine...

Microsoft is testing a one‑click “Share with Copilot” shortcut inside the Windows 11 taskbar preview that launches Copilot Vision against a single app window, plus on‑screen text translation in Click to Do — small UI changes that underline Microsoft’s push to make Copilot an ambient, context‑aware assistant inside the OS rather than a separate sidebar. Background Windows 11’s Copilot evolution has been gradual but relentless: what began as a single chat pane and web‑style assistant has been...

Microsoft’s new 18‑second commercial for Copilot Labs lands like a concentrated marketing shot: bright visuals, brisk pacing and a single-minded message — Copilot is experimental, useful, and already part of everyday workflows — yet the ad’s brevity masks a deeper conversation about how Microsoft markets emerging AI, how Copilot Labs is evolving, and what users should expect when experimental AI moves from the lab into the taskbar. Background: Copilot, Copilot Labs and why Microsoft is...

Asda’s renewed and deepened collaboration with Microsoft marks a decisive acceleration of the supermarket’s cloud-first, AI-enabled strategy — a move that places Microsoft Azure at the centre of operations across more than 1,200 stores while pushing Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure Databricks, Microsoft Fabric and Surface Copilot+ devices into the retailer’s day-to-day workflows. Background Asda’s multi-year transformation, widely known inside the company as Project Future, began after the...

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 10 — a firm lifecycle cutoff that stops free security updates, feature fixes, and routine technical assistance. This is not an instant outage: Windows 10 PCs will continue to boot and run after that date, but they will become progressively more exposed to newly discovered vulnerabilities and compatibility issues unless you take action. The practical choices are straightforward: upgrade eligible machines to Windows 11, buy...

Global Growth Insights’ roundup of the “Top 21 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software Companies in 2025” captures an important snapshot of the market: a mix of hyperscalers, regional champions, and vertical specialists that together illustrate how AI has shifted from experimental pilots into enterprise core systems. The list and accompanying market forecasts are informative, but they are also shorthand—useful as a vendor map but not as a final procurement guide—and they require careful...

Mint Group’s placement in Microsoft’s 2025–2026 AI Business Solutions Inner Circle is a significant marker of sustained performance in the Microsoft partner ecosystem and a vote of confidence in the company’s AI-first delivery across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Copilot, and the Power Platform. The recognition—announced via a Mint Group-issued release and reported by ITWeb—names Mint Group among a small set of global partners invited to the Inner Circle Summit and a year of strategic briefings...

The University of Oxford will provide free, campus-wide access to ChatGPT Edu — powered across the institution by OpenAI’s GPT‑5 — marking the first UK university to make the education-tailored version of ChatGPT available to all students and staff as part of a five‑year strategic partnership with OpenAI. Background / Overview Oxford's announcement confirms a formal expansion of the partnership first publicised earlier in 2025, and it names specific program elements: university-wide licences...

Microsoft confirmed that its September 2025 cumulative update for Windows 11, identified as KB5065426 (and preceded by the August preview KB5064081), introduced a regression that breaks playback of certain HDCP- and DRM‑protected video streams in legacy playback apps — notably those that use the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) with HDCP enforcement or platform DRM for digital audio — and that a targeted fix has been staged through the Release Preview channel while a broader rollout is...

Global Growth Insights’ countdown of the “Top 21 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software Companies in 2025” crystallizes a broader truth: AI has moved from pilot projects to the strategic center of enterprise technology stacks, but the numbers and rankings that circulate in commercial roundups require careful verification and context. Background / Overview The landscape of AI software in 2025 is defined by three converging forces: the rapid commercial rollout of generative AI, hyperscalers...

Microsoft has quietly begun testing another Copilot shortcut in Windows 11 — a “Share with Copilot” button that appears when you hover over an app on the taskbar and lets Copilot Vision scan and analyze whatever’s visible in that window. Background Microsoft’s Copilot strategy has been to make its generative AI assistant an ever-present layer in Windows: baked into the taskbar, the system UI, inbox apps like Paint and Notepad, keyboard hardware with a dedicated Copilot key, and now into new...

ASDA’s renewed and expanded technology agreement with Microsoft marks a decisive step in the supermarket’s pivot to a cloud-first, AI-enabled operating model — a strategy the retailer says will sharpen price leadership, improve product availability, and free colleagues from repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-value retail work. Background ASDA’s modernisation program, widely reported as Project Future, began after the retailer’s divestiture from Walmart and set out to replace and...

Microsoft’s decision to close the Windows 10 chapter on October 14, 2025 is now official, and the practical reality is stark: after that date Windows 10 installations will continue to boot, but they will not receive routine security patches, feature updates, or official technical support from Microsoft—leaving millions of home and small‑business PCs exposed to growing risk unless owners take action. Background Windows 10 debuted in 2015 and has powered a large portion of the PC ecosystem for...

When a decade‑old PC boots into Windows 11 with an unmodified Microsoft ISO and without a motherboard‑level TPM, a very practical question surfaces: is this a clever way to squeeze extra life out of aging hardware, or a fragile hack that will leave you unsupported and exposed when the next major update lands? Background: why Windows 11 left so many machines “unsupported” Microsoft set a new security and compatibility baseline for Windows 11 at launch: UEFI with Secure Boot, Trusted Platform...

Agentic AI has moved off road‑show slides and into vendor roadmaps that are already finding their way into enterprise pilots, but the real test isn’t which product demo looks slick — it’s whether organisations can measure and validate real time savings and quality gains before they commit large-scale budgets. Background Agentic AI describes a shift from passive helpers (transcripts, summaries, search) to systems that act on behalf of users: drafting agendas, nudging calendars, executing...

Microsoft is preparing to flip the switch on Windows 11 version 25H2, but the update arriving in the coming weeks is not a horsepower‑hungry revamp — it’s an enablement package that mostly activates features already staged on devices, trims legacy baggage, and adds a handful of targeted improvements (notably some Start menu and manageability tweaks). Background / Overview Microsoft has placed Windows 11, version 25H2 (Build 26200.x) into the Release Preview Channel as the final public...

Enterprise IT budgets are under a new kind of pressure: a fast-moving AI adoption cycle that’s forcing organizations to pay more for the software, infrastructure, and data plumbing that power modern applications. Over the past year enterprises have reported rising renewal costs, new usage-based charges, and a proliferation of AI-enabled features that vendors are packaging — and often re-pricing — as premium capabilities. The result is a scramble for visibility, governance, and measurable ROI...

Valve's Steam will stop supporting 32‑bit versions of Windows on January 1, 2026, a change that quietly completes the platform's long migration to a 64‑bit‑first ecosystem and leaves a very small but real number of users with a clear deadline to upgrade or accept an unsupported configuration. Background Steam has spent the past decade moving away from legacy operating systems and architectures as the PC ecosystem standardized on 64‑bit hardware and modern driver stacks. The company’s...

Duo Directory Sync delivers a practical, one-way bridge from on-premises Active Directory into Duo by importing users, phones, groups and administrators via the Duo Authentication Proxy — but getting it right requires careful attention to authentication, transport security, proxy placement, attribute mapping and sync ownership rules to avoid surprises in production. Background / Overview Duo’s Directory Sync lets organizations import end-users and administrators from Active Directory (AD) or...

Nscale’s announcement that it will host the UK’s largest AI supercomputer, in collaboration with Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI, marks a major inflection point for Britain’s AI infrastructure—an audacious package of GPU capacity, sovereign compute initiatives and private-sector investment that aims to reshape where and how large-scale AI models are trained and served across the country. The plan centers on a 50MW (scalable to 90MW) AI campus in Loughton initially populated with 23,040 NVIDIA...