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Microsoft’s decision to formally separate Teams from Office 365/Microsoft 365 marks the close of a high‑stakes regulatory chapter and creates a new competitive baseline for enterprise collaboration tools worldwide. The European Commission and Microsoft reached a negotiated package of commitments that will require Microsoft to sell versions of its productivity suites without Teams at a discount, offer Teams as a standalone product, improve interoperability with rival solutions, and enable...

Microsoft’s recurring Windows Office Hours returns on Thursday, September 18, 2025, offering IT teams a focused, chat-based hour to get engineer-led answers on Windows 11 adoption, Zero Trust, update orchestration, and cloud/hybrid device strategies. The one-hour session is scheduled for 8:00–9:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time and will be hosted entirely in the Tech Community Comments thread — there is no webinar or video stream. Overview Windows Office Hours is a live Q&A format aimed squarely...

Tech platforms and AI labs are operating on two different rulebooks: the same companies that ban automated scraping of their services in their terms of service are also building the next generation of generative models on training pipelines that — evidence shows — lean heavily on content harvested at scale from the public web, including copyrighted music, videos, and other creator work. The contradiction is the headline: industry players insist on permission and written consent for anyone...

Ralph Lauren has put a chatbot in the business of taste: Ask Ralph, an in‑app stylist built with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI, is now rolling out to U.S. app users and promising shoppable, head‑to‑toe looks that translate decades of archive imagery into instant styling advice. The launch is a clear pivot from catalog and campaign storytelling to conversational commerce, and it raises the questions every WindowsForum reader—IT leaders, product builders, and technologists—should be asking: what...

Microsoft has pushed a significant upgrade to Microsoft Sentinel’s User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), embedding AI-driven behavioral detection, broader cross‑cloud data ingestion, and dynamic baselining that together aim to surface subtle account compromise and insider risk while reducing investigation noise for SOC teams. Background Microsoft Sentinel launched UEBA to help security teams move beyond static, rule‑based detection by building behavioral baselines for users, hosts...

Valve has quietly but meaningfully reshaped the Steam client with a sweeping UI and accessibility refresh that brings long-requested controls — UI scaling, high-contrast mode, reduced motion, and a dedicated customization tab for game artwork — to the desktop and SteamOS users, and the result is one of the clearest signs yet that Valve is treating Steam as a living platform rather than a static storefront. Overview Valve's recent Steam client update introduces several accessibility and...

Microsoft has made Windows 11’s annual refresh—version 25H2—available as official ISO media to Windows Insiders in the Release Preview channel, completing the packaging that IT teams, OEMs and advanced users need for clean installs and image-based testing even as the bulk rollout continues to be handled as a lightweight enablement package (eKB). Background / Overview Windows 11, version 25H2 is being delivered this cycle under Microsoft’s continued shared servicing approach: most feature...

A stripped-down, community-built version of Windows 11 has pushed the limits of what the OS can be when every nonessential component is removed: tiny installation media, dramatic runtime compression, and the deliberate sacrifice of serviceability and security to reach an astonishingly small storage footprint. The engineering behind these “diet” builds—most notably the Tiny11 family and its more radical relatives—shows that the modern Windows desktop is largely a collection of optional...

XL Converter arrives as a quietly powerful, free and open-source image utility that brings modern compression formats and advanced JPEG tech to Windows and Linux users—making it a smart tool for anyone who needs to shrink, transcode, or batch-process large photo libraries without sacrificing fidelity. Background / Overview XL Converter is a cross-platform GUI application focused on "next‑gen" image formats and efficient JPEG workflows. The app packages support for JPEG XL (.jxl) and AVIF...

Oracle’s VirtualBox 7.2.2 arrives as a targeted maintenance update that—according to reporting from third‑party outlets—addresses several painful pain points introduced with the 7.2 line: virtual machines failing to start on Windows-on‑ARM hosts, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) not functioning in some guest configurations, multiple GUI crashes and freezes, USB‑over‑IP passthrough issues, and a string of platform‑specific regressions on macOS and Linux. The release is described as a...

One month before Windows 10 reaches its official end-of-support date, the migration map unexpectedly shifted: public telemetry shows Windows 10 reclaiming share versus Windows 11, a reversal that complicates Microsoft’s timeline and raises urgent security and deployment questions for consumers and IT teams alike. Background Windows 10’s free mainstream support from Microsoft ends on October 14, 2025. After that date consumer editions will no longer receive regular security updates unless an...

Microsoft’s September servicing quietly removes two long‑standing administration tools — the legacy Windows PowerShell 2.0 engine and the WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command‑line) tool — from certain Windows 11 images, a deliberate security‑first move that closes well‑documented downgrade vectors but also forces real migration work for organizations and power users that still depend on those utilities. Background Microsoft announced that the 2025 annual Windows 11 update...

Microsoft’s cybersecurity posture is under renewed fire after U.S. Senator Ron Wyden urged the Federal Trade Commission to open a formal investigation into the company’s default security settings, arguing that Microsoft shipped “dangerous, insecure software” that materially enabled a 2024 ransomware attack on Ascension, one of America’s largest hospital networks. The senator’s letter ties an attack that disrupted surgeries and exposed millions of patient records to long-standing platform...

The Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has quietly ushered in a new digital era for welfare delivery — combining an AI chat agent, a secure citizen portal and a cloud analytics stack built on Microsoft Azure technologies — a package that Microsoft says now helps roughly 100,000 people a month and dramatically speeds up benefit processing and case handling. Background The Ministry’s Client Zone, known publicly as Jenda, has become the single place where citizens can apply for core...

WP Engine’s announcement that it is launching its enterprise platform in the United Arab Emirates — enabling customers across the Gulf to run managed WordPress workloads on Microsoft Azure in Dubai — is a material expansion for enterprise WordPress hosting in the region and a pragmatic answer to two pressing customer demands: data residency and lower latency for Gulf audiences. Background / Overview WP Engine is a long‑standing managed WordPress platform focused on enterprise and agency...

Microsoft has quietly started seeding official ISO install media for Windows 11, version 25H2 to Windows Insiders, giving testers and IT teams a clean-install path ahead of the update’s broader rollout later this year. Background Windows 11, version 25H2 is the next scheduled annual feature update and Microsoft has positioned it as a lightweight release: rather than performing a full OS swap, the update is delivered as an enablement package (eKB) that flips on features already present in the...

Windows 11’s 2025 feature update has arrived in preview form — and if you were expecting fireworks, prepare for a shrug: version 25H2 is being shipped as a lightweight, enablement-style package that doesn’t add brand‑new features beyond what’s already available in 24H2. What Microsoft has delivered instead is a re‑packaging and activation of functionality that has been progressively seeded through monthly updates, plus a handful of removals and lifecycle resets that matter most to IT teams...

Satya Nadella’s practical, CEO‑level approach to AI boils down to a simple playbook: use AI to compress routine synthesis and surface decision‑ready evidence, but couple that capability with disciplined governance, measurement, and human oversight. In late August 2025 Nadella published five short prompts he says he uses in Microsoft 365 Copilot to prepare for meetings, draft project updates, assess launch readiness, audit his time, and produce targeted briefs — a demonstration of how...

The debate over whether artificial intelligence will devour the U.S. power grid has moved out of academic journals and into boardrooms, utility commission hearings, and consumers’ monthly bills—and the conversation is finally demanding honest numbers, not hype. Recent reporting has made two things frighteningly clear: grid operators and consultants now forecast large, rapid increases in peak electricity demand that they attribute largely to AI-ready data centers, and utilities are already...

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...