Microsoft

Tell Us Your Memories of Windows 95, the Most Charming OS Microsoft Ever Made

Want to feel old? The iPhone turns 20 today. Just KIDDING. Windows 95 is celebrating its 20th birthday though. Microsoft’s once-ubiquitous operating system launched in 1995 with an expensive (and wildly successful) marketing campaign. It looks laughably outdated now, but at the time, Windows 95 was a hit, selling 7 million copies in the first…

Hardcore Pirates Are Reportedly Banning Windows 10

There’s casual Pirate Bay piracy, and then there’s private torrent trackers: members-only clubs that share the best movie and TV rips among themselves. As you’d expect, they tend to be pretty hardcore about privacy, enough so that some groups are banning members from using Windows 10. As TorrentFreak reports, groups like iTS and FSC have…

Bing Already Has Android Marshmallow’s Best Feature

Microsoft just stepped on Google’s toes, beating the search giant to the on-demand info finish line. Bing now has Now on Tap superpowers, thanks to an update that hit the Play Store this morning. The new app update allows users to long-press the home button and get access to search results based on whatever image…

Parallels 11 Can Put Microsoft’s Cortana on Your Mac

Parallels, the virtual machine go-to for Macs alongside Apple’s own Boot Camp, has another annual update, bringing Windows 10 to your Mac. However, this year Parallels adds one feature previously unknown to common Mac users—a virtual assistant. As far as updates go, it’s all-around better software: boots 50 percent faster, with a quarter better battery…

Dropbox Refuses to Explain Its Mysterious Child Porn Detection Software

Recently a US Army reservist was arrested for sharing child pornography. Here’s what makes his story different from dozens of others: He’d been turned in by Dropbox. Dropbox has a habit of turning inpedophiles, as it turns out. The why of turning in people who share and hoard abusive images that exploit children is obvious,…

The Worst Bugs in Windows 10 and How to Fix Them

If you dived in the Windows 10 deep end, you might not have a smooth and seamless experience. Nowadays every piece of software seems to be a work-in-progress, and Microsoft’s newest operating system is no different. That’s not to say Windows 10 has been a total disaster—plenty of people have upgraded with no problems at…

Everyone’s a Winner With These Windows 3.0 Cards by Susan Kare

Practically everyone who used a computer in the 90s passed the hours playing Solitaire on Windows 3.0 at one point or another. Now, you can enjoy the game in real life with this deck of cards modeled after Susan Kare’s timeless, pixelated design. Even the box brings back memories. Susan Kare is probably best known…

NFL Replays Are Going To Be Packed With Juicy Player Data This Year

This season, every NFL player will wear a motion tracking chip—and we’re now getting a look at how the data these chips collect will be shown to fans in instant replays. This is the beginning of something beautiful. Earlier this year we learned that the NFL was teaming up with a company called Zebra to…

There’s now an Outlook app for Apple Watch that lets you see full emails and reply to messages directly from your wrist.

Don’t Buy The $15 DVD Player App For Windows 10

Windows 10 doesn’t ship with the software to play DVDs. If you want to make that happen, Microsoft thinks you should spend $15 on a Microsoft DVD-playing app from the App Store. Don’t do that. It’s kind of a shame that there’s no built-in software to play DVDs on Windows 10 — one more thing…

Windows 10 Is Coming to Xbox One in November

We knew Microsoft’s vision of one operating system across its hardware would be gracing the Xbox One in time, and now we’re more certain when that will be happening. During its Gamescom press conference, Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be available for Xbox One in November. November when? We still don’t know, but it’s better…

Microsoft just announced that the Xbox One will become a full-featured DVR in 2016. This couples with the console’s latest feature for free over-the-air television. You can record shows while playing games, and content can be shared with any Windows 10 device or downloaded for offline viewing. Best part? It’s free.

Acer’s Cloudbook: Like a Chromebook, But With Windows 10 for $170

Acer has just announced a new pair of computers that offer Windows 10 within a thin-and-light laptop case—and they start at just $170. The Aspire One Cloudbook comes in 11 and 14 variants, which refer to their respective screen sizes. They both feature 1.6GHz Celeron processors, 2GB of RAM, and full-size keyboards, along with USB,…

Don’t Fall For This Windows 10 Email Scam

Windows 10 is good, sure, but don’t be in such a rush to upgrade that you get suckered in by this (fairly obvious) email scam. As spotted by Cisco, some scammers are taking advantage of the reservation system for Windows 10 to send out malware-ridden emails, posing as Microsoft. The email pretends to contain the…

Your Computer Probably Can’t Use One Of Windows 10’s Coolest Features

How did I just do that? I’m using Windows Hello, a new feature of Windows 10 that can log you in with your face instead of a password. It gets better: Microsoft plans to let you log into all kinds of things the exact same way. Once your computer knows that it’s actually you sitting…

I’m Playing Xbox On Windows 10, And You Can Too

Yesterday, my wife wanted to play some Kingdom Hearts. I was in the mood for Titanfall. We only have one TV. So I pulled out a Surface 3 tablet, plugged in an Xbox One controller, and started streaming the game from my Xbox to my portable PC. It’s a new Windows 10 feature. How well…

Windows 10 Battery Life Is Better—Except When It’s Worse

I’ve had a devil of a time trying to figure out whether Windows 10 is helping or hurting when it comes to battery life. The answer: It’s complicated. This entire week, we’ve been measuring battery life across four different Windows laptops: two versions of the superlative Dell XPS 13, one excellent HP Spectre x360, and…

If You Want Microsoft Solitaire Ad-Free It’ll Cost You $10/Year

Procrastinators everywhere rejoiced when it was discovered that Windows 10 was bringing back everyone’s favorite time waster. But unlike the last time you played Microsoft Solitaire on your PC, this time you’ll have to pay a subscription fee just to get rid of the ads. If you’ve already loaded up Windows 10 you’ve experienced it…

PSA: Windows 10 Isn’t a Risk-Free Upgrade

Reviewers agree that Windows 10 is awesome. Reviewers also agree that you should probably wait till bugs get fixed. But maybe you’ve heard that you can simply revert to Windows 8.1 if you don’t like it? Well… I just tried it, and it’s not quite that simple. There definitely is such an option. You can…

Windows 10: The Gizmodo Review

Windows 10 defies review. It’s not a finished product. It will never be a finished product, if you believe Microsoft. Like Apple with Mac OS X, Microsoft has decided that the tenth version of their operating system will be the final one—it’ll just get updated, year after year. Only with Windows 10, even some already-announced…