More in Windows

Yes, the tech enthusiast community online has been buzzing about the weekend leak of an early build of Windows 8 “Blue,” the combination service pack/feature pack that Microsoft intends to release later this year. But this leak betrays a number of salient points about Microsoft’s strategy for the future, and that strategy has a much broader impact than those few of us scurrying around excitedly about this leak....More

Tired of speculative blog posts about Windows “Blue,” the upcoming interim update that will allegedly fix all the problems in Windows 8 and put Microsoft back on course? Speculate no more: Blue has leaked, and now we have a much better idea of what this release really contains....More

Tipped off by a reader, I checked my System log in Event Viewer today and what did I find but a stack of pending updates for all of the core apps in Windows 8. I’m not 100 percent sure this is what I think it is. But if we’re right, it looks like 18 of the core apps in Windows 8 are about to get updated. Or, almost all of them....More

Google made waves this week—for some reason—by releasing a web-based note-taking service called Keep. But while everyone is busy falling all over themselves comparing Keep to Evernote, the superior and most-used electronic note-taking solution, Microsoft OneNote, forges ahead. And this week, we get a new version of the OneNote mobile app for Windows 8 and RT....More

Microsoft announced today that the embedded versions of Windows 8—Windows 8 Embedded Standard and Windows 8 Embedded Pro—are now available. As with previous Windows Embedded products, the releases target a diverse range of so-called intelligent devices, including point of sale systems, credit card readers, home-based security and energy systems, traffic sensors, automobiles, and more. New to this version is a focus on edge devices in enterprise networks....More

Starting tomorrow, March 19, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will begin rolling out automatically to individuals via Windows Update. Not coincidentally, this change comes just weeks ahead of the end of mainstream support for the original, or RTM, version of Windows 7....More

Before Windows 8, resetting a PC was a complex and time-consuming affair. But thanks to Push Button Reset, you can now “nuke it from space,” as I think of it, and return the PC to its factory-fresh state in just minutes. Too good to be true? Not at all. In fact, this is one of Windows 8’s best new features....More

According to a credible Bloomberg report, Microsoft has sold over 1.1 million Surface tablets since the devices first launched in October 2012. That includes 1.1 million Surface with Windows RT units—lower than expected---plus over 400,000 Surface with Windows Pro devices, which is better than expected. What’s the overall picture look like?...More

My recent call for Microsoft to “bring back NT” garnered some interesting and predictably fractured feedback, with some claiming that it was at odds with my approach to Windows 8 over the past year. Not so: I like Windows 8, and I’ve used it full-time longer than most, for over 15 months. As such, I think I have a pretty reasonable perspective on its strengths and weaknesses....More

I don’t normally report on each month’s set of “Patch Tuesday” updates since it’s mostly just security updates that everyone should be installing automatically. But this month includes three surprises, including firmware updates for both the Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets, and a major update to Internet Explorer 10 that completely reverses the way this browser handles Adobe Flash....More