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Microsoft’s latest Excel headlines have been dominated by bold AI stunts — Copilot, on-cell generative functions and natural‑language formulaing — but one of the oldest, most reliable features in the spreadsheet deserves a second look: PivotTables. Used judiciously, PivotTables remain the fastest, lowest‑risk route from a raw sales table to an interactive, explorable dashboard — and a recent Excel Beta update that adds PivotTable Auto Refresh changes the calculus for many everyday reporting...

Microsoft’s latest Copilot Studio updates push AI deeper into the everyday mechanics of business by letting agents make routine approval decisions inside multistage workflows — automating rule-driven steps while keeping humans in the loop for exceptions and final sign‑off. Background / Overview Microsoft has introduced AI Approvals and expanded multistage approvals inside Copilot Studio’s agent flows, now available in preview. These capabilities let organizations add AI stages to approval...

Ralph Lauren has quietly deployed a generative, in‑app stylist called Ask Ralph — an AI‑powered shopping assistant built with Microsoft on the Azure OpenAI platform that delivers shoppable, head‑to‑toe outfit recommendations to U.S. mobile app users and aims to recreate the experience of speaking with an in‑store stylist. Background / Overview Ask Ralph began rolling out to Ralph Lauren app users in the United States on September 9, 2025, and is explicitly framed by the company as the next...

If your laptop is still in your hands right now, treat that as a narrow window of opportunity: apply a handful of defensive settings that will protect your data, help you recover the device if it goes missing, and dramatically reduce the damage a thief can do. These changes take minutes, and they close the gap between “hope I get it back” and “I can’t access the data even if they steal the hardware.” Below are seven high-impact settings and practical steps to change them immediately on...

Windows' built‑in security toolbox is larger and more capable than it has ever been, but several of its most visible safeguards can — paradoxically — reduce real‑world security when design and deployment interact with human behavior and system performance. Four features in particular — User Account Control (UAC), Smart App Control, Virtualization‑Based Security (VBS) / Credential Guard, and Windows Security notifications — all solve real problems, yet each has implementation or usability...

ASUS’ quietly posted promo that details the Xbox Ally family’s so‑called “Zero Gravity” cooling system has pulled back the curtain on one of the most consequential engineering problems for modern handheld gaming PCs: how to keep a dense, hot APU comfortable and quiet in every orientation while preserving battery life and long‑term reliability. Background / Overview Microsoft and ASUS introduced the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X as Windows‑based, Xbox‑styled handheld gaming PCs built...

Windows 10’s sudden rebound in usage just weeks before end of support has shifted the migration narrative: a late-month rise in Windows 10’s market share has narrowed the gap with Windows 11, exposing a fragmented upgrade landscape that will complicate Microsoft’s push to consolidate users on the newer platform ahead of the October 14, 2025 end-of-support deadline. Background Windows 10’s official end of support is scheduled for October 14, 2025. After that date Microsoft will cease regular...

Microsoft's decision to remove the Microsoft Store registration fee for individual developers is a deliberate, high-impact policy shift that lowers the financial barrier to publishing on Windows, replaces credit-card gating with identity verification, and refocuses the Store as an open, discoverable distribution channel for indie creators and hobbyists. Background Microsoft announced a flighted onboarding change that waives the long-standing one‑time registration fee for individual developer...

Neo4j’s new Infinigraph architecture, anchored by a technique it calls property sharding, promises to finally break the company out of its historical scalability box — allowing a single Neo4j deployment to run both high-throughput transactional (OLTP) and deep analytical (OLAP) workloads at multi‑terabyte scale, while also integrating more tightly with Microsoft’s Fabric and Azure ecosystem. Background Graph databases model data as nodes, relationships, and properties rather than rows and...

A horned demon with bat wings confronts a tuxedoed host at a grand doorway.

Gartner’s warning that VMware could lose roughly a third of its workloads to hyperscalers by 2028 has snapped the industry into high alert, but parsing the numbers, the causes, and the practical options for IT teams shows a market in rapid re‑arrangement rather than an immediate collapse. The headline — that VMware may shed about 35% of workloads over the next few years — comes amid sweeping Broadcom licensing and partner‑program changes that have effectively redirected how customers obtain...

Microsoft’s free, 12-lesson GitHub course on building AI agents offers a practical, hands-on primer that packages Microsoft tooling, agent design patterns, and runnable code into a single, modular learning path—making it one of the most accessible entry points for developers and IT professionals who want to move from theory to working agent prototypes quickly. Background / Overview Agentic AI—systems that sense, reason, and act over time using large language models (LLMs) and external...

Ralph Lauren has rolled out Ask Ralph, a conversational AI stylist embedded in the brand's mobile app, delivering head-to-toe, shoppable outfit recommendations that the company says are personalized to users’ prompts and drawn from live inventory. Launched on September 9, 2025, and built in partnership with Microsoft on the Azure OpenAI platform, Ask Ralph positions Ralph Lauren at the front of a fast-evolving wave of conversational commerce — where shopping feels more like a dialogue with a...

Windows 3.0’s arrival in 1990 was less a single product launch than a change in the way millions of people thought about personal computing — and yes, the tiny game of Solitaire bundled with it played a surprisingly large role in that cultural shift. Background / Overview Windows 3.0 launched with a redesigned graphical shell, the Program Manager and File Manager, richer color support and a stronger focus on usability than earlier Windows releases. Those changes — along with an unprecedented...

NTDEV’s community ecosystem has produced yet another extreme take on Windows 11: nano11, a script-driven rebuilder that pares a stock Windows 11 image down to astonishingly small sizes — an ISO reportedly just over 2 GB and an installed footprint under 3 GB when combined with compression — by stripping large swathes of features, drivers, and servicing infrastructure to produce an ultra‑light test image for old PCs and lab use. Background Windows 11’s growing feature set has produced a...

Microsoft’s October deadline for Windows 10 support has arrived like a ringing bell for an industry that—by several measures—wasn’t ready: large numbers of consumer and corporate endpoints still run Windows 10, many organisations face compatibility and budget constraints, and the safety net Microsoft offers is limited and temporary. The timetable is clear: after 14 October 2025 Microsoft stops shipping free security updates, feature patches, and standard technical assistance for Windows 10...

Microsoft has confirmed that OneNote for Windows 10—the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app preinstalled on many Windows 10 machines—will be retired on October 14, 2025, and will switch to a read-only state after that date, meaning you will still be able to view content but will not be able to create, edit, or sync notes from that app anymore. Background OneNote’s Windows story has been unusually complicated for a decade. Microsoft has maintained multiple OneNote clients: the classic...

Windows 11’s 25H2 installer has arrived for testers, but the copy available today is a Release Preview disk image (ISO) and still a preview build — meaning most users should sit tight and wait for the official, staged rollout through Windows Update rather than rushing to download and manually install the preview media. Background / Overview Windows 11 version 25H2 is being distributed this cycle primarily as an enablement package (eKB) layered on top of the existing 24H2 servicing stream...

OpenAI’s backing of a feature-length, largely AI-created animated film called Critterz has jolted the animation world: the project — expanding a 2023 AI-made short into a Cannes-bound feature — explicitly uses OpenAI tools (including GPT-5 and the Sora video model) and a dramatically reduced team and budget to prove that generative AI can compress production time and costs. Background The short film Critterz, written and directed by Chad Nelson, used OpenAI’s DALL·E image pipeline in 2023...

Microsoft will begin retiring the lightweight Outlook Lite Android app on October 6, 2025, blocking new installs that day as it directs users toward the full Outlook mobile client and consolidates engineering around a single, feature-rich Android email experience. Background Outlook Lite launched in August 2022 as Microsoft's deliberately small, low-footprint Android client designed for phones with limited RAM and storage, and for regions with slow or expensive mobile networks. The app...