licensing

Microsoft’s cloud-first posture is unmistakable, but the story of on‑premises Microsoft services is not over: companies can — and in many cases must — continue to run core Microsoft platforms in their own datacenters, provided they understand the tradeoffs around licensing, lifecycle, and...

Virtualisation remains the quiet engine of enterprise IT in 2026: despite cloud and containers grabbing headlines, organisations still rely on hypervisors and VM platforms to deliver predictable performance, isolate workloads, and bridge the on‑premises / public cloud gap—and the latest ET CIO...

In a short, revealing post on his long-running Old New Thing blog, Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen pulled back the curtain on one of Windows 95’s smaller — but unexpectedly knotty — triumphs: how Microsoft managed to include Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” music video on the Windows 95 CD-ROM. What looks...

Paul Thurrott’s site recently published language reminding readers that the content on Thurrott.com is proprietary, intended for “personal, non-commercial use only,” and off-limits to automated scraping, republication, or use as a substitute for the site’s Service — a stance that has ignited...

Microsoft has quietly closed a long‑standing loophole that let some users activate Windows 11 without contacting Microsoft’s activation servers, and the change — delivered through Microsoft’s November 11, 2025 cumulative updates and accompanying servicing adjustments — has effectively rendered...

A genuine Windows 11 Pro license is becoming less a luxury and more a practical necessity for professionals who need uninterrupted security, predictable updates, and advanced management — a claim that recent community analysis and industry reporting have repeatedly backed up. Background Windows...

Generative AI’s arrival in art, media and entertainment has been messy, consequential and rapidly pragmatic: a wave that began as an existential threat in 2022 has already re-shaped business models, courtroom strategy, and creative workflows — and today many creators are learning to combine...

Microsoft has begun rolling OpenAI’s GPT‑5.2 into Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio, placing a new two‑mode model family—GPT‑5.2 Instant for fast day‑to‑day writing and translation, and GPT‑5.2 Thinking for deeper reasoning and planning—directly into the flow of office work and agent...

Microsoft will tell judges at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) that a proposed mass claim accusing it of anti‑competitive cloud licensing practices should be struck out because the plaintiffs’ methodology for proving common liability and quantifying loss is flawed, a move that puts the...

The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google’s use of online content to power and train artificial intelligence features, focusing on whether the company has been using publishers’ web pages and YouTube videos without fair compensation or meaningful choice, and...

Microsoft’s Exchange team has quietly sharpened the enforcement blade on Exchange Web Services (EWS): starting March 1, 2026, EWS calls against mailboxes that carry only frontline or kiosk-class licenses will be blocked with HTTP 403 errors, and the broader deprecation plan still culminates in a...

Adobe’s ecosystem still shapes the conversation, but 2025 is the year the photo‑editing market stopped being a two‑horse race and became a full‑blown ecosystem battle: subscription fatigue, a wave of powerful free entrants, and aggressive AI features have reshaped how photographers choose...

Last week’s Patch Tuesday quietly closed one of the more persistent gray‑market loopholes in Windows activation: the offline “KMS38” technique — widely packaged by the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS / Massgrave) project — no longer functions on updated Windows 10 and Windows 11 builds, and...

Microsoft moved swiftly this week to plug two separate but related problems that tripped up the first Extended Security Updates (ESU) delivery for Windows 10 after mainstream support ended, shipping an emergency “preparation” package for commercial environments and an out‑of‑band enrollment fix...

Microsoft’s latest student push hands eligible college and university students a full year of Microsoft 365 Personal with Copilot — a one‑user Microsoft 365 Personal seat (desktop and web Office apps), Copilot AI integrated across supported apps, and 1 TB of OneDrive storage — but the details...

Microsoft Teams’ ascent has been nothing short of meteoric, but recent market research and licensing moves show a product at a crossroads — still dominant in installed base, yet increasingly vulnerable on customer satisfaction, cost, and perceived AI value compared with several aggressive...

The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal has delivered a unanimous preliminary ruling that Microsoft cannot use its contract terms and copyright arguments to stop customers reselling perpetual Windows and Office licences — a major win for reseller ValueLicensing and a decision that reinforces the...

Microsoft’s November cumulative updates closed a long‑standing activation shortcut that many hobbyists and small businesses used to keep Windows and Office running without a legitimate license, and the change — centered on KB5068861 and companion updates — has already forced users in Spain and...

Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday has quietly removed a long‑exploited activation backdoor: the KMS38 technique used by the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS / Massgrave) project no longer works on updated Windows builds, and the MAS maintainers have removed KMS38 from the script in the v3.8...

Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday has quietly closed off one of the most convenient — and widely abused — offline activation routes for Windows 10 and Windows 11, effectively neutering the long-running “KMS38” trick used by the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS / MASSGRAVE) project and forcing...