microsoft news

New subscribers to Xbox Game Pass may be privy to free three month memberships to Discord Nitro in what would be the latest of many Game Pass promotions.Neowin reports that the latest Discord 9.8.3 be...

Update:Telltale has confirmed earlier reports about its partnership with Netflix. Minecraft: Story Mode is coming to Netflix this fall and Telltale will publish a game based on Stranger Things for consoles and PC at a later date.Separately, we're thrilled to confirm that Telltale is developing a game based on Stranger Things that we'll publish to consoles a...

We have just become accustomed to the $1000 smartphone, but now, according to a new report in the Korean Times, Samsung will be pushing things just that bit further with their upcoming folding smartphone, which is expected to cost closer to $2000 than $1000.For that price, said to be around $1850, you will get not just 2, but actually 3 screens, however – 2 ...

If for some reason you’re still ruing on operating systems well over a decade old, you soon won’t be able to play games on Steam. Valve aounced that starting on January 1, 2019 the Steam client will cease to support Windows XP and Windows Vista.“Starting on January 1 2019, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating s...

Microsoft provides an Advanced Startup options menu in Windows 10, which serves as a central location for all of Windows start up features.Advanced Startup offers the ability for users to Reset their PC, use System Restore, or boot up into Safe Mode among others. It’s a useful tool, especially if you suspect something’s wrong with your PC and you want to fix...

Update: The first batch of April’s original Xbox backward compatible games are now live.Original: Inside Xbox promised news on original Xbox backward compatible games and they sure did not disappoint. Though five titles leaked earlier today before the official aouncement, they weren’t the complete list. A total of 19 original Xbox games will be playable on...

It appears ads, which are becoming increasingly pervasive on Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, have now reached the Windows 10 Mail app.Users on Reddit are now reporting that a baer has shown up in the Windows 10 Mail app in a space above the Mail, Calendar and People buttons. The baer caot be removed except by closing the menu, and currently ad...

Microsoft today aounced that they are acquiringChalkup, a classroom collaboration platform. Educators & students from 1 in 3 universities and 1 in 5 high schools in the United States have used the Chalkup Class Collaboration Platform to engage and coect with their classes. As part of this deal, Chalkup’s co-founder Justin Chando is also joining Microsoft.Microsoft is plaing to bring the best of Chalkup including features such as Chalkup’s iovative rubrics system toMicrosoft Teams.“In spending time with the amazing people at Microsoft, it was clear that we were completely aligned in our mission for coecting classrooms, sparking student collaboration, and finding new and iovative ways to work ...

We reported recently that the Bing app on Android now directed users to Google Maps, and speculated that Bing Maps may be next on the chopping block at Microsoft.Today we have another bit of evidence to add to the pile, as it appears Microsoft has withdrawn support for Windows 10 Mobile from theirBing Maps Web Control.This means if you are one of the rare few who use a Windows Phone and you come acrossa website with an embedded Bing Map you will only see a blank page.According toRicky Brundritt, Senior Program Manager at Bing Map “support for Windows Phone as a whole (not just maps) started ending in January” and “Windows Phone was removed to align with Windows Phone as a whole no longer bei...

As the release of Redstone 4 approaches, Microsoft has been gearing up to prepare the first build for Redstone 5. According to Buildfeed, Microsoft has just compiled the first build of Redstone 5. This comes just after Microsoft created a new RS4_release branch which will serve as the official branch for RS4 releases starting next month.If you recall, Microsoft did the same thing as with RS4 last year. Once the Creators Update was almost ready, Microsoft started flighting RS4 builds to selected Insiders in Skip Ahead Ring. We expect the same to happen as Microsoft prepares for a global rollout of Redstone 4 next month.The current compiled build for RS5 branch is17600 and it looks like this w...

Microsoft is finally delivering a feature in Windows 10 Photos app which they demoed at Build developer conference last year. With the latest Photos app update, Microsoft has included the“Choose a Star” feature which will allow you to select someone in the video as the star. Once selected, Photos app will create a video around the person you choose, pulling in relevant photos and videos, zooming in on your star, and choosing an appropriate theme.Here’s how you can use this feature:Select the “Create” button on the top toolbar. Choose “Automatic video with music” and select content. Click the “Create” button on the top toolbar again and title your video. Then select “Create video.”Once you’re...

There has been an increasing momentum around folding smartphones, which would let smartphone screen sizes escape from the confines of being pocketable. Despite interest from a number of companies it was ZTE which brought the first mode smartphone with a dual-screen design, the ZTE Axon M, exclusive to AT&T. The device has had a middling reception, with reviewers criticizing the thickness of the device and Android’s somewhat clunky support for dual screens. This does not seem to have put the company off, however, with ZTE’s vice president of marketing Jeff Yee telling Engadget in an interview at CES 2018 that consumers who purchased the device like it, and that associated issues were sim...

While processor manufacturer AMD initially claimed their chips were not vulnerable to Speculative Execution flaws, later research showed that this was not completely true and that flaws in Speculative Execution could allow hackers to exfiltrate data from your PC. Microsoft’s OS-level patch for the issue appeared to cause more harm than good, however, causing Microsoft to pull it from distribution. AMD itself, however, has now started delivering a fix to PC and motherboard OEMs to push out to their clients. AMD says: AMD will make optional microcode updates available to our customers and partners for Ryzen and EPYC processors starting this week. We expect to make updates available for our p...

Microsoft was first with releasing Intel’s fix for the recently discovered processor flaws for their Surface line of laptops and tablets, and now it seems HP may be next. Users are reporting that HP has started publishing updated BIOS for some of their laptops on their website confirmed via a Powershell verification script to include a fix for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in Intel’s x86 processors. Unfortunately, it appears HP has not started pushing out the fixes, so, for now, users will need to check HP’s support website for updates to their BIOS. TheMeltdown and Spectre Side-Chael Vulnerability exploit design flaws in processor speculative execution, normally used to speed u...

During CES 2018, Acer unveiled a new Nitro 5 laptop model that is set to bring a more powerful experience to casual gamers. Because it’s marketed as a mid-range laptop and won’t compete with higher-end models, you’ll be able to purchase it for a more affordable price (via Neowin). The new Nitro 5 will come equipped withAMD’s Ryzen mobile processor and sport an AMD Radeon RX560 GPU. The 15.6″ screen supports 1920×1080 resolution. It is also set to deliver up to32GB DDR4 RAM and you can get up to a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD) installed. Some of its other features include a backlit keyboard, a front-facing webcam, andDolby Audio Premium stereo speaker hardware built-in. You will be able to m...

With the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft introduced a new feature which restored the apps ruing before the PC was shut down. Microsoft took this approach to preserve your work and to increase productivity.While the feature is handy, it does cause problems and surely users are not happy about it.Fortunately, there’s a workaround for the users who still want a fresh start when they tu on their computers. The most basic approach you can take is to shut down the computer after closing all the open windows and applications. Another way is to use Alt+F4 shortcut instead of going to Start>Power Button>Shut Down.If you don’t want to go through this many steps then there’s...

Earlier this year Qualcomm introduced their flagship chipset for 2018. Called Snapdragon 845, it showed what 2018 has in store for mobile devices and flagships but not every device will run 845. A new leak at Chinese website Weibo showed three new upcoming chipsets which might be used in Mid range and budget devices. The spec sheet posted on Weibo compares the upcoming Snapdragon 670, 640 and 460 processors. If the other similar chipsets are to be seen, we can assume that 670 and 640 will be made available for mid-range devices while 460 will be for budget devices.While the Snapdragon 670 is rumoured to replace the existing 660, Snapdragon 640 is probably a new line to be introduced in 2018....

Surface Pro LTE was made available to commercial customers in several countries earlier this month. This device is now available for order from Microsoft Store Online in the US.Surface Pro with LTE Advanced offers Cat 9 speed and supports 20 LTE frequency bands, making the most of the mobile network. The versatile laptop comes in two different configurations: The i5 Intel Core processor, 128 GB SSD and 4 GB RAM is available at a price of $1,149. The model with i5 Intel Core processor, 256 GB of SSD storage and 8 GB of RAM costs $1,149.Only the 256GB/8GB configuration is now available on stock from the online store, but you can find both of them in physical retail store locations.Microsoft is...

The Starbucks mobile app for Windows users appears to be in the process of shutting down. First spotted by a reddit user, Windows Phone users report being unable to sign in and the app now redirects all users to head to the mobile website in order to manage their accounts.Unfortunately, the website lacks the ability to make transactions on mobile, making it a poor substitute for a proper app.Starbucks was one of the most awaited Windows phone apps, its arrival was seen as a validation of Microsoft’s Windows mobile strategy, but as the firm has since moved on from mobile, there is no longer a need for the Starbucks to maintain a Windows mobile app (especially combined with the poor Windows ph...

While Android is in theory open source, with anyone able to compile a working version of the operating system, in the West you do not really have an alteative to using Google’s version of the operating system, with the apps and services tied to Google’s Play Services and store.Now a new startup which paints itself as a champion for data privacy is starting a project to create a Google-free Android distribution which places privacy at its forefront.Led by Gaël Duval, who created Mandrake Linux,eelo is aiming to provide an alteative mobile operating system and associated web-services, including email, cloud storage, online office tools with a better respect of your personal data privacy. eelo ...