licensing

Microsoft’s latest push stitches a unified, content‑aware Copilot chat directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote — surfacing a persistent side pane that can read the file you’re working on, search other files with an inline “/” picker, accept multiple images, and give wider...

Microsoft has started seeding an optional Release Preview update — KB5065789 — that previews key parts of the upcoming Windows 11 25H2 enablement package, bringing early access to AI-powered productivity features, accessibility upgrades, new emoji, and a handful of desktop and gaming refinements...

A playful prompt and a banana-shaped nickname have turned a tightly engineered image model into a global meme: Google’s Gemini “Nano Banana” — marketed as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image — has ignited a viral trend that turns ordinary selfies into hyper‑real 3D figurines and packaged mockups with almost...

A playful name and a deceptively simple prompt have pushed Google’s Gemini “Nano Banana” into the center of a new viral wave: users are turning ordinary selfies into hyper‑realistic miniature figurines, packaging mockups and even short animated clips with only a handful of words. The trend has...

Waitaki District Council’s cautious, staff-first rollout of generative AI shows how a small public body can harness large language models for practical gains—while keeping human judgment, privacy safeguards and governance firmly in the driver’s seat. The council’s chief digital officer, Teresa...

Microsoft has pushed a coordinated set of Windows 11 Insider Preview builds into the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channels, bringing the near‑final 25H2 activation and a raft of AI, accessibility, and usability tweaks that IT teams and power users should validate now. (blogs.windows.com)...

Microsoft’s latest packaging of its agent-building tools — now split into Copilot Studio Lite and the Copilot Studio Full Experience — is less a rename and more a strategic reframe: the company is clarifying who these tools are for, where they run, and how enterprises should govern them. The...

Connecting from a Mac to a Windows PC is no longer a niche trick; it’s a day‑to‑day workflow for developers, accountants, and hybrid workers who want the best of both worlds. With the Microsoft Remote Desktop client (and the newer Windows App consolidation on macOS), a properly configured...

Microsoft’s internal account of how Teams has evolved into an AI-first collaboration platform reads less like a product update and more like a blueprint for how large organizations will work in the next decade: Teams as the connective tissue, AI agents as the operational workforce, and Copilot...

Microsoft’s announcement at Ignite that an enterprise-oriented variant of Windows 10 S will be used as a lower‑cost, locked‑down deployment option for large organizations marks a pragmatic pivot in how the company is packaging security, management and price for frontline and lightweight worker...

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...

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...

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...

Google Cloud’s surprise removal of certain EU and UK data transfer fees dramatically reshapes the short-term economics of multicloud strategies and adds fresh momentum to regulators’ efforts to break hyperscaler lock‑in. (reuters.com) Background The European Union’s Data Act is the legal...

If you still have a working copy of Serif PagePlus 7 and a stack of .ppp files, the short answer is: yes — you can usually move PagePlus 7 to a new PC, but it’s rarely a one-click affair and the right approach depends on three things: the installer and product-key you have, the Windows edition...

Google Cloud’s decision to waive multicloud data-transfer charges in the EU and UK — through a new “Data Transfer Essentials” option — has shifted a regulatory tug‑of‑war into a full commercial play, and it matters for every IT team wrestling with vendor lock‑in, migration economics, and...

Google has moved to eliminate a key friction point for organisations running workloads across multiple cloud providers in Europe and the UK, announcing that its Data Transfer Essentials service will be available at no cost for customers processing workloads “in parallel” across two or more...

Microsoft’s decision to stop free security updates for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 has moved from a routine lifecycle notice into a global business, security and environmental story — one that could funnel billions into Microsoft’s coffers through Extended Security Updates (ESU), provoke...

Microsoft’s Copilot can now pull text out of a Word document and drop it into PowerPoint as a ready-to-edit slide — a small-seeming change with outsized implications for productivity, licensing, and IT planning, especially for organizations still on Windows 10 and watching Microsoft’s support...

Microsoft’s Copilot has quietly crossed a threshold: it can now turn sections of a Word document into fully formed PowerPoint slides — not as a rough sketch, but as editable, presentation-ready slides that include layouts, speaker notes, and suggested imagery. This is a practical, day-to-day...