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Microsoft has quietly turned the Xbox PC app on Windows into a genuine, controller‑friendly game hub that now discovers and launches installed titles from third‑party launchers — Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net and more — while adding a new My apps shelf for quick access to storefronts and utilities. Background For years PC gamers have lived with an ecosystem of competing storefronts and launcher clients: Steam for discovery and community, Epic for exclusives, GOG for DRM‑free...

Principled Technologies’ new hands‑on benchmark argues that running an end‑to‑end Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) application entirely on Microsoft Azure — rather than splitting model hosting, retrieval, and compute across providers — can deliver measurable gains in latency, simplify governance, and produce more predictable multi‑year costs for many enterprise AI workloads. Background / Overview Principled Technologies (PT), a commercial third‑party testing lab, built a canonical RAG...

Thirty-one years ago today Microsoft shipped Windows NT 3.5 — a quietly transformational release that turned the “New Technology” experiment into a credible platform for servers and workstations and set technical foundations still visible in Windows 11 and Windows Server today. Overview Windows NT 3.5 (codename Daytona) arrived as a pragmatic, performance-first update to Microsoft’s fledgling NT family. It did not radically change the user-facing shell — the classic Program Manager and File...

Apple’s latest wearable cycle leans into health, battery life and incremental hardware polish — and the new Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 are already available for preorder with delivery slated to begin on September 19. Background: what just happened and why it matters Apple’s September hardware event again paired a new iPhone family with an updated Apple Watch lineup, positioning the watch as both a health device and a more independent, always‑connected...

Microsoft Taiwan will formally introduce the Surface Laptop to the local market in early August, bringing Microsoft’s first “true” clamshell Surface notebook to Taiwan with Windows 10 S preinstalled, a tiered SKU lineup starting in the low-to-mid NT$30,000 range, an introductory free upgrade path to Windows 10 Pro through the end of the year, and an Office 365 Personal subscription bundled on qualifying purchases. Background The Surface Laptop is Microsoft’s move to recast the Surface brand...

Valve’s latest decision to end support for 32‑bit Windows in Steam marks the final stage of a long, industry‑wide migration to 64‑bit computing—and while the change will touch only a vanishingly small slice of users, it has meaningful technical and security consequences that every Windows PC gamer should understand. Background Over the past decade the PC ecosystem steadily moved from 32‑bit (x86) to 64‑bit (x86‑64 / AMD64) as default. Microsoft’s own push—Windows 11 is 64‑bit only, and...

Cloud computing — and particularly sovereign cloud — has quietly become the fulcrum of the UAE’s digital transformation push, shaping how governments, banks, healthcare providers and logistics firms choose where and how to run their most sensitive workloads. Recent market studies and government-led programmes paint a clear picture: the UAE’s digital transformation market is expanding rapidly, cloud remains the dominant deployment model, and sovereign cloud offerings that combine hyperscale...

Microsoft appears to be quietly testing a native video‑wallpaper feature in Windows 11 Insider builds — a modern, DreamScene‑style capability that would let users set ordinary video files (MP4, MOV, MKV and others) as their desktop background directly from the OS — but the functionality is still hidden in preview code and its final behavior, rollout timing, and power/security policies remain provisional. Background Windows has flirted with animated desktop backdrops before. In 2007 Microsoft...

Cloud-first strategies are no longer a future aspiration in the UAE — they are the operational backbone of a national digital agenda that ties sovereign cloud, hyperscaler partnerships, and large-scale AI ambitions into a single, fast-moving transformation story. Background / Overview The UAE’s digital transformation market is entering a rapid scale-up phase: market research estimates put the UAE digital transformation market at USD 1.57 billion in 2025, with projections to reach USD 3.29...

I used a simple change—turning off nonessential startup apps—and cut my PC's boot wait by measurable seconds; the tweak is low-risk, reversible, and one of the fastest wins for real‑world responsiveness. In controlled tests on two machines (one HDD-based, one SSD-based) the boot time dropped consistently when startup programs were disabled, and a selective approach—keeping only essential apps enabled—delivered most of the benefit without sacrificing convenience. This feature explains exactly...

Kotaku this week flagged a steep, time-limited markdown on a 14‑inch HP laptop running Windows 11 Home — a bargain-priced machine that the outlet says dropped to $171 from $229 and is listed among Amazon’s top sellers — and for readers hunting a budget Windows laptop this model is worth a close look. Background The laptop market has splintered into dozens of niches: premium ultraportables, gaming workhorses, business-class machines, and the huge, price-sensitive gateway segment where...

Microsoft’s decision to bake Copilot into Teams is not a gentle feature update — it’s a structural shift that turns meetings, channels, and workplace communities into surfaces where AI acts as a persistent teammate, not just a reactive assistant. The new generation of Copilot agents—led by the meeting-focused Facilitator and a family of channel, project, and community agents—aims to automate note-taking, capture decisions, assign tasks, and keep projects coherently tracked under enterprise...

Primebook's new 2 Pro landed as a wake-up call: a fully packaged, Android‑15 laptop with 8GB RAM, 128GB UFS storage, a 14.1‑inch FHD IPS screen and a MediaTek Helio G99 SoC, priced at just ₹17,990 — and it claims up to 14 hours of battery life and built‑in AI features that make it sound like a much more expensive machine. Background The low‑cost laptop segment in India has morphed from basic netbooks into a surprisingly versatile space where vendors experiment with operating systems, mobile...

Microsoft’s aggressive Copilot rollout and Google’s Agent Payments Protocol headline a week that will matter to every small business that uses Windows, the web, or payroll software—because the shape of everyday productivity, commerce, and cash flow automation is shifting fast. Microsoft will begin automatically installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows machines that already have desktop Microsoft 365 apps this October, with tenant admins able to opt out but personal users largely...

This week’s Microsoft story cycle delivered a mix of pragmatic progress and painful reminders: hardware prices climbed, platform support timelines tightened, browsers leaned harder into generative AI, and Microsoft continued to weave Copilot-style AI deeper into Windows and Microsoft 365. The net is a clear direction — cloud, AI, and consolidation — but also a widening list of practical decisions for gamers, IT teams, and privacy-conscious users who now face new costs, forced installations...

If your Windows 11 PC goes to sleep but doesn’t lock when it wakes, that behavior breaks a basic line of defense: it lets anyone who walks past the machine see your screen and interact with running apps. This guide summarizes the common causes and fixes—from the quick Settings toggle to Registry and powercfg edits—explains the security trade-offs, and gives a prioritized troubleshooting checklist so you can both restore the lock-on-sleep behavior and understand why it stopped working in the...

xAI’s new Grok 4 Fast lands as a direct bet on cost‑efficient reasoning: a unified, multimodal model with a staggering 2,000,000‑token context window, split SKUs for reasoning and non‑reasoning use, native web and X search, multihop browsing, and a pricing structure designed to make long‑context and agentic workflows affordable for both developers and end users. Background / Overview Grok 4 Fast is the latest release in xAI’s Grok family and is positioned explicitly as a price‑performance...

Vivaldi’s latest release, Apple’s sweeping OS refresh, Google’s new Spotlight-like desktop search, Microsoft’s automatic Copilot roll‑out for Microsoft 365 customers, and a batch of platform-level housekeeping items made up a brisk tech news cycle on September 20 — each item carrying practical changes for power users, IT teams, and privacy-conscious consumers alike. Background The second half of 2025 has continued a familiar pattern: vendors shipping targeted quality-of-life updates while...

Microsoft has set a firm deadline: Windows 10 reaches end of support on October 14, 2025, and the clock is now counting down for hundreds of millions of PCs that will no longer receive routine security updates unless their owners act. Microsoft’s consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program provides a one‑year bridge for vulnerable machines, but details and uptake vary—and independent estimates of how many people are affected range widely. The practical reality is stark: ensure your...

Steam is officially pulling the plug on support for 32‑bit versions of Windows in the Steam desktop client, forcing the remaining holdouts to upgrade or accept an unsupported, unpatched client after January 1, 2026. Background Steam’s announcement is surgical and narrowly scoped: the company says it will stop supporting systems running 32‑bit versions of Windows starting January 1, 2026. The only 32‑bit Windows SKU Steam still lists as supported today is Windows 10 (32‑bit), which Steam’s...