The way we work, connect and learn continues to change right in front of us. Our devices have become our window to the world - our office, our school and our social space. To help navigate the current environment people are turning to Windows PCs more than ever. In fact, over 4 trillion minutes are being spent on Windows 10 a month, a 75% increase year on year. It's not just the pull of the larger screen and better keyboard, but the versatility of a device that runs the software we need and games and entertainment we love, with cameras and mics built in to connect us to the people who matter most. This is what Windows PCs were built to do. This is what we design Surface for.

The new Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2, Surface Earbuds and accessories are designed to help you do what you need, from anywhere - a concept that has taken on new weight since we first started working on these products. Instead of planes, coffee shops and offices, we're moving from home office to kitchen table to couch, but our need for devices that keep us productive and connected has never been greater.

Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system has historically been rising in market share thanks to the slow depreciation of Windows 7 OS, and Microsoft's efforts to push it as only Windows OS available for desktop users. However, according to the information by NetMarketShare, a company providing statistics about the market share of Internet Technologies (browsers and OSes), Windows 10 has seen a decrease in market share. This news is a surprising discovery, given that the OS is expected to be gaining new market share slowly, given that Windows 7 has reached the end of life in January.

From 57.37% of market share in February, Windows 10 got down to 57.34% in March and 56.08% in April. While this may seem just like a few percentage decrease, given the massive amount of PCs available, it can be counted in thousands. What could be the reason behind this is the current COVID-19 related pandemic and slower demand for office PCs, as everyone is working from home now. This was a big growth sector for Windows 10 as the previous version of Windows, the 7, was very popular in office space before its EoL. Of course, this is just a speculation which you should take with a big grain of salt. Some of the interesting things to point out is that Ubuntu, a Linux kernel based operating system, has massively increased its market share from 0.27% in March to 1.89% in April.

Valve has announced that SteamVR will drop support for the macOS platform so that development teams can focus on Windows and Linux support. SteamVR users running macOS who wish to continue using SteamVR will need to opt-in for legacy macOS builds from the "Beta" tab under SteamVR properties. This measure will probably stop functioning relatively quickly as new hardware and software changes appear. This move doesn't come as much of a surprise as the macOS platform isn't known for its VR activity, in the long-term macOS users will have to migrate to an alternate operating system or dual boot if they wish to continue accessing SteamVR.

Microsoft has today announced that they will delay the scheduled end of service date for Windows 10 October 2018 Update, version 1809 from May 12, 2020 to November 10, 2020. This is in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a bid to lessen the burden on consumers and enterprise. The following is Microsoft's statement on the matter:

"We have been evaluating the public health situation and understand the impact this is having on many of our customers. To help ease some of the burdens customers are facing, we are going to delay the scheduled end of service date for the Home, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations, and IoT Core editions of Windows 10, version 1809 to November 10, 2020. This means devices will receive monthly security updates only from June to November. The final security update for these editions of Windows 10, version 1809 will be released on November 10, 2020 instead of May 12, 2020."

Microsoft has decided to shift its focus away from Windows 10X dual-screen laptop solutions in the near term, according to the report from ZDNet. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has happened recently, Microsoft's Chief Product Officer Panos Panay internally informed his team that Microsoft will not be focusing its efforts on delivering the Windows 10X based dual-screen laptops this year. However, Microsoft is committed to that idea and will not shift away from it completely, it is just taking a rest for now. This is bad news for everyone that was hoping to get Surface Neo dual-screen laptop that was meant for the Holiday season of 2020. In addition to Surface Neo not shipping this year, Microsoft isn't enabling any new Windows 10X dual-screen device to ship this year either.

What Microsoft is focusing on, however, is to get Windows 10X firstly on single-screen devices. That means that regular laptops should be getting the Windows 10X treatment sometime this year so vendors can launch products to compete with Chromebook devices, based on Google's ChromeOS.

Intel's x86 processor architecture has been the dominant CPU instruction set for many decades, since IBM decided to put the Intel 8086 microprocessor into its first Personal Computer. Later, in 2006, Apple decided to replace their PowerPC based processors in Macintosh computers with Intel chips, too. This was the time when x86 became the only option for the masses to use and develop all their software on. While mobile phones and embedded devices are mostly Arm today, it is clear that x86 is still the dominant ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) for desktop computers today, with both Intel and AMD producing processors for it. Those processors are going inside millions of PCs that are used every day. Today I would like to share my thoughts on the demise of the x86 platform and how it might vanish in favor of the RISC-based Arm architecture.

Both AMD and Intel as producer, and millions of companies as consumer, have invested heavily in the x86 architecture, so why would x86 ever go extinct if "it just works"? The answer is that it doesn't just work.

Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service, has seen a huge uplift in traffic/usage in the past few days amid the COVID-19 outbreak. In the places where the outbreak happened and people are enforcing social distancing, Microsoft reports that there has been a 775% traffic uplift compared to the previous situation. As everyone capable of working from home needs a communication tool, Microsoft Teams is a popular choice, and it has seen some amazing usage as well. The users of Teams service have generated over 900 million meetings and calling minutes on Teams daily in a single week, resulting in high server usage. The demand for Windows Virtual Desktops has tripled as well.

OWC a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company and one of the world's most respected providers of hard drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions and performance upgrade kits, today announced the latest edition of its legendary Mercury Elite Pro external storage system for Mac, PC, Linux machines, Smart TVs, and PS4 and Xbox consoles. The 3.5-inch USB 3.2 5 Gb/s hard drive system is a modern day workhorse, delivering real-world performance up to 283 MB/s and capacities up to 16 TB to keep pace with the demands of everything from video editing projects, critical business data, and irreplaceable personal content to expanding PS4/Xbox One game storage and enjoying music/video content via a Smart TV.

The Essential External Storage Solution for Everyone
The Mercury Elite Pro kicked off OWC's rich, storied history of storage solution innovations nearly 20 years ago, and it has successfully stood the test of time by continuing to offer an incomparable blend of performance, quality, and value in a single HDD storage solution.

Microsoft yesterday announced that they would be freezing any release for optional Windows 10 updates whilst the world still reels from the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision by the company comes after they decided to keep delivering security updates for the Fall Creator's update (version 1709 of the OS).

Both these decisions by Microsoft stem from the company trying to reduce the impact of Windows 10 updates on businesses - reducing update requirements to security updates means there is fewer chances of an optional update shipping that could negatively impact productivity - of which very little bit is required right now for some businesses to even keep afloat. When the crisis has passed, all updates will be resumed.

Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system has been a mix of old and new designs since its launch, however, Microsoft decided to modernize its UI look by providing a fresh set of icons. If you are a user of Microsoft Office suite, then you already know how the new icons look for Office applications like Excel and Word. The material design present on those apps is now transferring to the rest of Windows 10 stock applications like Calendar and Calculator. In the effort to modernize the look of Windows 10 and end the Windows 7 inspired UI, Microsoft will be pushing the updated icon set over few following months. The updates icons are already available for Windows 10 Insiders, and specifically for Preview Build 19569. Regular users can expect to get the update in the coming months.

Microsoft is determined in its goal to move away from x86-64 dominance it had in the personal computer space for many decades. In the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19559, Microsoft has enabled Hyper-V support for ARM64 devices, such as Surface Pro X. Hyper-V is a Windows native hypervisor and it is Microsoft's virtualization technology that allows running other OSes on top of Windows. Being a low-overhead solution, it is more efficient than a virtual machine and allows for better performance of OS that is running on top of Windows.

With the Insider Preview Build 19559, Microsoft is enabling this feature on a Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise customers. It is important to note that by adding more features like this, Microsoft is expanding the software ecosystem of ARM64 devices, which should result in wider adoption of PCs like the Surface Pro X.

NVIDIA today has finally launched its GeForce Now streaming gaming service, and users can enjoy partial amounts of free gaming under the business model. There are two tiers of users on offer: Free, and Founders. The free tier, which you may give a go to check the streaming infrastructure and if it's something you would enjoy paying for, is limited to 60-minute play sessions. This means that after the clock has stopped ticking (with potentially intrusive pop-up notifications reminding you of how much time you have left every 10 minutes), you'll be forced to quit the game, and submit yourself to a playing queue until your next 60-minute window is up. RTX isn't available in this tier, though - so if you also wanted to see for yourself what the raytracing talk is all about, you'll have to pay $5 (monthly subscription) to cross that particular river.

Founder-tier members, however, will be able to enjoy the latest RTX-enabled games. The only ones listed on the service, for now, are Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Call of Duty: modern Warfare, Metro Exodus, and Deliver Us the Moon, which NVIDIA has recently started bundling with select RTX graphics cards). There is still a catch though: play sessions will be limited to 6 hours, after which time you'll be brought back to a gaming queue (though you'll have precedence over Free tier accounts, should there be many Founders-tier players in the queue, you might have to wait a while). There's a limited-time 90-day introductory period of which you can take advantage while subscribing for the Founders tier right now, which means you will only be billed after that 90-day grace period is over. Remember - you have to own a digital copy of the game you want to play in any of the more popular storefronts, such as EPIC and Steam, before you can game - but it's still a nice way to experience RTX should you currently own a non-RTX-enabled graphics card.

A little over a year ago, we announced our intention to rebuild Microsoft Edge on the Chromium open source project with the goals of delivering better compatibility for everyone, less fragmentation for web developers, and a partnership with the Chromium community to improve the Chromium engine itself. At Ignite, we unveiled our new vision for the web and search, our colorful new icon, and how Microsoft Edge + Bing are the browser and search engine for business — and we are thrilled by the growing excitement we've heard from all of you who've tried it out and sent feedback!

From this incredible momentum, today I'm pleased to announce the new Microsoft Edge is now available to download on all supported versions of Windows and macOS in more than 90 languages. Microsoft Edge is also available on iOS and Android, providing a true cross-platform experience. The new Microsoft Edge provides world class performance with more privacy, more productivity and more value while you browse. Our new browser also comes with our Privacy Promise and we can't wait for you to try new features like tracking prevention, which is on by default, and provides three levels of control while you browse.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the release of the Vulkan 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Multiple GPU vendors have certified conformant implementations, and significant open source tooling is expected during January 2020.

Vulkan continues to evolve by listening to developer needs, shipping new functionality as extensions, and then consolidating extensions that receive positive developer feedback into a unified core API specification. Carefully selected API features are made optional to enable market-focused implementations. Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications, including: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.

Today, on January the 14th, Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows 7 operating system. After more than 10 years since its launch, Windows 7 has remained a primary operating system on many PCs, especially OEM PCs manufactured before 2015, when Windows 10 came out. The user transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has not been an easy task for Microsoft, however, by declaring that the product has reached End-Of-Life, Microsoft is trying to make millions of users pull the trigger and embrace the new operating system.

When January 14th arrives, Microsoft will stop giving Windows 7 users technical support, software updates with new features, and most importantly security updates. The official recommendation from Microsoft is to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, meaning Windows 10. As some of the older PCs may have compatibility issues with newer OS, it is also recommended to check your PC specifications. If you are a customer of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, you will continue to see further support in the future, however, for regular users, the support period is over.

Halo: Reach for PC is going live today, as per confirmations from game developer 343 Industries. The game is supposed to go live tonight at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST when it will be released on PC and Xbox One. The PC port is going to be available for purchase on three platforms: Game Pass, Steam, and the Windows Store. The PC port currently contains some bugs, however, 343 Industries is working to iron them out before the game launches. Features like uncapped FPS will be mostly unstable during the launch period and might cause the game to crash, so it's better to turn it off for now. Latency issues could also be present in the beginning but 343i is working hard to remove it before the game drops tonight. For all Steam users, you can pre-purchase the game here.

According to the sources close to Neowin, Microsoft is expected to launch x86-64 (or x64 in short) emulation support for Windows on ARM (WoA) devices. Expected to arrive in Windows 10 21H1, or around 2020 for all the Windows Insiders, the new feature will enable a vast majority of apps made for Windows OS, currently built for x64 architecture, to run on ARM ISA and all Windows on ARM computers.

So far, only 32-bit x86 applications were able to be emulated, however, if these rumors are to be believed, many users of WoA devices should get a chance to run all of their favorite 64-bit software that was previously unavailable. The launch of this feature will boost the adoption of the WoA ecosystem with benefits reaching all existing laptop models, including Microsoft's newly launched Surface Pro X laptop that utilizes an ARM-based chip called SQ1 (customized Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx processor).

In today's world, computer security is becoming very important due the exponential increase in malware and ransomware attacks. Various studies have shown that a single malicious attack can cost companies millions of dollars and can require significant recovery time. With the growth of employees working remotely and connected to a network considered less secure than traditional corporate network, employee's computer systems can be perceived as a weak security link and a risk to overall security of the company. Operating System (OS) and independent hardware vendors (IHV) are investing in security technologies which will make computers more resilient to cyberattacks.

Today, AMD and Microsoft announced the first-ever 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop powered by new AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processors. A significant, multi-year co-engineering program between AMD and Microsoft at the silicon, platform, and software levels created this 15" Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 with a perfect balance of performance, battery life, and sleek and lightweight design. Combining world-class compute and graphics performance with a fully optimized, rearchitected system software stack including AMD Radeon FreeSync display technology, Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 is designed for creative professionals, students, gamers on the go, and business users who value the large screen experience alongside portability. The custom AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processors and optimized software highlight the latest example in the multi-year collaboration between AMD and Microsoft, first established more than a decade ago for the Microsoft Xbox and now spanning from Azure to Surface to xCloud and Project Scarlett.

Microsoft has been using Intel hardware exclusively on its Surface lineup ever since it came out with the first Surface device. The choice was clear - Intel offered much better energy efficiency than anything AMD could offer at the time, besides the strong bond between the two companies. However, it seems that AMD might have done enough with its Ryzen 3000 series to sway big Microsoft into using some of its hardware (Ryzen 3000H or U) on upcoming Surface devices, if reports are to be believed.

Microsoft should be refreshing its Surface Laptop 2 with a 15-inch variant packing AMD hardware. It's uncertain if this will happen, and much less likely to happen for the entirety of Microsoft's Surface product stack (which includes potential refreshes for Surface Pro 6, Surface Book 2, Surface Go or Surface Studio 2). However, that AMD is now being considered alongside Intel in what can be said to be the ultimate Windows experience in Microsoft's usually excellently-designed products is a prestige in and of itself, and means an empowered brand standing for the red camp. Oh and Microsoft might finally be introducing that dual-screen device we've been hearing rumblings about for a while. Project "Centaurus" has already been seeded among Intel insiders, it seems, so it might see the light of day in the upcoming Microsoft Surface event taking place in New York on October 2nd.

Soldak Entertainment today announced Din's Legacy has been released. Din's Legacy is an action RPG with mutating characters, set in a dynamic, evolving, fantasy world for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

During the Orc Schism, the entire Orc race was violently split into Dark Orcs, Zombielords, and the Mutated. The Mutated are tainted with Orc blood, a zombie parasite, and necromancer magic. This makes people seriously mistrust and even fear them. The fact that they slowly mutate over time makes it even worse. Who is going to trust you when you grow horns overnight?

AMD today addressed multiple issues with its 3rd generation Ryzen processors through a highly-recommended update to its Chipset Driver software. To begin with, it stated that several users noticed anomalous behavior with 3rd generation Ryzen chips where the voltages and clock-speeds would be raised as the processor would misinterpret low-scale performance requests from certain software as a request to unlock higher performance states (combinations of higher clock-speeds and voltages to support them). This first came to light when users reported abnormally high voltages at idle when performance was measured by certain software that caused the Observer Effect. The new version 1.07.29 of AMD Chipset Drivers refine the AMD Ryzen Balanced Windows power scheme to be more aware of low-priority workloads and ensure the right state when the system is idling. AMD recommends Ryzen Master software. Version 2.0.0.1233 (or later), as they have fixes to the hardware monitoring module.

The AMD Chipset Drivers 1.07.29 also includes a "beta" fix for the bug that rendered "Destiny 2" unplayable on machines powered by 3rd generation Ryzen processors. The company had earlier tried to fix this bug through an update to its AGESA processor microcode, through ComboAM4 1.0.0.3ABA, although that particular version, not to be confused with the widely circulated 1.0.0.3AB, was found to be buggy and pulled. AMD said it's working on a newer version of AGESA, version ComboAM4 1.0.0.3ABB, which will include "a more comprehensive solution" to the bug affecting "Destiny 2."

Igor Wallossek of Igor'sLAB Germany postulated a method by which an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT "Navi" graphics card can be made to run at clock-speeds of over 2.20 GHz (engine clock), thanks to custom SoftPowerPlay Tables (SPPTs) deployed by modifications to the Windows Registry. The AMD Radeon driver is designed such that it reads PowerPlay tables from the video-BIOS of an RX 5700-series graphics card the first time it's detected, and writes it onto the Windows Registry for quick-reference. This is called a SoftPowerPlay Table or SPPT. It's the modification of SPPTs that allows you to manipulate the power limits of RX 5700-series graphics cards, and achieve higher engine clocks than the 2150 MHz engine-clock limit of the RX 5700 XT, which is set at just 1850 MHz for the RX 5700.

Wallossek's mod involves preparing your Windows Registry with a driver cleaner such as DDU, downloading and applying Registry files for various new power-limit targets you want. The table below details the various power-limit and clock headroom on offer from each kind of registry file. There's also a registry file that cleans up your Windows Registry of any SPPTs, if you decide to roll-back your mod. You can inspect a registry file by opening it in a plaintext viewer such as Notepad. Find links to the SPPT mods, and the Registry Cleanup in the source link below. You can also watch a video presentation by Wallossek in German language here. You make any changes to your machine at your own risk, be sure to have proper custom cooling for your graphics card.

Microsoft earlier today released to market its latest version of Windows 10, the May 2019 Update (version 1903). There was quite some talk about Microsoft tweaking the kernel to improve CPU performance. Other gamer-relevant changes include updates to WDDM (display driver model), and an updated DirectX 12, which now supports variable-rate shading. A similar technology is available on Vulkan, and has already been implemented in games such as "Wolfenstein: The New Colossus." With much talk about the latest Windows being better for games than the previous Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update (1809), we decided to take it for a spin.

After backing-up our 1809 installation onto a disk image, we updated to 1903 using Windows Update, with the same driver- and game versions as our recently-updated setup (details here). We then put the machine through our entire selection of 21 games, and two high-end graphics cards, the AMD Radeon VII and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. We used driver versions 19.5.1 for AMD, and 430.64 for NVIDIA, both of which support Windows 1903. Our tests span 1920x1080 (Full HD), 2560x1440 (1440p), and 3840x2160 pixels (4K) resolutions. We present our data as percentage gain/loss over Windows 1809, with three data-points per game, each representing the three resolutions in the order "Full HD", "1440p", and "4K". The first graph below covers the RTX 2080 Ti, and the second one Radeon VII.

Eliovp, who describes himself on GitHub as a Belgian [crypto] mining enthusiast, created what could go down as the best thing that happened to AMD Radeon users all decade. The AMD Memory Tweak Tool is a Windows and Linux based GUI utility that lets you not just overclock AMD Radeon graphics card memory on the fly, but also lets you tweak its memory timings. Most timings apply live, while your machine is running within Windows/Linux GUI, some require memory retraining via a reboot, which means they can't be changed at this time, because rebooting reverts the timings to default. The author is trying to figure out a way to run memory training at runtime, which would let you change those timings, too, in the future. While you're at it, the tool also lets you play with GPU core frequency and fan-control.

The AMD Memory Tweak tool supports both Windows and Linux (GUI), and works with all recent AMD Radeon GPUs with GDDR5 and HBM2 memory types. It requires Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.4.1 or later in case of Windows, or amdgpu-pro ROCM to be actively handling the GPU in case of Linux. The Linux version further has some dependencies, such as pciutils-dev, libpci-dev, build-essential, and git. The source-code for the utility is up on GitHub for you to inspect and test.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Memory Tweak Tool by Eliovp