Items tagged with Microsoft
The past few years have seen dramatic changes in daily life as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on. While the pandemic is still ongoing, the push to return to "normal" is strong. People are killing less time playing games as offices and schools continue to fill up, and that might mean the windfall for game publishers and...
Read more...
If you're not a gamer and not particularly technical, you may feel slightly let down by your new NVMe SSD. After all, the newest game consoles from Microsoft and Sony came along with big promises as to the potential benefits of their solid-state storage subsystems. Integrating the same type of storage technology for...
Read more...
Following its latest earnings report, shares of Microsoft stock jumped by as much as 5 percent in pre-market trading leading up to today's opening bell. This despite Microsoft attributing a negative impact on Windows OEM revenue, which fell 2 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022, to what it deemed a...
Read more...
Two days ago, I was at my cousin's residence attempting to troubleshoot a Brother laser printer that would not work. The printer was duplicated several times in the Windows "Printers & Scanners" dialog, and troubleshooting had to go as far as removing all of the print devices, while rebooting several times, before...
Read more...
The time it takes your Xbox Series X/S console to boot up is about to get a bit faster. Microsoft was able to cut several seconds off the boot sequence by creating a shorter bootup animation.
Gamers can be some of the most impatient people on the planet. If a new console or gaming PC takes more than a few seconds...
Read more...
If you feel like you're serving as a tech guinea pig for the rest of us, running with Windows 11 as your daily OS driver, well, good on you. The officially-released OS does come with a few nice renovations, like the mostly-unified Settings applet, DirectStorage support, and under-the-hood improvements for Intel's...
Read more...
Microsoft has released a preview of its KB5015882 update for Windows 11. This update is part of the new monthly ‘C’ updates, which arrive around this time every month, previewing feature updates which will be rolled into the following month’s Patch Tuesday release. This month, the update might be eagerly acquired by users, as it includes a
Read more...
Xbox and Discord have come together to make communicating with your teammates across various platforms much easier. Discord Voice Chat is making its way to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, rolling out to Xbox Insiders first, with everyone else to follow soon.
Being able to communicate with a group of friends...
Read more...
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Windows 10 is still the most recent version of Windows, with Microsoft holding true to its original plan to continually uddate the OS until the end of time. But in this universe, Microsoft ended up changing direction and ultimately released another version, Windows 11. That's not...
Read more...
Phishing attacks employ various methods to trick users into handing over sensitive information, such as login credentials. Over time, as users have become more suspicious and email clients, web browsers, and IT departments have implemented anti-phishing measures, scammers have had to get creative and devise more...
Read more...
Were you around for the heyday of Windows 98? PC gamers were slow to adopt Windows 95 because the conventional game design paradigm of talking directly to the hardware was a big no-no in the new operating system. However, in the not-quite-three years between the release of Windows 95 and Windows 98, both PC hardware...
Read more...
Windows 11 has been a contentious launch for Microsoft. Historically speaking, when users are dissatisfied with the latest Windows release (Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows Vista), the next release is usually met with relative enthusiasm. Yet, while Windows 10 isn't exactly beloved by most users, Windows 11 isn't...
Read more...
An annoying Outlook bug has seemingly crawled out of the woodwork again, after having pestered users around this same time last year. In a recently posted support document, Microsoft said it is investigating an issue that is preventing Outlook Desktop on Windows 11 from displaying recent emails in search results. The...
Read more...
In February security firms, researchers, infosec employees, antivirus, and malware organizations rejoiced. Why? Microsoft was finally disabling Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros on Microsoft Office. However, the Redmond software giant just took a step back and reversed course on the change, but why?
What...
Read more...
Game streaming services are gaining steam as viable alternatives to spending big money on decked out PCs and dedicated gaming consoles, and they've come a long way in a relatively short time. One of the benefits is they're mostly platform agnostic. Or they should be—there are multiple reports that Microsoft's Xbox...
Read more...
Last month, we wrote about malicious Android apps containing a trojan that researchers have dubbed “SMSFactory.” This bit of malware exists to infect Android phones and conduct SMS billing fraud. SMSFactory uses SMS and phone permissions to regularly send premium text messages and make calls to premium numbers...
Read more...
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine near the beginning of this year, some prominent hacking groups announced that they would be joining the war within the digital realm. The hacking collective Anonymous declared cyberwar against the Russian government and has since been conducting cyberattacks on Russian and...
Read more...
It's been a little over 8 months since Microsoft released Windows 11 (on October 5, 2021). When it hit the market it came with a slew of new features. Things like a significantly upgraded UI, more cloud based functionality, and even cleaner interfaces were all packaged into the new (at the time) release.
Windows 11...
Read more...
Just over nine years ago, Microsoft provided a first look at Windows 8.1. And almost to this day nine years earlier, it rolled out a preview, timed with the start of its Build conference. If you ended up upgrading and never looked back (or forward), brace yourself for nag screens imploring you once again to upgrade...
Read more...
For the past year we've been hearing about how Microsoft's DirectStorage API will supercharge PC gaming with faster load times, and facilitate "virtual worlds that are more expansive and detailed than ever," to use Microsoft's own words. It holds a lot of promise, but does your PC support the feature? There's now an...
Read more...
Facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly becoming more common. Nevertheless, there are various issues associated with AI that must be considered by those who develop and use it. Microsoft plans to retire its facial recognition tool and other technologies as part of its goal to...
Read more...
Shortly after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, many tech companies announced that they would be suspending sales to the country. Among the companies that made these announcements were AMD, Intel, TSMC, NVIDIA, Apple, Cisco, Oracle, IBM, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Since this initial flurry of...
Read more...
