Table of contents for Issue 3 in Windows Advisor

Remember when Microsoft touted Windows Mobile during earnings calls? Now, Microsoft’s Windows Phone business is ‘immaterial’, while Office, Azure, and other cloud and services products continue to propel the company to profitability. In a small note during its second-quarter earnings report, Microsoft said its phone business had declined $361 million in revenue from a year ago, leading to the claim that the phone business was ‘immaterial’, or not enough to report to investors. It wasn’t enough that the firm’s More Personal Computing segment reported a revenue decline of 2 percent to $8.8 billion: chief financial officer Amy Hood also noted that phones caused a four-percent decline – in other words, Microsoft blamed phones for the company’s loss. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s mantra of “mobile first, cloud first” has been officially discarded. Chief…

Microsoft’s HoloLens may have largely faded from public view, but that doesn’t mean that Microsoft’s halted development on it. The tech giant’s researchers recently disclosed that HoloLens development is moving ahead, with a new chip that emphasizes machine learning. Specifically, Microsoft said the next generation of its Holographic Processing Unit, or HPU, will support Deep Neural Network processing, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence, or AI. The AI in question isn’t necessarily Cortana, but simply the way that the HoloLens recognizes the real world. Harry Shum, executive vice president of the Artificial Intelligence and Research Group, recently showed off the second version of the HPU. The chip, designed by Microsoft, will be totally programmable, the company said. Microsoft’s HPU is one of the signature features of the HoloLens, responsible for…

There are some very good reasons why you might want to peer behind the scenes of your Windows PC. Maybe you want to tweak your system to maximize performance, or maybe you just want to know what your computer is doing underneath those slick desktop graphics. Either way, here are 12 free programs you can use to fully monitor and manage your Windows experience. 1. Belarc Advisor It’s tough to tweak your hardware and software settings without knowing your exact system composition to begin with. Belarc Advisor (tinyurl.com/y9pryg6b) tells you in detail all about your hardware, software, patch status, security settings, networking inventory, and more. If you’re dealing with a new system for the first time, running a Belarc report can give you vital information in one place that it…

There’s no doubt about it: Windows 10 is studded with data-tracking tidbits and hooks into all sorts of Microsoft’s online services. Handing over all that data has some tangible benefits, like Windows 10’s OneDrive integration and the Bing-powered brains behind the Cortana digital assistant, but not everyone is thrilled with the idea of an operating system that’s constantly looking over their digital shoulder. Don’t fret. We’re here to show you how to get your PC and its data out of the cloud and back on silicona firma. (Yes, I did just make that up.) This guide will show you how to disable Windows 10’s integration, as well as provide tips on what those features actually do. That way you can decide whether you want to keep any of it active…

For most people, Windows 10 was either a free upgrade or it came on your new PC or laptop. If you’re ever asked for a product key – during a clean install for example – here’s how to find it. Get product key If you upgraded from Windows 7 or 8, Windows 10 will have activated automatically after connecting to Microsoft’s servers online. You didn’t need to enter a product key as you were entitled to Windows 10 by virtue of having a genuine consumer copy of Windows 7 or 8. There are, however, a few instances where you’ll need your product key. If you’ve upgraded from Windows 7 or 8 and plan to upgrade your PC components, thus wiping your hard drive, you’ll need your Windows 10 product key.…

No Windows 10 Creators Update for you, Microsoft says – at least, not if you happen to be the unlucky owner of certain older Atom-based Windows devices, and other aging models in the future. After stories arose of failed attempts to upgrade such hardware to the Creators Update, Microsoft confirmed recently that any hardware device that falls out of the manufacturer’s support cycle may be ineligible for future Windows 10 updates. In the case of the four ‘Clover Trail’ processors (part of the Cloverview platform) that have fallen into Intel’s End of Interactive Support phase, they will be ineligible for the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft confirmed. Instead, they’ll simply be offered the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, plus security updates through January, 2023, the end of the original Windows 8.1…

My desire to power up a laptop with an external graphics card began in 2015, when I set out on a quest to get back into PC gaming – a beloved pastime I’d neglected since childhood. But the only PC I had at the time was a 2011 Lenovo ThinkPad X220 laptop with Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics. That just won’t cut it for proper PC gaming. Sure, the laptop would work well enough for older titles like Diablo III, especially on the laptop’s tiny 1366x728-resolution display, but forget about more graphics-intensive modern games on an external 1080p monitor. That’s why I decided to examine external graphics card (eGPU) setups. And indeed, I found entire communities of people creating DIY setups that connected desktop graphics cards to their laptops via…

Windows 10 works best with more disk space. While it’s not optimal to run Windows 10 from a 16GB or even 32GB SSD, the OS has some tricks up its sleeve that allow it to run on devices with skimpy storage space, such as tablets. It’s not that painful once you take the proper steps. Live small and prosper Microsoft designed Windows 10 so that its own files could be reduced in size without using disk compression. The overhead of unpacking stuff reduces performance somewhat, but it can mean the difference between being able to work with the device you’ve got, and having to buy a new one. Compressing the Windows 10 files is simple: type CMD into the search windows field, right-click on CMD and run as administrator. Once…

Stand down, everyone: Microsoft Paint isn’t going away after all. Microsoft signalled an about-face in a blog post by Megan Saunders, a general manager within the Windows Experiences group. Instead of deprecating Paint in Windows 10 (which seemed to many to be the first step toward oblivion), she said Microsoft would release MS Paint in the Windows Store as a free app. “MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the Windows Store where it will be available for free,” Saunders wrote. Saunders acknowledged the pleas of Paint fans who didn’t want this longtime app to go away. “Today, we’ve seen an incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint,” Saunders wrote. Her next words were almost sentimental, as she affirmed Paint’s…

Choosing the best laptop can be difficult these days. With companies like Dell, HP, Acer, and Asus continually launching updates of popular notebooks and expansions of product lines, we’re all but swimming in options right now. Summer has pushed even more convertibles, 2-in-1s, and traditional notebooks onto store shelves. The most interesting ones poke holes in existing assumptions about certain categories. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, for example, is an attempt to revive the company’s battle with Chromebooks, while Dell’s Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming – our ‘Best budget gaming laptop’ pick – offers 1080p gaming for just £899. Vendors also are serious about squeezing AMD’s new CPUs into their line-ups, with Asus recently debuting the first Ryzen laptop at Computex. Best ultrabook laptop Winner: Dell XPS 13 Price: £1,149 from fave.co/2h50xTh Dell…

Owners of some Windows 10 laptops and tablets are crashing into a worrying road block when they try to install the Windows 10 Creators Update. Windows Update initially says the notebooks are compatible with the upgrade, but fails to install it after downloading the setup files, instead displaying the following message: “Windows 10 is no longer supported on this PC. Uninstall this app now because it isn’t compatible with Windows 10.” That sounds ominous, but you don’t need to uninstall your existing version of Windows 10, and there’s no app to uninstall. Instead, the message means your PC’s hardware isn’t compatible with the Creators Update, or any future Windows 10 updates. Here’s what you need to know about the error, which currently affects PCs powered by Intel’s Clover Trail processors.…

You never know when you’ll need a Windows recovery drive in order to restore your system to a pristine state, so the time to make one is now – and it’s very easy to do. A recovery drive is similar to the media you’d receive if you bought a prebuilt system. Back in the day, PCs would ship with a CD or DVD that included an image of the system as it left the factory. If your PC’s OS went sideways, you could easily restore it to the way things were on day one (though you’d lose all of your subsequently created data and applications, obviously). Nowadays manufacturers usually just put an image of the system as it left the factory on a hidden partition of your main drive. A…