The changes, which would replace WSUS and are part of an effort by Microsoft to pull IT to the cloud, are due out by the end of June. At its Ignite developers conference in March, Microsoft issued a host of announcements — some new, some more akin to status updates — about new features and functionality for … Read more
If one or more Office apps is acting glitchy, work your way through this series of repair maneuvers, starting with the simplest. We’ve all been there. You’re working on a document or a spreadsheet, or using email, and BAM! One of your Microsoft Office applications starts acting weird or stops responding. Please relax, and don’t … Read more
The year’s first feature upgrade for Windows 10 arrived this week with little fanfare, largely because it offers little new functionality because Microsoft has abandoned its major-minor release cadence. Microsoft Tuesday issued Windows 10 21H1, officially the year’s first feature upgrade even though new functionality was largely absent because the company has abandoned its major-minor … Read more
Windows Admin Center is a free tool accessible via browser that can make remote management more convenient, efficient, and secure. A lot of the value built into Windows Admin Center has to do with it being a remote-management tool that can have a lot of upside in a modern IT shop, including implementing best practices … Read more
Recent versions of Windows 10 have introduced optional updates to Windows Update. What are they and how should you handle them? Windows 10 users who have upgraded to version 2004 or 20H2 might have noticed something new when they go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. Beneath the always-present “Check for updates” button, … Read more
The company is now touting ‘Windows Feature Experience Packs’ as a way to increase the number of features it rolls out to users over the course of a year. Microsoft, which has not given up on pushing frequent feature changes to Windows 10 users, this week introduced the concept of Windows Feature Experience Packs as a way … Read more
One day after Apple unveiled new computers that run on Apple-designed silicon, Microsoft issued a preview of Office for the Mac that will run natively on the new hardware. Microsoft on Wednesday issued a preview of Office for the Mac that will run natively on Apple’s upcoming ARM-based laptops. The Redmond, Wash. company also modified … Read more
Here comes Windows as a Desktop-as-a-Service: Microsoft Cloud PC. Ready or not, here comes Windows as a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) for all users in the forthcoming Microsoft Cloud PC offering. I’ve been predicting that many of us would soon be using Desktop-as-a-Service for a long time now. I can give you an approximate date now. By May 2021, … Read more
Getting the dreaded Windows 10 black screen, with or without a cursor? Here are some simple (and not so simple) ways to banish it and get your desktop back. The “black screen” phenomenon in Windows 10 shows poignantly how nothing sometimes matters quite a lot. Seeing nothing except black screen where the desktop and its … Read more
The big news with this month’s patches – aside from the usual smorgasbord of strange errors – has more to do with the patches that are outside the regular cumulative update stream. Remarkably, we didn’t get any security fixes for IE or Edge. And the new .NET “optional” preview patches aren’t optional at all. October … Read more
