There’s no shortage of advice from productivity gurus telling you how your Windows desktop should be. A minimalist taskbar, fewer shortcuts, folder organization, and an empty desktop look great in YouTube videos and promotional images. But I found that the reality is not exactly true. The picture-perfect setup never survived more than a week on my PC.

For years, Microsoft has leaned heavily into extensive backward compatibility across multiple generations of Xbox hardware as a major selling point for its consoles. Today, that effort expands past the console ecosystem, making select original Xbox titles officially playable (and purchasable) on Windows PCs for the first time.

The appropriately and bluntly named "Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC" program kicks off today with compatibility for BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy. PC players can download each title for $10, but those with Xbox Game Pass subscriptions or existing digital licenses for these games on console will have instant access without an additional purchase (no such luck if you simply stick an original Xbox disc in your PC drive, alas).

Playing these older Xbox titles on PC enables some bonus graphical features like Vsync support, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and up to 4x resolution scaling of the original SD signal (to 2560x1920). Games are limited to their original frame rates and aspect ratios, though, which means a 30 fps 4:3 image in most cases. Microsoft says this first batch of games should be playable with 11-year-old GTX 950 graphics hardware, but recommends a 2017-era GTX 1070 Ti with 8GB of VRAM for best performance.

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Nearly 20 years ago (!), in 2007, I published my first and only book: Microsoft 2.0. It focused on changes I expected at the company in the “Post-Gates” era. What would remain the same and what likely would be different once co-founder and CEO Bill Gates had left the building?

CEO Satya Nadella has not exited the company (yet). But there’s no question that Microsoft and its mission have morphed considerably in the past year or two. I’m not quite ready to christen this the Microsoft 3.0 era, even though Nadella handed the reins of Microsoft’s dominant commercial business to Judson Althoff nearly a year ago.

That decision resulted in Nadella moving into more of a “founder mode” role, allowing him to focus less on the day-to-day work of running the business. (Microsoft historians may recall that Gates made a somewhat similar move back in 2000 when he became Microsoft’s chief software architect.)

While it might not yet be time for Microsoft 3.0, we arguably could be in the “Microsoft 2.5” era. Windows and Office are still around and still play a big role. Microsoft still builds and sells developer tools and databases. But there’s no question that the cloud and all things AI are at the top of the pecking order now.

I’m embarking on a series here at GeekWire that will focus on what matters to Microsoft and, by extension, to its customers, partners, investors, and employees these days. Who are some of the people shaping and leading the company? What are their opportunities and challenges right now?

Over the next few weeks, I will be profiling various Microsoft execs working on plans for Microsoft’s ongoing evolution. Some are company veterans; some are newcomers. I’ll be talking with top execs from Microsoft’s Security, Copilot, Windows + Devices, Xbox, GitHub, and more.

I’m interested in their strategies for Microsoft’s key products and technologies and how they plan to try to turn Microsoft’s ambitious vision into reality. What are their teams building? What do they see as their biggest challenges and opportunities? And where do they see the technologies in their respective areas heading?

I feel like many of us who’ve been keeping track of the biggest tech companies (myself included) have fallen into the trap of blaming or attributing everything a company does to AI. Layoffs? AI is the culprit. Price increases? It’s all thanks to AI. Changing sales strategies? Chalk it up to AI …

But upon further reflection, I believe Microsoft’s strategy is more nuanced than “AI or bust.” There’s no question that Microsoft’s AI ambitions are shaping its goals and tactics. But Microsoft, as a heavily enterprise-focused entity, can’t simply stop supporting products that aren’t built from the ground up with AI (as much as it might like to do so). Nor can it just leave behind customers who aren’t 100% onboard with its AI moves.

Couple those enterprise hurdles with some not-so-popular consumer decisions, like axing 3,200 people in the gaming unit, and Microsoft’s approach to turning the ship looks a lot trickier.

Our Microsoft 2.5 series kicks off Thursday. Stay tuned.

If you've ever used Win+Shift+S for quick screenshots, you'll know how handy it can be and how much time it can save. But there's another shortcut that's even more useful. On recent versions of Windows 11, Win+Shift+T extracts editable text directly from your screen, turning information trapped in images, PDFs, and presentation slides into text you can immediately reuse.

Your PC isn't going to switch itself off one day. But the version of Windows sitting on it right now? It has a shelf life. And it's shorter than you'd think. You've probably heard the headlines about Windows 10 riding off into the sunset. This is a bit different.

The more I use—and learn about—the command line, the more I want to do in it. Whether it’s playing music, working with a git repository, or browsing the web, if there’s a way it can be done in the terminal, I want to try it.

My Bluetooth mouse would cut out every few minutes on my Windows laptop, usually right in the middle of an intense working session. Then reconnecting it over and over got old fast. While digging around for a fix, I came across common Bluetooth bugs on Windows and realized my issue wasn't the device at all. It was a single power setting buried a few clicks deep in Device Manager.

Are you fed up with Microsoft's invasive behavior? They're increasingly inserting themselves into your digital life, collecting your data and outright disrespecting your wishes. It would normally anger me, but there’s no Microsoft on my system, and I'll explain why.

Windows 10 still runs on 16.9% of the Windows devices monitored by asset-tracking service Lansweeper. That's more than one in six, The Register points out. A year ago, the operating system accounted for about half of the machines in its dataset, falling to the low-to-mid 40% range by the time Microsoft ended standard support. The decline continued after that, reaching 18.6% in June, but Lansweeper says migration has now slowed to a crawl... Small and medium-sized businesses are particularly exposed. Lansweeper reckons that 21.4% of machines at small and medium-sized business still run Windows 10, with cost usually being the constraint that keeps the legacy operating system running. The exposure is greater in some sectors, with 23% of healthcare and pharmaceutical systems sticking with Windows 10, while consumer and retail devices hover at 22.7%. According to Lansweeper's data, "a Windows 10 device carries an average of 1,903 active CVEs against 652 on Windows 11. That's a 2.9x gap." Esben Dochy, principal technical evangelist at the company, told The Register that "the Windows 10 average also includes devices that have Extended Security Update patches applied." [According to Lansweeper's figures, 14% of Windows 10 assets have applied Extended Security Update patches.] Part of the problem, according to Lansweeper, is "patch diffing," in which Windows 11 fixes can be reverse-engineered to find flaws in Windows 10. "The supported OS effectively hands attackers a map into the unsupported one," Lansweeper said... Looking at other market share measures such as Statcounter, there was little change in the share of Windows 10 and its successor over the last few months after a surge following the end of support. As Lansweeper noted: "The easy migrations are done. What's left is the hard core: devices that haven't moved because they can't or won't." Lansweeper's evangelist noted that in some cases there is no Windows 11-certified version yet for many medical devices and industrial or retail systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If there are three things folks typically know about me, it's that I love Linux, I'm an avid reader and I have a bit of an obsession with modding Kindles and Fire Tablets. I would say, "Hey, I resemble that remark!" and then wait patiently while no one catches the reference. One Kindle has eluded me all these years, but I finally found one: a Kindle Fire 7 (2012). I tried to mod it, with a little help from Claude.

Network issues can often be infuriating because everything seems to work as it's supposed to—except your internet connection. Then your internet connection starts working fine, but websites take forever to load. Then there are those frustrating intermittent connection issues that come and go seemingly at random.

I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit diagnosing stubborn Windows problems: sluggish laptops, desktop crashes, weird startup behavior, you name it. Over the years, I’ve used plenty of different tools, from flashy “PC optimizers” that promise too much, to hidden system utilities that actually deliver. What I’ve learned is that many of the best ones are lightweight, reliable, and give you a clear view of what’s really happening under the hood, so to speak.

Microsoft has been on a roll recently, bringing new Windows 11 features left and right. The latest one to reach general availability (meaning it's available to every Windows 11 user, not just Windows Insiders) is called point-in-time restore, and from what I've seen, it's essentially a modern take on System Restore, which has been around for more than a quarter of a century, first debuting with Windows ME back in 2000.

In practice, Windows Fast Startup is supposed to be helpful, but after disabling it, a lot of things actually got a little better for my computer. I wish I had turned it off sooner, and for some of you, there are a few reasons you might want to do the same thing.

Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro support ends Oct. 13, 2026. See who is affected, available upgrade paths, and what IT teams should do now.

The post Windows 11 24H2 Support Ends Soon: What Users Need to Do Before October appeared first on TechRepublic.

Windows has a way of breaking in ways that feel almost personal. What makes these issues so draining isn't that the problems are complicated; it's that the built-in tools Microsoft gives you to fix them either don't work or don't even come close to addressing what's actually wrong. I started handing these problems to Claude instead, to see if it can do more than just free up space on your Windows PC. I was surprised at how good it was at finding a reasonable solution.

Microsoft paused the July Windows 11 update for some Dell PCs after an Intel driver conflict raised performance and power-use concerns among users and IT teams.

The post Microsoft Halts July Windows 11 Update for Some Dell PCs appeared first on TechRepublic.

I recently spent some time with Snapdragon's latest lineup of laptop processors, putting the X2 Plus, X2 Elite, and X2 Elite Extreme head-to-head to see which one is better. The results definitely surprised me, and I think they'll surprise you, too.

There's a famous quote that Jamie Zawinski that goes "...Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance."

Microsoft is redesigning Windows Search with improved local results, fewer promotional elements, better file previews, and more control over web-based search.

The post Windows Search Gets a Major Revamp Focused on Usability appeared first on TechRepublic.