Generally speaking, always being up to date on the latest Windows patches is a pretty good thing. Updating your system will not only fix bugs and add new features, it also includes security patches that prevent hackers from having their way with your system.

While there are plenty of benefits to having the latest updates, sometimes updates do cause issues. As Microsoft doesn’t have the capability of internally testing each update with billions of computers on the planet before they release it, updates sometimes causes issues which get fixed in a later update. For those who can’t afford to have any issues with their systems, it’s important to be able [...]

The next major feature update for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system is here.

The Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update brings a long list of improvements and new features. Finally integrated is the long-promised desktop chat integration for contacts from LinkedIn and Skype, as well as a new Android and iPhone linking feature. You won’t be able to respond to text messages, but you’ll be able send browser sessions from your phone directly to your desktop for future viewing.

AR, or Augmented Reality, is also receiving a lot of love. The Fall Creators Update will prepare your system to be AR ready right off the get-go, no setup required. [...]

The promised day has come. After rolling out to 5% of users for beta testing earlier this year, Discord’s highly anticipated video calling feature has landed to stable release.

After downloading a 22MB patch, all Discord users can now enjoy video calling with all their friends. Video calling supports up to 10 users simultaneously and also supports full screen sharing, which is useful when you want to show a game tip, give a presentation or troubleshooting someone’s computer. Of course, as with any conversation on Discord, the video calling feature uses Discord’s dedicated servers to ensure stability and reliability when the calls get heated.

To [...]

Microsoft’s Groove Music streaming service (formerly known as XBOX music) will end its run on December 31. Rest in peace.

Microsoft explains that the Groove music app will continue to work as a standalone player for local music, and will continue to be able to stream music stored in OneDrive. Only the streaming service will end.

For streaming, Microsoft has reached out to Groove’s biggest competitor, Spotify. Microsoft has partnered closely with Spotify to promote the service, and is currently developing a new music app for the Windows Store. Customers with existing playlists on Groove Music will be able to export them to Spotify easily via the [...]

Mozilla has just unleashed a massive update to its Firefox browser making it so fast that they’re calling it Firefox Quantum.

Firefox Quantum started as a perpetual project in October 2016 with the goal of developing a better web engine for today’s web content. The web is no longer a collection of static pages, and is now driven by many types of webapps. To run these apps optimally, Quantum takes advantage of the multi-thread, multi-core processors found in most of today’s machines. Instead of letting one core handling the command stream for the entire browser, the engine will intelligently distribute the workload across multiple threads and the GPU. [...]

Microsoft announced the latest perpetual version of Office, Office 2019 at the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando.

The announcement, written by the General Manager for Office, Jared Spataro, was fairly vague on the new features of Office 2019, only mentioning that it will add to and enhance the core features. Some of these new features include improved inking, new formulas and charts for Excel, better animation for PowerPoint, and improved management and security.

Microsoft’s cloud is also getting some major upgrades as well however, Microsoft has also stated that Office 2019 will be “valuable” for those more comfortable running their own apps [...]

Popular messaging app WeChat recently updated its privacy policy to let users know that it logs and shares private user information with the Chinese Government. While the latest update to WeChat’s privacy policy is no surprise, it does explicitly confirm what we’ve all assumed to be true all along.

The scope of data collection covers anything WeChat collects including identity information, credit card information, chat history, phone numbers, biometric information (voice, fingerprint, etc) and more. It would be safe to assume that all versions of WeChat is subjected to the same level of scrutiny.

WeChat’s new privacy policy complies with the [...]

Popular Windows optimization utility CCleaner has a serious problem right now as a recent blog post by their VP of Products, Paul Yung reveals that hackers have compromised recent versions of CCleaner, installing a backdoor utility into the application that would allow hackers to remotely access systems with CCleaner installed.

The security issue which was discovered on September 12, affected the 32-bit version of CCleaner version 5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud version 1.07.3191. Hackers were able to illegally modify the application before it was released and was able to introduce the malicious code. The malicious code not only granted attackers remote access to infected [...]

If you’ve been experiencing performance issues in your games after the Windows 10 Creator’s Update, rest assured, you’re not alone.

According to a recent article at MSPoweruser, Microsoft is well aware of the issues thanks to numerous user reports and has identified a number of problem sources which have been causing issues such as studdering and reduced framerates. A fix for one of the issues has already been fixed and will be included in build 16273.

“Thank you everyone for providing feedback and submitting traces. We have been analyzing the traces from your feedback and have identified several different problem sources surfacing as stutter [...]

It’s upgrade time again and Windows 10’s next big update, the Fall Creator’s Update, will land in user’s machines starting on October 17.

Like the Anniversary Update, the Fall Creator’s Update is a major update for Windows 10. As a result, it will bring numerous new features as well as improvements to many of its core applications. Patch notes emphasize that the Photos and Videos app has been overhauled to provide a more intuitive experience, and OneDrive Files On-Demand will allow you to access files stored in your OneDrive cloud directly without the intermediate step of first accessing it from your browser. Constantly losing track of [...]