Operating Systems

Around eight years ago, a man named Vincent Deroo-Blanquart set out to buy a Sony laptop in France for €549. Like most laptops, it came with Windows pre-installed, something that he wasn't planning on using, so he contacted Sony to see if he could get a refund for the software. …

Intel's upcoming refresh of its CPU line up, currently codenamed Kaby Lake, will only work with Windows 10 PCs and will not function on the likes of Windows 7 or 8.1. That means if you want to stick to those older versions of the Microsoft OS, you better avoid buying …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking aim at Microsoft this week, joining a growing list of organisations with complaints about privacy in Windows 10. In a lengthy editorial, the EFF claims that Windows 10 is sending an “unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft”, and Cortana integration increases that …

Last year, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 would only have support for Intel’s new Skylake CPUs for a limited time. Initially, support for Intel’s latest platform was due to end on older operating systems in 2017, then a while later, Microsoft extended its support deadline to 2018. …

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update began rolling out this week, which means it is time for Microsoft to start talking about the future. Today, in a new blog post going over some new Windows update changes, Microsoft confirmed that there are no more feature updates planned for 2016. However, there …

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update started rolling out this week and unfortunately, it has started causing some major issues for some systems, with users complaining about crashes and system freezes. Some users are reporting system freezes within seconds of booting up, while others are getting ‘Windows is not responding' errors. …

On Saturday morning, Microsoft's free year-long upgrade offer for Windows 10 officially ended. We were expecting this to mean that from now on, those looking to upgrade will need to pay the £99/£179 license fee depending on whether they wanted the Home or Pro edition. However, it looks like Microsoft has …

Windows 10 is approaching the end of its first year out in the wild and so far, over 350 million people have made the upgrade. To mark the occasion, Microsoft is planning a big Anniversary Update, which will come out on the 2nd of August. While it will bring plenty …

Earlier today, Epic Games head Tim Sweeney made headlines once again by continuing to bash Microsoft's new Universal Windows Platform initiative. This time, Sweeney claimed Microsoft might make Steam worse over time to try and push studios to use UWP more. Now, Microsoft has issued a comment of its own, …

We are approaching the 29th of July, which will mark exactly one year since the launch of Windows 10 and Microsoft's increasingly invasive campaign to get Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade. If you really don't want to upgrade, then the good news is that in 72 hours, you …

Ever since the launch of Windows 10, plenty of people have had issues with Microsoft’s new policies when it comes to privacy and data collection. Now, it looks like France’s data protection authority also has a problem with it and has ordered Microsoft to “stop collecting excessive user data” within …

Back when Windows 10 launched almost one year ago, Microsoft set itself a goal to have the OS running on one billion devices by 2018. Unfortunately, while things are off to a great start with 350 million installs, things on the mobile front have been moving very slowly and now …

This week, Microsoft has revealed that it will soon begin offering its enterprise users a subscription option for Windows 10, allowing companies to pay $7 per month or $84 per year for a Windows 10 license, rather than bulk-buying full licenses for the OS. On top of that, the company also …

Chinese online retail giant, Alibaba, has announced a new vehicle created as part of a joint partnership between itself and SAIC Motor Corp, china's largest car manufacturer. Made using the YunOS operating system, the new Roewe RX5 can connect to the internet through your smartphone, with the firms behind it claiming it's …

Microsoft has tried many tactics to get Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users to upgrade to Windows 10 over the last 12 months. However, from the 29th of July onward the update will no longer be free and will probably decrease the chances of some upgrading even further so in …

Windows 10 is almost one year old and to mark the occasion, Microsoft will be launching the ‘Anniversary Update' on the 2nd of August, just a few days after the official one year milestone. This new update will be free for all current Windows 10 users and will include some …

Microsoft received a lot of flak when it made the Windows 10 upgrade ‘recommended,' so something that would automatically install if you didn't opt-out. So much so that one woman sued and won. It seems finally though that Microsoft is going to scale back its pushy pop-up and will soon offer …

We have been hearing reports of PCs upgrading themselves to Windows 10 without the owner's knowledge for a while now and for businesses in particular, this can be a big problem. Teri Goldstein, a California based business owner had this happen, and in response she sued Microsoft for $10,000 and …

Microsoft has revealed that it plans to stop manufacturing its current entry-level Surface device by the end of the year. The Surface 3 first launched in May of last year at a lower price point to try and capture those who want a tablet that could also act as a …

One of the biggest debacles of the last-generation of consoles was the way Sony handled its Other-OS feature. After cracks were found in the console's security, it pulled the feature entirely, leading to a lawsuit that has lasted six years. Now though it's coming to a close and if the …

Microsoft is currently readying the launch of a new tool that will make it easier to do a clean install of Windows 10, free of bloatware. With its latest OS, Microsoft offered users the ability to ‘reset' a PC which restores it back to a previous time, this new tool …

Microsoft has been making plenty of changes to Windows 10 since its initial launch in July of last year and soon it looks like one feature in particular will be getting the axe. In Windows 10, there is a feature called WiFi-Sense, which allows Windows 10 users to grant home …

On the back of this week's news that Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade period would be coming to a close in July, we have also learned that those annoying ‘upgrade to Windows 10' notifications will also be going away for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users. In a statement sent …

When Microsoft initially unveiled its roll-out plans for Windows 10, one of the things it offered was a free upgrade to all Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 owners as long as they made the switch in the first year of Windows 10 being released. We are now coming up to …

While Microsoft may have managed to boost its Windows 10 numbers significantly over the last year thanks to things like automatic upgrades and free installs for those on Windows 7 or 8, a new report this week says that adoption is actually slowing down now. It only took Microsoft a …

Microsoft has been tinkering with a lot of features that launched with Windows 10 over the last year. The latest change made to the OS affects the Cortana feature, which is now completely locked to Microsoft's own Bing search engine and Edge browser. Obviously, this is the way Cortana ships …

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would not be supporting Intel's Skylake processors on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 after July 2017. As you might imagine, this was seen as a very controversial announcement that was put in place to try and force those building a system using Intel's …

Microsoft has had to delay the release of its long-rumoured Windows 10 Redstone update once again. This update was initially expected to come out in the summer and will be one of the first major updates to Microsoft's new OS. However, the timeline may have shifted to Spring next year …

Microsoft is all set to finally unveil which Windows 10 universal apps will be coming to the Xbox One this year. According to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans, an announcement should be coming this month, with a number of apps set to debut alongside a new initiative to open up …

If one thing has become clear from the way Microsoft has handled the launch and updates of the Xbox One, the launch of Windows 10 and its latest push for smartphone acceptance, it wants to build a single, unified Windows platform. Epic co-founder Tim Sweeney however, thinks that's a horrible …