Latest news with #Windows11
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Microsoft Confirms 2 Free Offers—Windows Users Must Now Choose
Decision time for 700 million users. Microsoft's sudden decision to kill its own October deadline for Windows 10 was many things — but above all it was a surprise. But now for the reality check. Doing nothing is not an option. This reversal means half of all Windows users must now decide. There are now two options on the table — both free — from which to choose. These numbers are stark. There are around 400 million Windows 10 users eligible to upgrade to Windows 11 — that means a PC with the right security hardware onboard. A further 240 million can't upgrade because their PCs fail that eligibility test. All told, that's at least 700 million users with three options to stick to Windows 10. Use Microsoft's cloud backup and extend support for free until october 2026. Use some of the company's rewards points to do the same. Or cough up $30. There is a fourth option of course. Those 400 million users should really take the free upgrade to Windows 11 that's still on the table. Windows 10 retaining security updates for 12-months might be table stakes, but Windows 11 is much more secure. In the same blogpost Microsoft used to confirm its u-turn, it also emphasized the free upgrade point. 'Security is at the heart of Windows 11... Windows 11 is secure by design and by default, with layers of defense enabled on day one to enhance your protection without the need to first configure settings.' I've said before that this u-turn is a mistake. The free 12-month extension should have been limited just to users with PCs unable to upgrade to Windows 11. The threat now is inertia — users that would otherwise have upgraded not bothering until next year. The irony is that those upgrades had finally started to accelerate just as Microsoft issued its surprising news. The danger is that this acceleration will now rapidly slow back down to the crawl it was beforehand. That's not good for users or for Microsoft. So go ahead, upgrade to Windows 11 if you can and have not done so already. And if you can't, use the extended support wizard as soon as it's available. It's currently only available for Insiders, but that will change soon at it hits all PCs. For the rest, the best advice is to see what new PC bargains might crop up through the rest of this year. The Microsoft news will have disappointed PC m akers who want the refresh cycle to continue unabated. You should see some good bargain hunting through the shopping season in the fall as all that inventory chases an unexpectedly soft market. As for all those Windows 10 users, there are now two free offers on the table. Upgrade an eligible PC to Windows 11 or extend support for a year. No excuses for falling off support anymore, making the fared cyber nightmare a reality.
Ammon
4 hours ago
- Ammon
Windows is getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death after 40 years
Ammon News - The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has held strong in Windows for nearly 40 years, but that's about to change. Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was overhauling its BSOD error message in Windows 11, and the company has now confirmed that it will soon be known as the Black Screen of Death. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified black screen. The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen you'd see during a Windows update. But it will list the stop code and faulty system driver that you wouldn't always see during a crash dump. IT admins shouldn't need to pull crash dumps off PCs and analyze them with tools like WinDbg just to find out what could be causing issues. 'This is really an attempt on clarity and providing better information and allowing us and customers to really get to what the core of the issue is so we can fix it faster,' says David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge. 'Part of it just cleaner information on what exactly went wrong, where it's Windows versus a component.' Microsoft says it will roll out this new BSOD design in an update to Windows 11 'later this summer,' alongside its new Quick Machine Recovery feature, which is designed to quickly restore machines that can't boot. The changes to the BSOD are part of a broader effort by Microsoft to improve the resiliency of Windows in the wake of last year's CrowdStrike incident, which left millions of Windows machines booting to a BSOD. The Verge
Irish Independent
8 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Microsoft says farewell to the ‘blue screen of death'
Most Windows users will have encountered the screen and its 'Recovery' message most likely at an inconvenient moment. The software company announced on Thursday that it was rolling out a simplified user interface in its place – a black screen of death. The rollout also comes almost a year on from a major global outage following a faulty update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Airlines, hospitals, emergency services and banks around the world that use Windows were affected and millions of Microsoft users were taken offline. It caused approximately 8.5 million Windows systems to crash and companies lost billions of dollars due to lost productivity, among other issues. As a result, Microsoft vowed to strengthen its cyber resilience. 'We are streamlining the unexpected restart experience,' said David Weston, Microsoft's vice-president of enterprise and OS security. 'We are also adding quick machine recovery, a recovery mechanism for PCs that cannot restart successfully. This change is part of a larger continued effort to reduce disruption.' The new recovery system would launch later this summer on Windows 11 devices, the company said. The rollout will reduce the wait time during restarts to two seconds for most users, according to Microsoft. 'This is really an attempt on clarity and providing better information and allowing us and customers to really get to what the core of the issue is so we can fix it faster,' Mr Weston added in an interview with The Verge. 'Part of it [is] just cleaner information on what exactly went wrong, where it's Windows versus a component.'
Digital Trends
16 hours ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
This Dell Pro 14 business laptop just dropped below $1,000
If you are on the hunt for a business laptop, you should jump at this chance to buy the Dell Pro 14 with a discount. This configuration featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor is originally sold for $1,039, but it's on sale for $899 following a $140 discount from the laptop deals at Dell itself. It's a powerful machine that will surely boost your productivity, and if you want to get it for a lower price than usual, we highly recommend proceeding with your purchase today as tomorrow may already be too late to pocket the savings. Why you should buy the Dell Pro 14 laptop A business laptop should be efficient and dependable, and the Dell Pro 14 passes those requirements with flying colors. Its AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor combines with AMD Radeon 760M graphics and 16GB of RAM, which places it on the level of top-tier machines, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. With these specifications, the laptop is capable of maximizing its built-in AI capabilities, including Microsoft's Copilot as part of Windows 11 Pro. The Dell Pro 14 is pretty portable with its 14-inch screen, and its Full HD+ resolution provides sharp details and vivid colors to make up for the relatively smaller display compared to its peers. The laptop also comes with a 512GB SSD, which should provide plenty of storage space for your apps and files, and a Full HD HDR+ infrared camera that enables facial recognition for additional security to prevent unauthorized access to your Dell Pro 14. This configuration of the Dell Pro 14 featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 processor already provides amazing value at its sticker price of $1,039, so Dell's $140 discount that drops its price to $899 nudges it into must-buy territory. We're not sure how much time is remaining before the offer expires though, so if you're interested in the Dell Pro 14 as your next business laptop, you should complete your transaction for it immediately to make sure you're able get it for below $1,000.
New York Times
16 hours ago
- New York Times
:( Microsoft's ‘Blue Screen of Death' Is Going Away
For millennials, blue can be a significant color. It is associated with clues left by a well-meaning dog in our youth. Songs about a little guy that lives in a blue world (Da Ba Dee Da Ba Di). Or the rage-inducing abject failure of the Windows computer in front of us. In other words, the Blue Screen of Death. And now, the world is set to bid a fond farewell to a generation's most feared and notable error message, as Microsoft announced on Thursday that the screen was being officially replaced by a less friendly but more efficient Black Screen of Death. The simplified screen, Microsoft said in a blog post, would roll out later this summer, and 'improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed.' A new message — in white lettering — is slated to say, 'Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.' For more than three decades, Windows has denoted some sort of serious crash or slow down in its system with a blue screen. An early version of the message was written by the former chief executive, Steve Ballmer, according to Raymond Chen, a longtime Microsoft programmer. The message, released in the early 1990s, would fill the screen: 'This Windows application has stopped responding to the system.' Underneath, multiple soothing options were provided over the blue-screen background, including ESC, and ENTER — which would give you false hope that the problem was fixable — and then the last resort 'CTRL+ALT+DEL' to give up and start over. An engineer named John Vert designed one for Windows NT soon after, and Mr. Chen helped finalize a new one for Windows 95 in 1995. All of them were blue by coincidence, according to a blog post by Mr. Chen. The change to a black screen comes in the wake of last year's outage generated by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Its software update unintentionally crippled computers using Windows software all around the world, causing disruptions to service for airlines, retail stores and emergency response systems. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
