Featured content

Microsoft’s Copilot is not just growing — it’s accelerating faster on mobile than many expected, and recent Comscore data shows that the shift is reshaping the consumer and enterprise AI landscape in ways that matter for Windows users, IT teams, and marketers alike. The numbers tell two simultaneous stories: Copilot’s mobile footprint surged sharply in Q2, driven largely by enterprise integration and distribution deals, while ChatGPT remains the dominant mass-market destination, with the...

Satya Nadella’s five short Copilot prompts are less a CEO flex and more a practical playbook for turning generative AI into repeatable executive work — from meeting readiness and project rollups to launch probabilities and time audits — and the implications for Windows and Microsoft 365 admins, managers, and knowledge workers are immediate and profound. Background Satya Nadella recently published a brief set of prompts he uses with Microsoft Copilot to compress routine cognitive tasks into...

Esri’s announcement that VBScript is deprecated throughout ArcGIS effective September 2025 sets a firm deadline for GIS professionals to stop relying on an aging scripting engine and begin migrating label, symbology, calculator, and evaluator logic to modern, supported expression languages such as Arcade, Python, and SQL. The blog post makes clear the move follows Microsoft’s multi‑phase VBScript deprecation for Windows, and Esri is aligning ArcGIS products to that timetable to avoid broken...

Microsoft’s PowerToys team has quietly moved to fill a conspicuous gap in Windows’ personalization features: beginning with PowerToys v0.94 the project teased a scheduled automatic theme switching utility that will let Windows switch between light and dark modes on a timetable — a capability Windows 11 still lacks natively for everyday users. Microsoft’s announcement of the 0.94 release confirms the tease for v0.95, and community and GitHub activity make clear this feature has been a...

Microsoft’s audit of the August Windows 11 cumulative update has closed one chapter of an unusually noisy storage scare, but it has left behind a tangle of reproducible community tests, partial vendor confirmations, and unanswered forensic questions that IT teams and power users should still treat seriously. Microsoft says it “found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media,” while Phison — the SSD controller...

When a single AI service becomes central to millions of workflows, a short outage stops more than casual conversation — it exposes systemic fragility and forces users to choose alternatives they may previously have ignored. Recent market shifts and intermittent service interruptions have pushed many Windows power users, content teams, and developers to evaluate the rising field of ChatGPT alternatives. This feature pulls together the most compelling replacements in 2025, verifies core claims...

Microsoft’s definitive update: after an internal review and partner testing, the company says the August 2025 Windows 11 security rollup did not directly corrupt or “brick” SSDs — but the incident has exposed a fragile interaction between OS updates, SSD controller firmware, and real-world workloads that still leaves some users exposed and data at risk. Background / Overview Over the second half of August 2025 a cluster of alarming user reports began circulating online: users installing the...

Dr. William L. Bain’s career bridges the arc of modern parallel computing — from Bell Labs and Intel research labs through a Microsoft acquisition to founding ScaleOut Software — and his work today pushes operational intelligence and in‑memory computing into production systems where latency, availability, and real‑time insight matter. Background Dr. William L. Bain holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering with a focus on parallel computing from Rice University and has spent decades designing...

Australian Data Centres has bolstered its executive bench with three senior hires — appointing Matt Holden as Chief Operating Officer, Greg Gale as Chief Information Security Officer, and Peter Adcock as Chief Technology Officer — moves the company says will accelerate its national expansion, strengthen sovereign-ready offerings, and position the business to meet surging demand for AI‑ready and high‑assurance data centre capacity. (arnnet.com.au, ausdatacentre.com.au) Background Australian...

Files 4.0 lands as a major milestone for an already feature-rich third‑party file manager, shipping a redesigned address experience (the new Omnibar), a polished Dual Pane workflow, wider cloud-drive support, and a host of security and productivity tools aimed squarely at power users and IT professionals. This is the most substantial update in the app’s history: a full release with coordinated UI changes, keyboard-driven workflows, and deeper integrations that make Files not just an...

The moment your Windows PC starts whispering “Low disk space,” it isn’t always because you’ve hoarded videos or forgotten to empty the Recycle Bin—sometimes the culprits are ordinary system and application folders that quietly balloon over time. A recent practical roundup identified the usual suspects—Temp, Recycle Bin, Downloads, update caches, leftover app data, system restore points, and browser caches—and showed how Windows’ built‑in tools and a handful of safe third‑party utilities can...

Windows 11 gives enthusiasts a stronger baseline, but a Virtual Private Network (VPN) remains the most practical way to extend that protection across networks, locations, and services—turning a secure machine into a truly private and travel‑ready workspace. Overview Microsoft has repeatedly touted Windows 11’s security improvements: hardware-backed baselines, secured‑core PCs, and built‑in protections that have driven a measurable drop in reported security incidents. Microsoft’s own security...

Microsoft’s surprise consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) window is real — and it’s urgent: Windows 10 users now have a one‑year lifeline to keep receiving security updates through October 13, 2026, but you must enroll before Windows 10’s support ends on October 14, 2025. The enrollment appears as an “Enroll now” button in Settings → Windows Update and offers three ways to claim a year of protection — a free path tied to backing up PC settings to OneDrive, a Microsoft Rewards redemption...

ZDNET’s compact roundup of "45+ time‑saving Windows keyboard shortcuts" is less a listicle and more a practical playbook: a curated set of high‑impact keystrokes that swap repetitive mouse motions for instant, repeatable actions and unlock features many users overlook. The author prioritizes real‑world wins — quick access to File Explorer, smarter window management with Snap Layouts, selective screenshots with Snipping Tool, and the clipboard history stack — then folds those shortcuts into a...

NanaZIP’s preview of version 6 lands as a clear evolution of the 7‑Zip fork: deeper Windows 11 integration, a host of interface rewrites using XAML, a controversial new extract‑on‑open workflow, and security‑minded codec changes that move the project further from its 7‑Zip lineage while tightening compatibility requirements. Background NanaZIP began as a modern, Microsoft Store–friendly fork of 7‑Zip, with the stated aim of bringing the raw power of the 7‑Zip engine to a Windows 11‑style...

Microsoft's Surface Pro line is on the move again: after a year of careful iteration and the arrival of a new 12‑inch Surface Pro variant, the rumor mill and a handful of leaks point toward a more ambitious flagship refresh commonly referred to as the Surface Pro 12 (12th Gen) — a device that may redefine what a Windows 11 tablet 2‑in‑1 looks like in the AI era. Early reporting and leaked briefs sketch a roadmap that blends Qualcomm's ARM advances, Microsoft’s Copilot+ ambitions, and a...

A quiet software miracle has turned a stack of nearly obsolete Windows Mixed Reality headsets back into usable PC VR hardware: Oasis, a free, unofficial SteamVR driver released by Matthieu Bucchianeri, restores direct SteamVR support to Windows MR devices on modern Windows 11 systems and, in the process, exposes a tangle of engineering, platform policy, and vendor cooperation issues that every VR owner should understand. Background Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) launched in 2017 as Microsoft’s...

Windows 11’s long‑running Bluetooth headache — game sound collapsing into muffled, mono audio the moment a headset microphone is used — has finally been addressed at the operating‑system level: Microsoft has added support for Bluetooth LE Audio and a “super‑wideband stereo” path that lets stereo game and media audio coexist with a high‑quality microphone stream on compatible headsets and PCs. Background: why Bluetooth on Windows sounded like a compromise For more than a decade, PC Bluetooth...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has publicly shared the five AI prompts he now relies on inside Microsoft 365 Copilot — a short, practical blueprint that reveals how a top executive turns generative AI into a daily decision engine and meeting prep assistant. Background / Overview On August 7, 2025, Microsoft announced the integration of OpenAI’s GPT‑5 into Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of a broader rollout that put the model to work across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and Copilot Studio. Twenty...

Microsoft has made Windows 11, version 25H2 (Release Preview Build 26200.5074) available to the Release Preview channel — a near‑final, enablement package release that flips features already staged in the 24H2 servicing stream and brings a focused set of manageability, security, and AI refinements targeted at enterprise and education customers. Background / Overview Microsoft’s 25H2 update continues the company’s shift away from monolithic “rebase” feature updates and toward a shared...