Windows Server 2012 and R2, will officially reach its end of life on Tuesday 10^th October 2023.

Scary. End of life (EOL) means that Microsoft will no longer provide updates, patches, or security fixes for Windows Server 2012 R2. This termination of support poses several challenges and risks to businesses that continue to use this platform past the EOL date.

We explore the ramifications of this for your business and examine how Lineal can play a role in shaping the future of your server infrastructure.

So, what are the issues now facing clients?

Security Risks: Without regular security updates, Windows Server 2012 becomes vulnerable to new and evolving cyber threats. Hackers often target systems running on unsupported software, as they are more likely to find unpatched vulnerabilities to grant unauthorised access to company data. Using server hardware outside of its product lifecycle hinders the ability to detect and respond to security incidents in real-time, increasing the window of vulnerability to cyber threats.

Compliance Issues: Many industries and regulatory bodies require businesses to maintain up-to-date and secure systems. Using an unsupported operating system like Windows Server 2012 can lead to compliance violations under Cyber Essentials and ISO Accreditations. 

How can Lineal resolve them?

1. Upgrade to a Supported Server: The most straightforward option is to upgrade to a newer and supported Windows Server operating system. Windows Server 2019 or the latest version 2023 offers enhanced security, performance improvements all supported by our technical expert team.
2. Migrate to the Cloud: Many of our clients are adopting cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure. These offers scalable, secure, and managed server solutions that eliminate the need for on-premises hardware alongside reducing the burden of server maintenance costs through pay-as-you-go and reservations payment models.
3. Virtualisation: If a full server upgrade is not feasible immediately, consider virtualisation solutions like VMware. These allow you to run Windows Server 2012 in a controlled and isolated environment while planning your migration strategy meaning each virtual server can run its own operating systems independently.

The end of life of Windows Server 2012 signifies the importance of staying current with technology to ensure security, compliance, and compatibility. Our team is ready to assist your business in transitioning away to a more appropriate solution for securing your company’s data.

Microsoft Copilot will release to users worldwide from 26th September 2023.

The flagship natural language AI tool that previewed back in March of this year brings ChatGPT functions to a whole range of Microsoft productions including your favourite Microsoft 365 apps, Azure, Bing and into Windows itself.

At a colourful launch event in New York, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella debuted the official release of Copilot and demonstrated ways AI can revolutionise everyday tasks – whether that be writing emails, interpreting or generating images, transcribing handwriting into maths, or intelligently answering questions.

Copilot assistance aims to make Microsoft 365 apps including Teams, Word, Excel and more increasingly powerful – with users able to simply request complex data handling tasks rather than manipulating the data manually themselves. For more creative work, Copilot can also generate visual results within longstanding Microsoft apps like Paint.

This presents some fascinating opportunities for companies using the Microsoft 365 suite – common tasks such as ‘Re-write this email more professionally’, ‘Summarise this meeting’ and ‘Make me a set of PowerPoint slides based on this document’ would all be achievable within a few seconds.

Features from the Bing public preview have also made it into the release version – with users able to choose ‘More Creative’ ‘More Balanced’ and ‘More Precise’ language options to give the AI’s output a different tone, and draw on the wider web-based dataset that is previously unknown to the user.

For example, in another impressive example of Copilot using web and user data intelligently, an American user uploads a photo of a UK plug adaptor and asks ‘Will this work in London?’ Copilot is not only able to check based on an understanding of the image, but understands what the user means by ‘work’ and is able to confirm that the plug is the correct choice.

Some interesting guard rails have also been rolled in – Microsoft have previously stated that a firebreak exists between user data and the web dataset used to train the AI, but Copilot can use both to respond to prompts. Images created using the next version of DALL.E will also be crytographically signed as ‘Created by AI’, effectively signing the content as AI-generated.

Copilot will soon begin appearing to most users on the Windows toolbar – coinciding with the new upgrade of Windows 11 that is due on 26th September. Within Microsoft 365, Copilot Chat functions will begin appearing in app updates for Enterprise licence customers from 1st November 2023.

For Microsoft expertise and support, please contact our team today.

Windows Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 will be declared end of life (EOL) as of 10th October 2023, after which the operating system will receive no new security updates.

This leaves organisations using Server 2012 with several options:

– Re-license and migrate to a newer operating system if hardware supports it.
– Migrate those server workloads into a cloud platform like Microsoft Azure.
– Replace those server workloads with web-based applications.
– Purchase new server hardware with a supported operating system.
– Purchase specialist Extended Security Updates (ESUs) until 2026.

Which option to choose depends on where a business is their replacement/hardware lifecycle, budgets and changing workplace requirements. For some, a move to a newer version of Windows Server (2016, 2019 or 2022) is still possible, but this isn’t the only option. Don’t forget to check out Lineal’s handy flow chart on what to do when faced with the choice of replacing a server.

How and when to replace servers is a complex question, and businesses increasingly have far more cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaS) choices available than a decade ago. Bundled services like Microsoft 365 have increasingly replaced the on-premises Exchange server, the file server and more for many small organisations – making the heavy capital investment for a server impractical. In the face of increasing hardware and energy costs, running on onsite server also looks increasingly expensive.

In some ways the end of Server 2012 represents the end of an era – in 2012, server sales were just beginning to recover from the financial crash. A decade on, both PC and small volume server sales look bumpy, while the largest server manufacturers appear to be focusing ever more sales attention on the data centre market – where there is growing appetite for enterprise hardware driven partly by the hosting and increasing consumption of those same cloud services.

For many small businesses in particular, a Server 2012 box may have turned out to be the last on-premises server they would ever purchase.

For Technical support and expertise, please contact our team today.

Extended Support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 officially ends as of January 2023.

The older operating systems will no longer receive any security patches or technical updates from Microsoft, which poses a compliance risk to businesses and organisations.

Mainstream support for Windows 7 originally ended in early 2020, although some Enterprise users could choose to purchase an ‘Extended Security Update’ (ESU) program for an additional three years.

Ever since then, Microsoft has regularly urged users to upgrade to Windows 10, and later Windows 11 on PCs with TPM security built into their chipset.

Windows 7 was originally released in 2009 and became an overnight success, selling over 100 million copies within six months. As of September 2022, a staggering 11% of traditional PCs are somehow still estimated to be running Windows 7 globally.

Windows 8 suffered a more checkered history: originally developed with a touchscreen-friendly tile display designed to be similar across PCs, tablets and the ill-fated Windows Mobile – many users found the new user interface confusing, continuing the mysterious curse of alternate-versions of Windows being a flop.

Microsoft Edge 109 will also be the last version of the web browser that will be considered supported for Windows 7 and 8, with a similar change expected from Google within Google Chrome.

Now the World officially waves goodbye to Windows 7/8.1, and any users still stuck on the old versions are faced with the choice of either purchasing a licensing upgrade for their old PC if their hardware permits it, or replacing their device entirely with a newer Windows 10/11-based model.

For Operating System expertise and support, please contact our team today.

Microsoft have announced that OneDrive Personal will cease to synchronise on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 from 1st March 2022.

Beyond this date, data saved to the OneDrive desktop app will not be saved to the user’s online Microsoft 365 account. Instead the user must either upload files via their account on the web through their browser, or upgrade their hardware to Windows 10/11.

Business-licensed users will still be able to synchronise OneDrive files until Windows 7 extended support finally ends in January 2023, although time is clearly ticking for business users of the popular file storage app who remain on older operating systems.

The hugely successful Windows 7 reached ‘End of Life’ (the end of official support) as of January 2020, but remains in surprisingly widespread use. Despite the free release of Windows 10 and 11 over the past decade, Windows 7 alone still has millions of PC users remaining – approximately 14% of the global market.

Keen observers will note that with the business version still running (for now) there’s likely no overriding technical reason the Personal version must cease, but that OneDrive itself sits at the centre of Microsoft’s hugely popular suite of Office apps – and that announcements like this are one of the few remaining ways Microsoft can clearly signal the need to upgrade decade-old hardware that may have security vulnerabilities.

Lineal are a certified Microsoft Gold Partner. For IT support and expertise, please contact our team today.

Windows’ latest operating system offering was unveiled today at their virtual event, boasting the arrival of the “next generation of Windows”.

The announcement comes somewhat of a shock to the tech world who were told that Windows 10 would be the final version of the Windows OS with over 1.3 billion user devices.

However due to the rapidly changing, hybrid working environment emerging from the pandemic and the announcement that Windows 10 would no longer receive extended support past 2025, it appears that Microsoft are updating the OS platform to incorporate the working from home demands from its users.

Microsoft CEO Natya Sadella agreed saying “We need to be empowered to choose the applications we run, the content we consume, the people we connect to, and even how we allocate our own attention”. He further stated that “operating systems and devices should mould to our needs, not the other way around.”

New centralised task bar interface layout in night mode

These demands are being met with features such as tighter integration with Microsoft Teams directly into the centralised task bar (a significant shift away from the attachments to Skype) and the blending of the Xbox Series X’s Auto HDR graphical enhancements along with Xbox Games Pass; both come pre-installed.

The focus of Windows 11 revolves around the simplification of the standard Windows user interface whilst increasing performance and multitasking functionality. Microsoft executive, Panos Panay revealed that Windows 11 Updates are 40% smaller that its OS predecessors and gone are the days of work being interrupted by Windows Updates as they now are downloaded and installed without the need for system shutdown.

Snap Layouts for compartmentalisation of multiple screens

Additionally, the new ‘Snap Layouts’ promote easier movement of apps to defined compartments of the screen for easier multitasking and the OS will remember collections of apps open on external monitors when the PC/Laptop is unplugged thanks to ‘Snap Groups’ – mirroring certain characteristics of the cancelled, dual screen Windows 10X project.

A further major change comes as part of the Microsoft Store which, through Microsoft’s partnership with Intel and Amazon, now allows developers to distribute their apps through the Microsoft Store without sharing revenue and Windows systems will be able to support Android apps using the Amazon AppStore. Developers can even use their own payment systems within the Microsoft Store.

Before today’s virtual launch, a first build of the OS was leaked allowing for a quick glimpse of the evolved ‘Sun Valley’ interface – with a Start Menu in the centre of the main task bar with a return of Windows Widgets in the form of an AI-powered personalised feed. Widget types include a news feed, maps and weather. This evolution of Widgets signals the quiet removal of the controversial Live Tiles introduced with Windows 8.

Windows 11 will be available as a free update to existing Windows 10 users requiring 64 GBs of storage and 4GBs of RAM, but only for ‘eligible PCs’ – those with two or more cores and a clock speed of 1GHz or higher.

A preview early test version of the new system will be released for app developers as part of the Windows Insider beta testing programme in the beginning of July 2021. A public access version is expected to be made available in October 2021 without new hardware speculated to be released alongside.

Microsoft have previewed the Windows 10 October 2020 update with a partial re-design aimed at making the display clearer and enhancing security options.

Windows 10 updates are free of charge and are now issued to over a billion devices on a twice yearly update cycle.

Among the changes recently revealed on the Windows Experience Blog were:

• “A refreshing Start. The Start menu has a more streamlined design. A uniform, partially transparent background to the tiles creates a beautiful stage for the redesigned app icons like Calculator, Mail and Calendar. This refined Start design looks great in both dark and light themes, but if you’re looking for a splash of color, first make sure to turn on Windows dark theme and then toggle “Show accent color on the following surfaces” for “Start, taskbar, and action center” under Settings > Personalization > Color to elegantly apply your accent color to the Start frame and tiles.”

Ease of use has also driven other improvements, such as more natural support for Windows 10 on convertible devices:

• “2 in 1 toast elimination. 2-in-1 devices now naturally switch by default to the new tablet experience without the notification toast asking you to switch into the tablet mode when you detach the keyboard, helping to keep you in your flow.”
• “A Taskbar tuned to your liking. Getting a new Windows PC? You will enjoy a cleaner, more personalized, out-of-box experience featuring a taskbar specifically curated for you—less clutter and more content that you’ll love. (This experience is limited to new account creation or first logon scenarios.)”

In addition the new version includes security enhancements – including an updated version of Windows Hello3 single-sign-on & multi-factor authentication technology:

• “Simpler device management. Mobile Device Management (MDM)1 now includes a Local Users and Groups policy that gives administrators the same options as on-premises Group Policy.”
• “More secure biometric sign on. With enhanced sign-in security2, Windows Hello3 now offers added support for virtualization-based security for certain fingerprint and face sensors, which protects, isolates and secures a user’s biometric authentication data.”
• “Stronger app protection. Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG)4 now helps protect Microsoft 3655 as well as Microsoft Edge with a unique hardware isolation strategy. WDAG keeps enterprise data protected by opening sites and Office files from untrusted sources in a virtualized container.”

Lineal are a Microsoft Gold Partner – for IT support and solution expertise, please contact our team today.

The original source code to Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 has leaked online – nearly two decades after their original release.

Official support for Windows XP ended back in 2014, and the final security patch was a one-off release in 2017 released in response to the WannaCry ransomware attack that temporarily crippled large parts of the NHS.

Among the interesting things we learned were that Microsoft originally included a hidden theme that made Windows XP look like Apple’s rival macOS operating system, and that the 4chan poster who released the dump had either added or helped spread anti-vax and population control conspiracy-theory material about Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

According to NetMarketShare, Windows XP still accounts for at least 1% of all PCs that generate web traffic worldwide (around 25 million PCs) although may actually include many air-gapped factory PCs and similar in practice.

The 43gb data dump has been available to Government agencies and similar for a while, although it’s unusual that the public at large have the opportunity to discover zero-day exploits for an entire operating system. Microsoft urges that users should not still be using XP, and the outdated platform is insecure even for the oldest legacy services.

For IT expertise and guidance, contact our IT team today.

July 14th: as Microsoft flag a ‘Critical’ Level-10 DNS vulnerability on Domain Name System (DNS) servers worldwide, Lineal engineers rush to patch the infrastructure of dozens of organisations overnight.

The Microsoft Security Response Center recently released details of CVE-2020-135, a ‘Critical Remote Code Execution’ weakness deemed ‘wormable’ (potentially spreading between devices automatically) affecting all Windows Server versions.

A grade of 10.0 is the highest possible severity level that can be assigned under the Common Vulnerability Scoring System Calculator. For comparison the WannaCry attack, which temporarily crippled the NHS in 2017, had a CVSS rating of 8.5.

Lineal staff use remote monitoring software to administer large numbers of client servers and devices, monitor hardware health and deploy patches more rapidly – and were quickly on the case overnight to patch the vulnerability as a special emergency.

Within 8 hours we’d patched a large number of DNS servers – applying both an initial fix and further scheduled updates.

DNS is a naming technology which translates the identities of computers, servers and other networked devices into the IP addresses used for connecting on private and public IT networks.

For this reason, DNS servers often have massive reach, and must be carefully protected to mitigate the risk of compromising an organisation’s technology on a huge scale – even across the globe.

Israeli IT security firm Checkpoint Software Technologies, who discovered the 17-year old hidden bug and reported it to Microsoft, argue ‘this is not just another vulnerability’ and risks handing an attacker ‘complete control of your IT’ if IT admins fail to address the issue urgently.

For IT expertise and support, please contact our team today.

Microsoft have blocked availability of May’s Windows 10 Update from PCs with attached removable storage – such as USB flash drives and SD Cards.

The restriction has been put in place to prevent users encountering accidental drive re-assignment when they try to update: causing D: to become E:, or similar.

Harmless for most personal devices, any change is likely to cause maximum confusion for work devices which often rely on organisations sticking to a fixed structure for drive access.

Instead, users will be confronted by a warning message reading:

• Your PC can’t be upgrade to Windows 10. Your PC has hardware that isn’t ready for this version of Windows 10. No action is needed. Windows Update will offer this version of Windows 10 automatically once the issue has been resolved.

While USB drives may be easily removable to make May’s Windows 10 Update available again, users online have pointed out that Microsoft Surface devices and other Windows 10 enabled tablets are likely to be scuppered by the SD Card, which may have been pre-installed for work devices. More worryingly, Microsoft’s official support article notes ‘The drive reassignment is no limited to removable drives. Internal hard drives may also be affected.’

May’s 2019 Windows Update (which looks to include some promising new features) has undergone an extended testing period with the Windows Insider program this year, after some Windows users suffered file deletion problems during the October 2018 update cycle.

An undetected bug remains a setback for Microsoft’s flagship operating system, and the concept of a constant update cycle on a consistent platform. The problem will not be unfamiliar to Apple, however, whose 2017 OSX High Sierra update somehow reached release with an undetected root password security bug, only discovered weeks after release.

Microsoft have confirmed the removable storage bug will be resolved in a ‘future servicing update for Windows 10’ although May 2019’s Windows 10 update may well turn into June, July or August.

For IT support and expertise, contact our team today.

Microsoft’s Windows Team have previewed a new optional Light Theme to be released in May 2019’s Windows 10 update.

The glossy, bright look is currently available to those on the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build (a kind of test program for volunteer guinea-pigs of future Windows versions – accessed through Windows Update.)

Both Apple and Microsoft have introduced ‘Dark Modes’ more eye-sensitive for night-time use in recent years, either in popular software such as Outlook, or as part of the main operating system itself, as in the case of Apple’s Mojave update.

Windows Light Theme introduces a brighter feel for Microsoft’s signature operating system, likely to prove a hit among companies with certain in-house ‘styles’ favouring brighter tones, or to provide more options to those with visual impairments.

As of March 2019, Windows 10 is now in use across more than 800 million devices worldwide, running on just a smidge under half of all PCs in existence (49.9%.)

May’s Windows update (build 18362.30) also features numerous minor fixes, including improvements to printing processes, splitting Cortana from Windows Search, and extending dark mode within OneDrive.

Light theme will be available within the ‘Personalisation’ settings available by right-clicking on the Windows desktop, once the new update lands in May.

For Microsoft expertise and support – contact our team today

Around 6% of PCs are estimated to still be running out of date, unsupported operating systems like Microsoft Windows XP. Here at Lineal we’ve long advocated keeping operating systems up-to-date and secure against the latest threats.

But in certain circumstances that’s not always so easy: legacy XP machines are often connected to third party equipment (e.g.: manufacturing hardware) using cable connections or drivers that are now difficult to obtain. The external hardware can’t be replaced as readily as the connected PC for both cost and practical reasons, so the ageing PC (with a lack of XP antivirus) creates an in-built security vulnerability for a businesses’ whole network.

Users caught by this conundrum can find a solution in Bitdefender’s Security for XP and Vista – a version of Bitdefender’s award-winning security built to be backwards compatible to older PCs, and providing ongoing security against the latest threats for legacy hardware.

Security for XP and Vista is available for Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Vista Service Pack 2 operating systems, and also integrates with older software likely to be found on such machines, such as Outlook 2007, Yahoo Messenger 9, Internet Explorer 8 and other common web browsers of the same generation.

For those concerned that a trusty old machine and lack of XP antivirus could be the very weakest point in their security, Bitdefender could be a shrewd choice indeed.

For IT Security advice and support, contact Lineal today.

Windows Server 2003

Nearly 1 in 5 Windows Server users are still running Windows Server 2003 at great risk, more than a year after Microsoft announced end of security support for the product, new findings have shown.

Research by Spiceworks and Cloudphysics both found that 18% of Windows Server licensing market share is still taken up by Windows Server 2003, based on data recorded in June 2016. More than 53% of those surveyed also still ran one or more instances of Windows Server 2003 somewhere in their organisation.

Anyone still using the old software risks becoming vulnerable to security threats, which Microsoft will no longer address, with many organisations potentially being in violation of their compliance, insurance or regulatory obligations for data protection.

The continuation of Windows Server 2003 (which Tech Radar last year touted as potentially “the biggest security threat of 2015”) has been left unresolved within many companies, many of whom believe they lack a clear decision, expertise, or funds to replace the now unsupported operating system.

In the short term the best measure is risk mitigation: isolate any Windows Server 2003 systems as much as possible to prevent access by outside security threats.

But sooner or later, all companies will need to upgrade important systems, and those that do make the move are less likely to invest in the capital expense of physical hardware as they were over a decade ago – with increasing numbers likely to utilise an outside IT provider to migrate to a managed virtualised solution, for example business cloud services.

For Windows licensing support or guidance, please contact Lineal today – 01271 375999 or click here.

Microsoft Partner

Lineal has been certified as a Gold Microsoft Partner with immediate effect, becoming the only such Gold Partner in the North of the region.

Our official Microsoft Partner status was upgraded from Silver to Gold after Lineal’s team qualified for Microsoft’s Gold Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency – the result of several month’s efforts by the team comprising training, outstanding performance in our deployments and a large number of highly satisfied customers.

Head of Technical Services, Matt Norris, praised the team on all their hard work: “Lineal’s Gold award shows our commitment to providing our customers with only the highest quality Microsoft Cloud Services and Support – and to the continued development of our team’s expertise. I cannot be more proud of our team and the dedication to excellence they have shown which has been recognised in this award.”

The award is Lineal’s latest achievement following a string of Silver Microsoft awards, including Silver Authorised Education Partner (AEP), Silver Midmarket Solution provider, Silver Application Integration and Silver Hosting.

Microsoft certified partners must undergo a rigorous program of technical assessments and examinations via the Microsoft Partner University, as well as demonstrating real-world proficiency in undertaking complex Microsoft deployments for customers, in order to qualify for the prestigious ‘Gold’ status.

In addition, and pivotal to Lineal’s commitment to exceptional knowledge and expertise in the South West region, each Gold Partner must employ a number of Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) whose skills match the requirements of each award. MCP is the global standard for measuring expertise in Microsoft products and technologies with each of our team being required to hold multiple MCP Certifications which are regularly renewed. MCP examinations are widely recognised to be among the hardest professional qualifications to attain in the IT industry.

Lineal’s team are now working towards additional Microsoft Gold awards covering new Microsoft specialisms and products.

For expert Microsoft Services and Support, contact Lineal today by clicking here

Get Windows 10

If you haven’t already upgraded to Windows 10, Lineal highly recommend doing so before the free upgrade period ends on 29th July 2016. The free upgrade is available to PC users currently running a valid copy of Windows 7, 8 or 8.1.

Step 1 – Visit Microsoft’s Windows 10 Downloads page by clicking here, and select your current version of Windows from the dropdown menu, and click ‘Confirm’.

Step 2 – When prompted, select ‘Upgrade this PC now’.

Step 3 – Windows 10 will begin downloading, showing a progress report on screen. This can take 15 minutes to an hour, depending on your PC and internet connection speed.

Step 4 – When Windows 10 has downloaded, click to install Windows 10 and your PC will reboot – beginning the installation of the new operating system, and copying across all your existing files/settings.

Step 5 – When your PC has completed the installation and launched your desktop – enjoy Windows 10!

For extra help or advice in upgrading to Windows 10 for free, please contact Lineal’s IT support team today – 01271 375999

automatic windows 10 upgrade

Edit – 14:15 25.05.16: Following customer feedback, Microsoft have now added an additional pop-up which confirms update scheduling time to give users an additional chance to opt-out of the update.

A Microsoft ‘trick’ which prompts an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 has been condemned as misleading by PC users.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 update prompt was recently changed so that the ‘X’ close button, instead of closing the prompt, schedules an automatic update. PC World declared the change a ‘trick’ and Windows users who preferred older operating systems took to social media to complain.

Instead, users must specify to cancel the scheduled upgrade by clicking a small link in the fourth line of text which reads “Click here to change upgrade schedule or cancel scheduled upgrade.”

This is likely to catch out many users who have ignored the ‘GWX app’ so far, who until recently would have used the close button as their only way to close the updater and avoiding an automatic Windows 10 upgrade. Once upgraded by mistake, PC users must use Microsoft’s rollback service to return to Windows 7 or 8.1.

Escalating measures to push users towards upgrading demonstrate Microsoft’s drive to reach its stated target of one billion users running Windows 10 by the start of its 2018 fiscal year (beginning around October 2017).

The controversy surrounding a automatic Windows 10 upgrade is likely to only draw more attention to Microsoft’s Windows 10 upcoming upgrade deadline – the free Windows 10 upgrade will cease to be available to PC users after the 29th of July.

For Windows IT support and expertise, contact Lineal today.

Almost certainly – but don’t panic. Details of anonymous data gathered from Windows 10 users were released this week, with Microsoft publishing more usage information surrounding Windows 10 tracking.

In a blog post, Microsoft explained that the data is gathered for “Standard diagnostic, anonymous analytics that enables us to deliver the best Windows 10 experience possible.”

Via Windows 10 tracking, Microsoft have now measured more than 200 million active devices running the new operating system, 2.4 billion search questions asked of Virtual Assistant Cortana, and more than 44.5 billion minutes spent using the new Microsoft ‘Edge’ browser.

Routine data collection is unlikely to concern most users – and has clearly been announced to show Windows 10’s success. Microsoft also casually notes that the new operating system, released in the summer of 2015, has been “Outpacing… Windows 8 by nearly 400%.”

The accelerating adoption of Windows 10, including among 22 million Enterprise and Education customers, offers Microsoft renewed hope for growing the user base of associated products, such as Azure cloud computing, Windows Phone and the impressive Office365.

If concerned, users can ‘turn off’ all feedback (aside from error reports) by setting the feedback option to ‘Basic’ in their settings.

Taking a more nuanced view, this admission illustrates an industry ever more capable (and willing) to be flexible with privacy concerns of customers in the quest for the perfect user experience.

Need Windows IT support and advice? Contact Lineal today: www.lineal.co.uk or 01271 375999

Windows 10.1 updates security

With ‘Windows 10.1’ now barely a month old, and the Microsoft operating system already running on over 12 million business PCs, how fares Microsoft’s free updates strategy?

Windows 10.1 update was released with relatively little fanfare (be honest, you didn’t notice) adds features that, understandably with hindsight, might have been a distraction at the main Windows 10 release back in July.

Packaged within were mainly performance and security upgrades – Windows 10.1 will now boot almost 30% faster than an old Windows 7 system on the same device, the Cortana virtual assistant has some new handwriting recognition skills and there are new enterprise tools for mobile devices. Microsoft Edge runs smoother too, offering previews of tabs before viewing and syncing favourites across devices.

Most importantly, after recent corporate data breaches in the news, Microsoft have added a range of new security safeguards. These including ‘Windows Hello’, supporting enterprise grade biometrics including fingerprint and facial recognition – sadly currently only available for US users.

Aside from controversy surrounding user privacy then (if you didn’t notice your Windows 10.1 update, that’s maybe because Microsoft installed it automatically on your device without asking you) the first free update went ahead with relevant additions and limited fuss.

Starting free updates officially moves Microsoft into line with Apple’s OS X business model that has become the industry standard. Yet limited promotion of Windows 10’s ongoing development risks downplaying Microsoft’s progress.

Which would be unfair, because Microsoft is plainly taking extra care to develop the business security of their product range, including the excellent Office365, Microsoft Azure and now Windows 10.1. Microsoft is clearly listening to business’ fears, and businesses should welcome it.

For help and support with Microsoft enterprise IT, contact Lineal today.

Microsoft Office 2016 is here: the staple of word processing, spreadsheets and presentation work everywhere is now available for single purchase on Windows 10 and Mac OS X.

Office 2016’s apps will look very familiar to existing customers – but Office 2016 is undoubtedly ‘smarter’ than any previous version of Office, with its most impressive new features aimed at boosting productivity for both home and business customers.

Take Microsoft’s new ‘Smart Lookup’ function for example – click a single word in a document and Office will web search that term (via Bing) within the window, allowing instant research.

Cleverly, Office 2016 will even infer from the context of the surrounding paragraph the exact meaning of the word being searched for, preventing irrelevant homonyms clouding your search results. A neat trick certainly, but also an important one for certain sectors – for instance helping children do school work with protection against loading inappropriate search results based on words with double-meanings.

It is a similar case with 2016’s new ‘Tell me’ function. Gone are the clunky help menus or cartoon paperclips – ‘Tell’ Word for a tool like ‘mail merge’ or ‘footnotes’ and the Office 2016 apps will not load search results, but immediately take you to the exact menu and function needed.

The latest version allows for collaborative working (finally catching up with rival Google Drive) with multiple users able to edit documents in real time with a visible tracked changes function, from remote locations if needed. As an added bonus, Office is integrated with Skype, aimed at making the process of collaborative working more easily communicated.

Part of productivity is personal though, so Office 2016 also introduces ‘Office 365 Planner’, an app aimed at time and project management. Even Outlook will attempt to shave a few minutes off your day by linking attachments from cloud-based OneDrive and introducing ‘Clutter’, an automated email filtering service which avoids distractions by pushing less relevant emails into a separate folder, helping you to best utilise your time. Office 2016 knows that time is worth money, and for some may be a very smart investment indeed.

Need advice on software for your business, or help migrating to Microsoft Office 365 services? Lineal can help – contact us today: http://www.lineal.co.uk/contact/

Microsoft’s Windows 10 has been available to home PC users for more than two weeks now – but as more users get chance to test its features, how has the new operating system fared against the initial scrutiny of the news cycle?

With more than 67m devices now running Windows 10, some horror stories have already graced the internet post-migration. Not everyone has had an easy upgrade, with some users reporting touchpad or connectivity problems. Windows 10’s propensity to slideshow images, pulled from users’ ‘My Pictures’ Folder into the start menu, has caused the obvious hilarity. Some unfortunate early adopters found their PC displaying adult content from deep in their personal files played in an embarrassing slideshow.

The most widespread complaint though has been Microsoft’s new ‘Wi-Fi Sense’ feature. WiFi Sense by default allows your contacts and Skype friends shared access to your Wi-Fi network credentials without handing over a password. This has prompted serious security and privacy concerns.

The fuss here is not entirely without basis, with the tech community correctly noticing that even if Wi-Fi Sense doesn’t share access from your immediate friend on to a third party, in reality your immediate friend may share access to your network to a third party via their own Wi-Fi Sense if your friend has obtained the password first hand – either from you or via a written source.

Users merely need to turn off Wi-Fi Sense, but it’s important that those making the upgrade are aware of the need to make a decision over protecting their own network security.

Overall though, these problems are a shadow of the grief that Windows 8 gave Microsoft, and here at Lineal we’ve generally been impressed by the transition – the majority of our customers who have wanted to upgrade to the new operating system have done so without incident. The removal of Windows 8 style full-page apps, the introduction of the new Edge browser and the welcome return of the Start Menu have all been greeted warmly by a worldwide user base that has clearly felt listened too.

Most importantly, because some internet stories have reported lost files after upgrade, the golden rule still stands – if you have important data, always make sure this is backed up elsewhere, just in case.

If you’d like advice and support upgrading your systems – why not click here to see what Lineal could offer your business: http://www.lineal.co.uk/systems/

Windows 10 officially launched this Wednesday – but is an early update a good idea?

Return of the familiar start menu but with cool live tiles!

Here are our initial verdicts Continue reading…

This picture shows the latest batch of Apple iMacs going to one of our customers in Wales for a system refresh!

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Technology giant Hewlett-Packard, known as HP, is to split itself into two separate companies.

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A super-intelligent robotic “brain” that can learn new skills by browsing millions of web pages has been developed by US researchers.

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