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Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are pleased to release a new Insider preview build of the Windows Server VNext Semi-Annual Channel editions. Available Content Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview The Server Core Edition is available in the 18 supported Server languages in ISO format and in VHDX format in English only. Windows Server Core App Compatibility FoD Preview Windows Server Language Packs Windows Admin Center 1909 Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, click here. The following keys allow for unlimited activations of Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel Previews Server Standard: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV Server Datacenter: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W This Windows Server Preview will expire July 31st, 2020. How to Download Registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. See the Additional Downloads dropdown for Windows Admin Center and other supplemental apps and products. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see GETTING STARTED WITH SERVER on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. For Windows Server, use your registered Windows 10 Insider device and use the Feedback Hub application. In the app, choose the Windows Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. In the title of the Feedback, please indicate the build number you are providing feedback as shown below: [server #####] Title of my feedback See Share Feedback on Windows Server via Feedback Hub for specifics. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. For Windows Admin Center, Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities. Known Issues There is an issue where the App Compatibility FOD cannot be added to the OS .wim image offline using DISM /image method. After upgrade, it is necessary to reinstall the new FOD using DISM /online method. Terms of Use This is pre-release software – it is provided for use “as-is” and is not supported in production environments. Users are responsible for installing any updates made available from Windows Update. All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Announcing Windows Server vNext Insider Preview Build 18985 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Editor’s note: We’re back with the latest batch of weekly Windows 10 tips posts, which highlight some of the many helpful features that come with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make your daily life easier with a streamlined update process, as well as clean and simple experiences for your desktop. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/454871acdf9b4881e8621cb449835b4b-1024x767.jpg Text suggestions for the hardware keyboard is a learning tool originally introduced in RS4, and with RS5 it has expanded language support. If you’d like to try it out in one of the supported languages, you can do so by enabling the  “Show text suggestions as I type”  feature under  Settings > Devices > Typing. Check it out in action, in Hungarian: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/717dfaa8fe010042e67b670ff6f43268.gif Here is the list of languages added in this update: Afrikaans (South Africa) Albanian (Albania) Arabic (Saudi Arabia) Armenian (Armenia) Azerbaijani (Azerbaijan) Basque (Spain) Bulgarian (Bulgaria) Catalan (Spain) Croatian (Croatia) Czech (Czech Republic) Danish (Denmark) Dutch (Netherlands) Estonian (Estonia) Finnish (Finland) Galician (Spain) Georgian (Georgia) Greek (Greece) Hausa (Nigeria) Hebrew (Israel) Hungarian (Hungary) Indonesian (Indonesia) Kazakh (Kazakhstan) Kiswahili (Kenya) Latvian (Latvia) Lithuanian (Lithuania) Macedonian (Macedonia) Malay (Malaysia) Norwegian (Bokmal) (Norway) Persian (Iran) Polish (Poland) Romanian (Romania) Serbian (Serbia) (Latin) Serbian (Serbia) (Cyrillic) Slovak (Slovakia) Slovenian (Slovenia) Swedish (Sweden) Turkish (Turkey) Ukrainian (Ukraine) Uzbek (Uzbekistan) (Latin) Hindi (India) If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: Text suggestions expands language support appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

It’s a transformative time for the financial services industry. In the fast-changing, tech-driven world banks now live in, they recognize that technology can play a role in helping them meet both their customers’ expectations and challenging regulatory requirements. Coming to Microsoft from that world myself just two weeks ago, I’m now leading the team responsible for helping our customers do just that – regardless of where they are in their transformation journey. After 20 years in financial services, I’ve seen the impact technology can have, and recognize we have been approaching an inflection point for some time – and are at the tipping point. We’re approaching the close of a decade, and the industry has a tremendous opportunity to accelerate use of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst to improve competitiveness, drive growth, elevate customer experiences and keep ahead of changing regulations and cybersecurity threats. To take full advantage of what Sibos 2019 describes as a hyper-connected world, more banks are making broader cloud platform choices – moving beyond infrastructure services – and extending their cloud investment to productivity, data and AI, and agile customer relationship management services. They’re making this platform decision to seize the opportunity at hand and evolve to meet the rapidly changing needs and expectations of customers. They recognize technology can help them create the new business models required – even integrate past, present and future. As we look ahead, key to this will be the ability for financial organizations to: Deliver differentiated customer experience by accelerating growth and loyalty through deeper customer insights and relationships Modernize payments and core banking with agility to roll out new products and services Manage risk across the organization with deep insights and compliance with regulatory requirements Empower employeesthrough teamwork and improved employee productivity and accelerate workplace modernization Combat financial crime by protecting your bank and customers while lowering compliance costs Because of the hyper-connectivity, we know that regulatory compliance is and must be a top priority, which is why Microsoft continues to work with financial services regulators and customers to ensure our cloud services help customers meet their strict regulatory requirements.  Our team has been a part of the consultation period in sharing perspectives on updated outsourcing guidance by the European Banking Authority (“EBA)” and the final issued guidance, which takes effect on Sept. 30, 2019.  This longstanding engagement with regulators around cloud computing is one of the reasons more than 90 percent of Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (“GSIFIs”) depend on Microsoft cloud services. As a company we’ve made the investments and commitments to ensure they can meet their regulatory obligations. To accelerate digital transformation, Microsoft has focused on removing barriers to adopting cloud technology – such as regulatory and compliance, and beyond. At Sibos, we’re unveiling several announcements to further underscore this effort: Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection general availability and new feature addressing wrongful declines: This cloud-based solution will be generally available on Oct. 1, 2019 and is designed to decrease fraud costs and help increase acceptance rates for customer payment transactions with e-commerce merchants. Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection is designed to benefit merchants and banks while also improving customer shopping experiences by providing a seamless purchasing experience. The solution combats payment and account-creation fraud with AI technology that continuously learns and adapts to evolving fraudulent patterns. When generally available, the service will include a new feature (Transaction Acceptance Booster) that addresses wrongful declines – a common issue negatively impacting both merchants and banks. Among the first to deploy the new solution is Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Group in India to reduce the fraud rate for their ecommerce platform Yardley.com. FMCG players like Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Group can opt into this feature to increase acceptance rates for authorization requests they make to their issuing banks participating in Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Microsoft Banking Accelerator adds BIAN API implementation: Following the general availability of the Microsoft Banking Accelerator in July, today we are releasing an API sample implementation on GitHub for interoperability with the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) API service domains. BIAN is a not-for-profit association to establish and promote a common architectural framework for enabling banking interoperability. Microsoft and BIAN have been working together to help unlock new open banking opportunities by allowing organizations to more seamlessly and consistently share banking-specific data across disparate systems. In addition to the BIAN API samples, Microsoft released an update to  Banking Accelerator on AppSource bringing additional use cases for retail banking. Microsoft is the first cloud providerto receive a comprehensive cloud assessment from TruSight, an industry-backed, best-practices third-party assessment utility. Today, TruSight delivered a comprehensive on-site assessment of Microsoft’s Cloud Computing environment, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. The assessment was conducted using TruSight’s stringent best-practices assessment methodology. The new TruSight report gives financial services organizations a high-quality assessment of Microsoft’s cloud services based on standardized, industry-designed control assessment methodology. TruSight and its third-party assessment utility was created by leading banking institutions for the collective benefit of all financial services participants. The utility gives financial institutions the ability to access assessments on the most widely used third parties across financial services, rather than having to individually conduct assessments. Microsoft is the first of the major cloud providers to complete the assessment, which covered 27 control domains such as information technology, cybersecurity, business resiliency, privacy, physical security and risk management. Visit the Microsoft Trust Center to learn more. Microsoft customers share their success stories Microsoft is focused on empowering financial services organizations to achieve more. That requires being focused on trust, and always enabling our customers – through innovation, and security and compliance investments, as well as industry leading cloud scale. We continue to put our customers at the center of everything we do by sharing their inspired stories from our customers’ success since last year’s Sibos. We see momentum increasing worldwide as our customers tell their transformation stories – answering the questions about how they overcame obstacles, pitfalls to avoid, keys to success, why cloud or AI, and why Microsoft. Here are just a few of their stories: Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank, world’s first trade finance bank, hosted entirely on Microsoft cloud Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, SAP, and others trust Microsoft for their digital transformations Deutsche Börse and Microsoft reach a significant milestone for cloud adoption in the financial services industry HSBC: How HSBC built its PayMe for Business app on Microsoft Azure:Bank-grade security, super-fast transactions, and analytics P. Morgan and Microsoft announce strategic partnership to drive enterprise adoption of Quorum Mastercard: Partnering with Microsoft and utilising their cloud platform to make the business of doing business easy in 130 countries around the world Moula harnesses AI and transforms small business lending in Australia National Bank of Canada empowers and engages workforce, elevates customer and employee experience State Street chooses Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Teams for Enterprise Investment Management Solution TD Bank delivers legendary customer experiences with Microsoft UBS Group uses Microsoft Azure cloud to modernize critical business apps, leverage digital channels, and rethink how global workforce collaborates Microsoft partner news At Sibos 2019, we’re excited to showcase our partners’ progress in helping our mutual customers with their technology needs. Microsoft is the only cloud provider with a mature partner program and has the largest partner ecosystem in the market with more than 68,000 partners worldwide. Our partners are equipped and prepared to work with financial services organizations of all sizes across all their needs. We’re featuring the following partner successes and collaboration efforts: Accenture Microsoft Business Group empowers enterprises to thrive in the era of digital disruption Avanade, Accenture and Microsoft team up at Sibos Ernst & Young and Microsoft connect to bring customers together at Sibos Finastra creates new era of fintech using Microsoft machine learning and analytics tools Marco Polo Network uses Microsoft Azure and Corda blockchain to modernize trade finance Volante Technologies launches SEPA Instant Payments as a Service on Microsoft Azure for RT1 and TIPS The post Empowering financial services to achieve more appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Last week, at a gathering of press and analysts in San Francisco, I had the privilege of introducing new features and applications for Dynamics 365, spotlighted by AI-driven insights that empower organizations to take informed actions and improve customer experiences. In addition, I presented our vision for retail, brought to life by two new applications—Dynamics 365 Commerce and Dynamics 365 Connected Store—that will help organizations transform the retail experience. Helping worldwide business leaders drive intelligent action and make better decisions More organizations are choosing Dynamics 365 and Power Platform than ever before – from industries spanning energy (ExxonMobil), to transportation (Virgin Atlantic, ), to sports and entertainment ( , Tivoli) and many others. The common thread in our customers’ success is the power of a comprehensive, connected business cloud, drawing on unified data and applied intelligence to help customers make proactive decisions to positively impact their business. Customers have seen a transformative shift from a siloed to a proactive way of doing business. This approach has a dramatic impact to business leaders to drive results across the organization. Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Microsoft’s CFO Amy Hood and ask her about the transformational journey of Microsoft’s finance organization. Here is Amy in her own words, sharing how she thinks of our business applications portfolio and what business leaders like her need from technology solutions. YouTube Video Introducing new features and applications across our portfolio of AI-driven insights applications Over the past year, we have been investing in our AI-driven insights applications. Today, we are unveiling new features for existing applications along with entirely new applications and capabilities. With the expansion of the portfolio, we can provide a 360-degree view of your business. One that goes beyond data capture and backward-looking insights, to unification of all data, providing forward looking intelligence. Powered by Azure AI, these tightly integrated capabilities can make AI real for businesses today and enable employees to proactively drive decisions and action. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Customer expectations are rising all the time, but people aren’t coming up with these new expectations on their own—it’s brands and businesses that excel at delighting their customers that raise the bar for everyone. Organizations that can adopt AI to manage and analyze data will be better positioned to build powerful relationship with customers over time. Generally available earlier this spring, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights helps maximize customer lifetime value by surfacing a 360-degree view of the customer – to help organizations unlock insights and determine the best action possible to drive personalized engagement at scale. Today, we are announcing new capabilities that extend Dynamics 365 Customer Insights beyond B2C scenarios to address complex B2B journeys. Now, with the ability to add an organization as a first-class entity, organizations can map leads and contacts to buying groups, accounts and account hierarchies, giving them the ability to build segments and measure the relationship between an account and contact. Any organization—in any industry, from amusement parks to retailers and manufacturers— can effortlessly connect data from every source of interaction and arm employees with a single source of truth right within the external business applications they use every day. Dynamics 365 Product Insights Organizations on the quest to digitally transform their entire customer journey realize the important role product telemetry can play in terms of monitoring and learning from interactions a customer may have with connected products or services. These lessons help organizations to better understand customer expectations and then deliver more personalized experiences. Dynamics 365 Product Insights is a new application to the portfolio that can bring insights from connected physical products and give visibility into product performance and customer interactions so organizations can build richer relationships and improve engagement. Ecolab has been working with us in early development stages as they seek to improve operational efficiencies at nearly three million customer locations in more than 170 countries. Previously, Ecolab struggled in the “signal collection” phase with disjointed data sets making integration of that data even more challenging. They needed an end-to-end solution for reactive and proactive repairs of their products. Looking at just one example – their Internet-connected commercial dishwashers— Ecolab will now be able to use Dynamics 365 Product Insights to identify anomalies, like an unexpected drop in water usage for a certain model range, and then analyze that data in real time to narrow down to specific model and firmware. Now, in a matter of minutes, they’ll be able to identify a solution to a product performance issue that used to be very time consuming or even impossible to uncover. Ultimately, with Dynamics 365 Product Insights, Ecolab will be better positioned to unify development, deployment and usage data to get a view of their products; market, sell and better support their products; and then be more proactive with customers to optimizing their experience. Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service Customer service organizations have a growing need for deeper, more actionable insights to serve their customers, as well as tools to resolve customer issues quickly. New capabilities in Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service announced today, will enable service teams to more easily create and deploy virtual agents that engage in personalized conversations with customers without writing a single line of code. We’re releasing new authoring and web publishing improvements that will enable teams to deploy a virtual agent on a demo website for testing and stakeholder feedback before deploying on the external-facing website. Once deployed, new AI-driven insights will allow managers to monitor performance metrics for the virtual agent. Through a new customer satisfaction dashboard, customer service managers can view the overall customer satisfaction score and bot topics driving the score. In addition, they can now view “hours saved” metrics—the return on investment provided by bot sessions compared to typical resolution times by human agents, who are now free to tackle more complex, time-intensive cases. TruGreen, the largest lawn care company in the U.S., serves more than 2.3 million customers. With Dynamics 365 Virtual Agent for Customer Service, they will now be able to create and deploy a Virtual Agent on their website for routine inquiries in less than two days effort. Beyond simply answering routine questions, by utilizing out-of-the-box connectors from our Power Platform and the orchestration engine of Microsoft Flow, the TruGreen Virtual Agent will be able to take actions based on customer intent. For example, TruGreen can integrate to their ERP application to offer a customer visibility into their available account balance, and then schedule one of 13,000 technicians as a next best action. Ultimately, this will help TruGreen to reduce the call handling time for many of their customers most common requests via their website or mobile app, improving customer satisfaction while increasing their employee effectiveness as routine tasks are offloaded to virtual agents, freeing human agents to field more complex calls. IoT Intelligence for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Product quality is at the heart of any customer experience. And capturing the signals created when customers use a product can be game changing but imagine if you could capture critical insight before the product leaves the manufacturing facility. Organizations need a level of visibility and insight into shop floor and equipment operations—an end-to-end solution that provides real-time visibility of production and inventory by leveraging the power of AI, machine learning and mixed reality. With new IoT Intelligence capabilities we’re announcing today, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can connect IoT signals from mission-critical assets with business transaction data, enabling manufacturers and distributors to proactively manage production and stock in real-time, leverage predictive analytics to predict maintenance needs for business-critical equipment before downtime occurs, boost equipment performance and increase throughput, minimize waste and improve business performance. With headquarters in Australia, Majans is a producer and distributor of snack foods on a global scale and is in the process of trialing these new capabilities to build their factory of the future. By integrating IoT Intelligence, connected devices can detect salt and moisture content in the snacks they make, as well as machine and production KPIs. Signals from connected machines create a digital feedback loop that helps Majans reduce waste, eliminate rework from packaging of poor-quality product, reduce factory downtime with predictive maintenance and connect people with data and insights to refine processes and standards. YouTube Video New applications to help industries bridge the digital and physical worlds, starting with retail and manufacturing This is an exciting time to be involved in the retail industry. Shopping is no longer an isolated activity or a special destination, it’s something customers can do from anywhere, anytime. Mobile and digital platforms have enabled customers to have access to information and shopping experiences that were not even possible just a few years ago. Consumer expectations have evolved so much that historical models of operation are no longer good enough. For example, 91% of customers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations. With data driven intelligence, coupled with modern business applications, organizations can deliver personalized and differentiated shopping for their customers. We see this as a future of retail – and it is happening today. YouTube Video To bring this vision to life, we’re introducing two new applications that help transform the retail space – bringing together physical, digital and observational data sources to improve the store experience. Dynamics 365 Commerce A new application that we are announcing today, Dynamics 365 Commerce, is a comprehensive omni-channel solution for retail and e-tail companies that unifies back office, in-store, call center and digital experiences. A fully-connected solution that will evolve Dynamics 365 for retail, Dynamics 365 Commerce can transform the customer experience—from the digital experiences that make shopping fun and rewarding to productivity and collaboration solutions that help retail employees provide outstanding customer service. In addition, intelligent systems provide deep insights to empower advanced decision making and personalization, delivering the fully connected commerce solution retailers need to build brand loyalty, optimize operations and supply chain efficiencies and deliver better business outcomes. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, the third-largest premium wine company in the U.S., today announced plans to empower customers throughout the shopping experience and transform the way Ste. Michelle Wine Estates does business with Dynamics 365 Commerce as its end-to-end omnichannel solution across physical and digital channels. With three distinct consumer touch points – e-commerce, traditional brick and mortar and loyalty programs such as wine clubs – Ste. Michelle Wine Estates was challenged by the complexity of the technology needed to provide a true 360-degree view of its consumer. To offer customers the best possible experience, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates plans to align its operations with Dynamics 365 Commerce to power a comprehensive customer engagement platform capable of integrating distinct brands across all its direct-to-consumer sales channels. Dynamics 365 Connected Store In retail, success relies on a consistent customer experience across web, mobile and physical storefronts. The challenge for omni-channel retailers is ensuring the same level of service and convenience in physical locations as online—from stocking the same variety of inventory to offering personalized recommendations based on browsing and buying behavior. Dynamics 365 Connected Store is a new application that provides insight into the retail space, helping physical retailers understand and improve the in-store experience by analyzing disparate data from video cameras and IoT sensors to providing real-time and predictive insights that help store managers and employees make better decisions. Dynamics 365 Connected Store uses observational data generated as customers move through the store, as well as the status of store equipment and product, to create employee alerts and actionable insights that can improve store efficiency. For instance, Connected Store can improve the checkout experience by triaging extra cashiers via instant notifications, based on sensor or camera data. Fluctuations in the condition of store equipment such as freezers and refrigerators can put product quality at risk. Connected Store, supported by Azure IoT Central, utilizes IoT sensors to monitor temperature and humidity, which can quickly highlight any anomalies to protect inventory. Connected Store also tracks long-term trends in the retail space, illuminating patterns and opportunities across day-to-day, season-to-season activities and occurrences. Teams across the organization can stay updated with automated emails and a web app to review and report data. Whether you’re a regional manager who seeks to increase revenue and reduce cost by optimizing operations, a store manager who seeks to better-utilize their teams, or a store associate who seeks to better-prioritize their daily activities, Connected Store offers you benefits that can help you optimize customer experience. Multinational retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) is deploying Connected Store at its flagship, located in the heart of London, helping them achieve their ambition of becoming a ‘digital-first’ retailer. Store managers report that Connected Store gives M&S employees a real-time understanding of what is happening within their retail space, allowing them to work more efficiently and provide a more personalized customer experience. Here is a look into the impact Dynamics 365 Connected Store is having on M&S and how it is changing the way they deliver technology into their stores and into the hands of their colleagues. YouTube Video Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection general availability and new feature addressing wrongful declines The cost of fraud to both banks and merchants as well as the customer shopping can be quite high and detrimental to a company’s bottom line. To combat this, we are announcing Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection will be generally available on October 1. This new application will decrease fraud costs and help increase acceptance rates for customer payment transactions with e-commerce merchants. Banks and merchants can realize immediate benefits with Fraud Protection, but customer shopping experiences can also be improved by providing a seamless purchasing experience. The solution combats payment and account-creation fraud with AI technology that continuously learns and adapts to evolving fraudulent patterns. As part of this release, Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection will include a new transaction acceptance booster that addresses wrongful declines – a common issue that negatively impacts both merchants and banks. Merchants can opt to participate in this feature to increase acceptance rates for authorization requests they make to issuing banks participating in Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Microsoft is at the Sibos 2019 global financial services conference this week showcasing this and several other announcements illustrating our focus on removing barriers for the financial services industry to adopting cloud technology and accelerate digital transformation. Tune in to the Wave 2 Release Virtual Launch Event on October 10 Only Dynamics 365 connects all forms of data—from observational, to analytics, transactional and beyond – revolutionizing CRM and ERP, and empowering you and your employees to accelerate your business. To learn more about the technologies we announced today and much more, join us on October 10 for the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event—a free virtual event showcasing how we’re accelerating innovation with new features and capabilities across Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. With updates, insights and demonstrations directly from the experts, you’ll better understand how to leverage these new technologies as part of your own organization’s digital transformation initiatives. The post Announcing new Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI-driven insights applications and our vision for the future of retail appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18985 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with pre-release builds, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing any of the features in this build? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected. What’s new in Build 18985 Improving your Bluetooth pairing experience For Windows 10 version 1803, we announced a new streamlined experience for pairing supported Bluetooth devices. The idea was simple—if a supported device was nearby and in pairing mode, we’d show a notification that prompted you to go through pairing. This saved you from opening Settings yourself and finding the right place to go. Today, we’re rolling out an update with improvements we hope you’ll like. Here’s what’s new: Pairing is all done in notifications now. You don’t need to go to the Settings app anymore to finish pairing. For faster pairing time, we improved the UI by showing one less notification. We added a Dismiss button to the first notification to give you more control while using Swift Pair. To make the notification more helpful, now we show the device name and category when we can. We’re excited for Insiders to try it out and share feedback. This new experience is currently rolled out to 50% of Insiders, and we’ll let you know as the rollout increases. Supported devices include: Surface Ergonomic Keyboard Surface Precision Mouse Microsoft Modern Mobile Mouse Surface Mobile Mouse Microsoft Arc Mouse Surface Arc Mouse Surface Headphones https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/5f484abd8f965769869f0db867325b32.gif Improving your optional update experience As some Insiders have noticed, we’re working on making it easier for you to see all optional updates (including drivers, feature updates, and monthly non-security quality updates) in one place. Once optional updates are detected, they will be listed in a new page under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > View optional updates. For drivers, you no longer need to browse Device Manager for a specific device to update. Windows Update will automatically keep your drivers up-to-date, same as before, but if you’re having a problem one of those optional drivers might help. Other updates for Insiders Snip & Sketch app update After spending time in both the Fast and Slow rings, we’re now starting to roll out Snip & Sketch version 10.1907 to 100% of Insiders in the Release Preview ring. We will also be rolling this update out to a small percentage of those using retail builds. As a reminder, this update includes two notable improvements based on your feedback: Single window mode: We’ve heard that some of you prefer your previous snip to close when you click New in Snip & Sketch, so you don’t end up with a bunch of windows. Going forward, this will be the default option. If you liked having multiple windows, don’t worry! That’s still an option too if you go to Snip & Sketch settings. Zoom support: You can now zoom in on your screenshots if they’re a bit too small for you to annotate on (and yes, touch, CTRL+Plus, CTRL+Minus and Ctrl+Mouse wheel are supported!) If you prefer keeping a small Snip & Sketch window, we’ll also zoom out to ensure the whole snip fits in the Snip & Sketch window. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/78ed51e6f3932c197c6ad91910798057.jpg What snipping improvement would you like us to work on next? Let us know! Fastest way to get to the right place is to select the “…” menu in Snip & Sketch, and then choose Send Feedback. General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue where adding a new Language Pack reported successful installation but was not installed. We fixed an issue impacting the reliability of Settings when accessing the Network & Internet section. We fixed an issue that could result in printer entries not displaying properly for non-admin accounts—the text overlapping, and not being clickable. We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manager showing an unexpectedly high temperature for certain GPUs. We fixed an issue resulting in Task Manger unexpectedly showing 0% CPU usage in the Performance tab. We fixed an issue where the setting that enables Microsoft accounts on your device to go Passwordless (by requiring Windows Hello sign in and hiding the password option from the lock screen) was showing for local account users. Now the setting will only show for Microsoft account users. We fixed an issue with the Reset this PC cloud download option not calculating the correct amount of space you needed to free up if you did not have enough disk space to proceed. We fixed an issue with the Reset this PC cloud download option not working when specific optional features were installed. At this time, we’re removing our known issue about Realtek SD card readers. If you are still encountering issues with any SD cards, please take a moment to check for driver updates, and file feedback if that does not resolve it for you. Known issues There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, 3D Viewer) are incorrectly being treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality. During video capture, these 2D apps block their content from being recorded. When capturing a repro video while filing a bug via Feedback Hub in Windows Mixed Reality, you won’t be able to select Stop video, due to the protected content issue noted above. If you want to submit a repro video, you will need to wait 5 minutes for the recording to time out. If you’d like to file the bug without a repro video, you can close the Feedback Hub window to end the recording and resume filing your bug when you reopen the app in Feedback > Drafts. When viewing Optional drivers in the new section on the Windows Update page, you may notice older drivers showing as available for download. If accepted, they will attempt to install and fail to do so. This is a bug related to revised Windows Update detection logic rather than this new UI. The root cause is understood, and a fix will be available in an upcoming build. Windows Insider Webcast is back on September 24 The Windows Insider webcast is back on Tuesday, September 24! We’ll be talking about the upcoming 5-year anniversary of the Windows Insider Program, and then we’ll have guests from deployment and one of our leads for the 20H1 Bug Bash. Tune in at 10 a.m. PDT / 5 p.m. UTC on the Windows Insider Mixer channel! No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18985 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Thanks for staying up to date on the Windows Admin Center journey! This release contains incremental changes and quality improvements for the new functionality released in the preceding previews. Specific updates to Packetmon, and a couple visual changes are described below. This will be the last preview release in anticipation of the next generally available release of Windows Admin Center coming in the next two months. Specific connection type for Azure VMs In new Add connection experience, Azure VMs are now a top-level connection type. This functionality previously lived under the “Azure” tab when adding a server. When a server is added this way, it appears in the connections list as “Server (Azure VM)” so you can easily see which of your servers are Azure VMs. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/7d6d68a4126df5b681c70e3bfab75e53.png Unified connection type for clusters https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/34078ece53e3d27acf24be3769aea154.png The two separate connection types for hyper-converged clusters and failover clusters have been merged into a single, unified connection type. Clusters can be added as a “Windows Server cluster” and the appropriate tools will be loaded and available, primarily based on whether Storage Spaces Direct is enabled or not. Hyper-converged cluster connections and failover cluster connections added from previous versions of Windows Admin Center will be automatically migrated to the new cluster connection type. For extension developers: Extensions that enable tools for failover cluster connections and/or hyper-converged cluster connections will require a minor code change to display the tools properly in the new cluster connection. Details on this will be provided soon. Packetmon There are several improvements in Packetmon: New capture dialog wizard – users need to follow several steps to set the capture conditions: select specific components, set filters, choose dropped or all packets Capture conditions button – opens a dialog which shows the conditions used to create the capture Restart button – reuse same conditions to restart capture Display filters dialog – further filter captured results Save button – save the captured log in different formats Packet details page now shows actual names of networking stack components Partner extensions The Windows Admin Center ecosystem continues to grow with the recent release of several partner extensions. IIS extension We are excited to announce the first preview release of the IIS Extension for Windows Admin Center that provides the existing tools in IIS manager to administer and manage your web server. You can download and install the “msft.iis.iis-management” extension from the extension feed and If you are connecting to a machine to manage IIS for the first time, you will be prompted to install the IIS Administration API on the machine you wish to manage. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/b1cc5655312f52144c536cd347bd1108.png Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension is generally available The Lenovo XClarity Integrator extension is now generally available with the v1.2.11 release. In addition to the existing capabilities to manage standalone servers and hyper-converged clusters, the following features have been added in this release: In-band management for hardware inventory, events and alerts – Servers can be managed via PowerShell running in Windows Server. This allows server hardware management without the Lenovo XClarity Administrator. Support for Lenovo XClarity Administrator version 2.5.0 for out-of-band management. BiitOps Changes extension for server configuration change tracking The BiitOps Changes extension is now officially available for customers. BiitOps Changes makes identifying and troubleshooting server incidents through Windows Admin Center an even quicker and simpler process through a powerful graphical change overview. Key features include: Summarizes changes made to servers and/or services leading up to an incident Shows changes – and changes only – in a simple, yet powerful graphical interface Allows admins to quickly zoom in on specific changes for full details Simple one-time installation, configuration and deployment for 24/7/365 monitoring Highly secure with no data ever being passed from your local installation Offered as a free trial for up to 10 servers Learn more about BiitOps Changes here. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/3c79f81ecd8e1397e044ed6ea5508412.png Known issues Dell EMC extension – The Dell EMC OpenManage Integration extension is not compatible with Windows Admin Center v1909 due to a breaking change in this version and will fail to install. Dell EMC will be releasing a new version soon. In the meantime, you can continue to use the Dell EMC extension on Windows Admin Center v1904.1 or v1908. Cluster connections – When adding a cluster connection, there is reference to creating a new cluster, however this functionality is not yet available. [23380016] Azure Monitor onboarding – If you’re managing a server or a cluster using “manage as” credentials, the onboarding may fail. Network – If you have configured an Azure Network Adapter, the value under Microsoft Azure Virtual Network Gateway Address will be formatted as a hyperlink but leads to an invalid address. [20420185] Chrome users may see 403 Forbidden response from WAC after upgrading. The workaround is to close *all* open chrome tabs (make sure there are no chrome.exe processes running). After restarting chrome, everything will function normally. We have an error message that makes this clear, but chrome users with multiple windows admin center tabs open during upgrade will not see the message. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Windows Admin Center Preview 1909 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. 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Space represents the next frontier for cloud computing, and Microsoft’s unique approach to partnerships with pioneering companies in the space industry means together we can build platforms and tools that foster significant leaps forward, helping us gain deeper insights from the data gleaned from space. One of the primary challenges for this industry is the sheer amount of data available from satellites and the infrastructure required to bring this data to ground, analyze the data and then transport it to where it’s needed. With almost 3,000 new satellites forecast to launch by 20261 and a threefold increase in the number of small satellite launches per year, the magnitude of this challenge is growing rapidly. Essentially, this is the ultimate intelligent edge scenario – where massive amounts of data must be processed at the edge – whether that edge is in space or on the ground. Then the data can be directed to where it’s needed for further analytics or combined with other data sources to make connections that simply weren’t possible before. DIU chooses Microsoft and Ball Aerospace for space analytics To help with these challenges, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) just selected Microsoft and Ball Aerospace to build a solution demonstrating agile cloud processing capabilities in support of the U.S. Air Force’s Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations (CASINO) project. With the aim of making satellite data more actionable more quickly, Ball Aerospace and Microsoft teamed up to answer the question: “what would it take to completely transform what a ground station looks like, and downlink that data directly to the cloud?” The solution involves placing electronically steered flat panel antennas on the roof of a Microsoft datacenter. These phased array antennas don’t require much power and need only a couple of square meters of roof space. This innovation can connect multiple low earth orbit (LEO) satellites with a single antenna aperture, significantly accelerating the delivery rate of data from satellite to end user with data piped directly into Microsoft Azure from the rooftop array. Analytics for a massive confluence of data Azure provides the foundational engine for Ball Aerospace algorithms in this project, processing worldwide data streams from up to 20 satellites. With the data now in Azure, customers can direct that data to where it best serves the mission need, whether that’s moving it to Azure Government to meet compliance requirements such as ITAR or combining it with data from other sources, such as weather and radar maps, to gain more meaningful insights. In working with Microsoft, Steve Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Systems Engineering Solutions at Ball Aerospace called this type of data processing system, which leverages Ball phased array technology and imagery exploitation algorithms in Azure, “flexible and scalable – designed to support additional satellites and processing capabilities. This type of data processing in the cloud provides actionable, relevant information quickly and more cost-effectively to the end user.” With Azure, customers gain its advanced analytics capabilities such as Azure Machine Learning and Azure AI. This enables end users to build models and make predictions based on a confluence of data coming from multiple sources, including multiple concurrent satellite feeds. Customers can also harness Microsoft’s global fiber network to rapidly deliver the data to where it’s needed using services such as ExpressRoute and ExpressRoute Global Reach. In addition, ExpressRoute now enables customers to ingest satellite data from several new connectivity partners to address the challenges of operating in remote locations. For tactical units in the field, this technology can be replicated to bring information to where it’s needed, even in disconnected scenarios. As an example, phased array antennas mounted to a mobile unit can pipe data directly into a tactical datacenter or Data Box Edge appliance, delivering unprecedented situational awareness in remote locations. A similar approach can be used for commercial applications, including geological exploration and environmental monitoring in disconnected or intermittently connected scenarios. Ball Aerospace specializes in weather satellites, and now customers can more quickly get that data down and combine it with locally sourced data in Azure, whether for agricultural, ecological, or disaster response scenarios. This partnership with Ball Aerospace enables us to bring satellite data to ground and cloud faster than ever, leapfrogging other solutions on the market. Our joint innovation in direct satellite-to-cloud communication and accelerated data processing provides the Department of Defense, including the Air Force, with entirely new capabilities to explore as they continue to advance their mission. Satellite Launches to Increase Threefold Over the Next Decade - Via Satellite - The post Analyzing data from space – the ultimate intelligent edge scenario appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is a 7 billion-person mission that we don’t take lightly. None of us at Microsoft could ever hope to reach that objective without a vast set of partnerships with curious and passionate people who seek to deeply understand technology and its power to transform individuals, businesses and industries. Facilitating connections, sharing our technologies and partnering to create solutions to real-world challenges is why we create the many Microsoft event experiences we host around the world. Microsoft event experiences are designed to benefit specific audiences and structured to support clear objectives. We’re committed to closely aligning with all our partners, customers, and business and IT decision makers and connecting you with peers and industry leaders. To find out more about each event, visit our event website for details. Or, if you’re looking for a quick description of each event, read below to get a snapshot of our upcoming events. Flagship events IT professionals and developers Microsoft Ignite — For IT professionals, decision makers, implementors, architects, developers and data professionals. This event provides opportunities to explore the latest tools, receive deep technical training and get specific questions answered by Microsoft experts. With more than 26,000 attendees who join to learn, connect and explore what Microsoft has to offer, this truly is the place where reality meets imagination. Orlando, Florida | Nov. 4-8, 2019 Developers Microsoft Build — Where leading architects, developers, start-ups and student developers converge to focus on the latest tech trends and innovate for the future. We maintain our “produced by developers and for developers” mantra while inviting the next generation of developers to participate in the student zone. Seattle, Washington | May 19-21, 2020 Microsoft partners Microsoft Business Applications Summit — An annual opportunity to bring together a community of Microsoft customers and partners in roles that include power users, business analysts, evangelists, implementers and technical architects. This event provides a forum to learn how Microsoft’s end-to-end Dynamics 365 and Power Platform can create and extend solutions to drive business success. Anaheim, California | April 20-21, 2020 Microsoft Inspire — Where Microsoft partners meet to connect and celebrate as one community at the close of Microsoft’s fiscal year. With hundreds of thousands of partners across the world, our partner ecosystem is stronger and more united than ever. We invite you to learn more about how Microsoft leaders are supporting our partners, and how partners can capitalize on the opportunities ahead. We’ve co-located our Microsoft sales kick-off event to build on our shared partnership philosophy. Las Vegas, Nevada | July 20-24, 2020 Regional tours We started our regional tours for attendee convenience and to gauge how digital transformation is happening around the world. They’ve been a success on both fronts. This year we’re expanding to 30 markets for Microsoft Ignite The Tour and starting Microsoft Envision I The Tour in seven cities. Check out one of the stops on our regional tours in a city near you. IT professionals and developers Microsoft Ignite The Tour — We are bringing the best of Microsoft Ignite to you by traveling to 30 cities around the world for both ease of access and for the robust localized content for these distinct markets. Join us for in-depth learning and experiences in a free, two-day format that allows IT professionals and developers to learn new ways to build solutions, migrate, and manage infrastructure and connect with local industry leaders and peers. Visit Microsoft Ignite The Tour for locations and dates. Business decision makers Microsoft Envision | The Tour — An invitation-only, single-day event held in multiple cities around the world. With a global focus, this summit allows members of the C-suite to focus on challenges and trends that are changing the way organizations do business. Taking inspiration from our CEO Summit, this conference is designed to give leaders a chance to step back and learn about smart strategies to tackle emerging issues, power new efficiencies and build new business models and revenue streams. Visit Microsoft Envision I The Tour for locations and dates. Digital learning For those unable to make it in person or who are looking to quickly skill up on a particular topic, we offer digital learning options. Watch training sessions and event keynote sessions at any time. View multiple modules or choose a learning path tailored to today’s developer and technology masterminds that are designed to prepare you for industry-recognized Microsoft certifications. Additional events We’re just scratching the surface of the full picture of events that Microsoft has to offer. If you don’t find what you are looking for here, visit our full global events catalog for a list of events in your region and possibly your own city. These are events that are organized around specific product offerings and located in easily accessible locations with a wide range of class levels offered. We invite everyone to join us to learn and grow, join us to connect with your peers, join us to get the answers you need so that you can deliver the solutions that can help propel your digital transformation. Visit our events website of flagship and regional events, and we look forward to seeing you in the year ahead. The post Microsoft events — the year ahead appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

It sneaks up on me every year. One minute, my family is fully ensconced in summer break, the next we’re deep into school supply lists and pre-work to prep for the first day back. This year, as I’ve helped my own students get ready to go back to school, I’ve been thinking about all the cool (and free!) offerings Microsoft provides to bridge the technology gap for student developers. We’re committed to empowering the next generation of creators with access to technology and training – after all, our future is in their hands! – and we have a little healthy competition thrown in for good measure. Here are a few of the offers that students can take advantage of today and throughout their educations: One of the newest additions to our lineup, developer hub GitHub offers their Student Developer Pack, which provides access to the best real-world developer tools and training. Students who join the Pack receive GitHub Pro at no charge while in school, plus exclusive offers from GitHub Education partners, including Microsoft. Microsoft Azure for Students offers a free annual renewal subscription to our top cloud services, plus access to dozens of other Azure and artificial intelligence (AI) tools and training. Students can build skills in trending tech including data science, AI, machine learning and other areas with access to professional developer tools like Visual Studio Code. Microsoft Education has a plethora of resources available for students and educators, who can get Office 365 free as well, which includes powerful tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and now Microsoft Teams and a lot more. This isn’t a trial – it’s a full-featured product that is free while the student is in school and offered at a big discount after graduation. Educators also have a wealth of resources available to them to help students engage with STEM, from customized training opportunities to unique Minecraft editions to access to special guest speakers. For college and university students, the annual Imagine Cup competition is now open for entry. I’m continually impressed by the impactful ideas that come out of Imagine Cup – many of which go on to become full-fledged products. But big ideas that make a difference aren’t born in a vacuum, and they can’t be achieved alone. I think that’s one of the things that makes Imagine Cup so special. Students learn how to work together, be resourceful, meet deadlines and a select few receive funding to help take their ideas to the next level. This year’s Imagine Cup theme is AI for Good. Driven by inspiration and a growing sense of purpose, we’ve seen student competitors create applications tackling some of the world’s biggest social, environmental and health challenges – one user at a time – and that’s what Imagine Cup is all about! So, it only makes sense that there is a stronger focus on AI this year. It’s one of the most promising ways technology can help us be more inclusive, effective and productive. I encourage students with a dream of a better future and an idea to sign up and get to work. I’m excited to see where the competitors take the challenge this year – and where the competition takes them. Students who want to be a force for good and make a difference in their communities – while learning and sharing Microsoft technologies with their peers – can apply to be a Microsoft Student Partner, a program that lets student leaders gain experiences, access exclusive resources and gather real-world technical and career skills. Finally, LinkedIn offers a wide variety of networking and educational opportunities to support students when it comes time to look for a job, learn a new skill or connect with classmates. A current and accurate LinkedIn profile is one of the best ways to build and maintain a career network. Our goal is for all students to have access to the technology and support they need to make their dreams come true. Please share these offerings with the students in your life, and if you are a student, I hope you’ll take advantage of one or more of them to take your ideas to the next level this year. The post It’s back to school and back to innovation with free tools for student developers appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18980 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with pre-release builds, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing any of the features in this build? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected. What’s new in Build 18980 An update on Cortana In response to feedback, we are executing a plan to make it easier for all Windows customers to use Cortana. As a first step, starting with today’s build, all Insiders worldwide will see the Cortana icon and the new app. In a future Cortana app update, customers will have the option to use Cortana if they speak a supported language, regardless of their OS display language. The new Cortana app currently supports English (United States)—because Cortana is service backed, we can and will continue to add new languages over the coming months outside the bounds of OS build updates. We expect to support the same set of regions and languages we currently support in retail by 20H1 launch. We will share more details of our language rollout plans as they progress and appreciate your patience during this transition period. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) improvements In this build, we’ve added WSL2 support for ARM64 devices! We’ve also added the ability to set your distribution’s default user using the /etc/wsl.conf file. This release also contains multiple bug fixes, including a long-standing issue for legacy Windows symlinks (for example those in the user profile directory.) https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/381a6010902f768da2071e7130e692b7.png For the full details of changes in this latest Insider Preview build, please see the WSL release notes. Other updates for Insiders Update on the Optional Features settings section improvements These changes are now available to all Insiders in Fast! Thanks to those who’ve already tried it out and shared feedback. If the experience is just rolling out to you now, we can’t wait to hear what you think! To quickly recap, amongst other things, we’ve added multi-select, search, and generally done work to make this section easier to use: https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/4df5216558a7652fe168b9759e33e916.jpg General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC There was an upgrade block on the previous flight in order to ensure that Insiders with certain versions of Outlook weren’t impacted by an issue in the build, which resulted in some insiders not finding the build when they checked for updates last week. This has been removed with this flight. We fixed a deadlock in netprofmsvc.dll that was occurring in recent builds. Symptoms for those impacted potentially included upgrade to the build freezing at 98%, or (if you were able to upgrade,) various aspects of the system unexpectedly freezing and becoming unresponsive. We’ve done some work to help address an issue where Outlook wouldn’t launch if you clicked an incoming email notification. We fixed an issue impacting touch keyboard reliability in recent builds. We fixed an issue impacting WIN+(Period) reliability. We’ve made the decision to return to the retail build version of the Korean IME while we work on addressing feedback Insiders shared with us about the updated IME experience. We fixed an issue impacting screen snipping reliability in the last few flights. We fixed an issue that could result in the login screen acrylic on the previous flight sometimes unexpectedly showing squares around UI elements. We fixed an issue that could result in certain app thumbnails going unexpectedly blank when you right-clicked them in Task View. We fixed an issue where removable devices were erroneously labeled as HDD in Task Manager’s performance tab. They will now be labeled Removable. As some Insiders have noticed, to give you the option to save disk space if needed, we’ve converted MS Paint and WordPad into Optional Features. You can choose to uninstall them or reinstall them via Optional Features in Settings. We’ve made some adjustments to help improve performance of the Apps & Features page in Settings when searching. We fixed an issue that could result in Settings crashing when updating your account picture. Ease of Access settings are no longer participating in settings synchronization (roaming). Accordingly, we have now removed the Ease of Access toggle in Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings. Magnifier reading now works better in applications like Google Chrome and Firefox. Magnifier reading no longer clicks the application when using the “Read from here” button or the Ctrl + Alt + Left Mouse Click keyboard shortcut. We fixed an issue where the text cursor indicator would not display when switching between left-to-right and right-to-left languages. We fixed an issue where the text cursor indicator would sometimes appear on read-only areas of the screen. We fixed an issue where the text cursor indicator would appear over the Start menu instead of staying in the Search edit box after typing text in the Search edit box. Improved the ability of reading the title of the window with Narrator while reading messages in Outlook. Improved auto-reading in Outlook with Narrator to make it more reliable. Made changes to more reliably read the message headers using Narrator while reading when using the Shift + Tab command while in Scan Mode. Improved the verbosity of Narrator when reading lists at verbosity level one. We fixed an issue where an edit field on some webpages was not getting properly updated on a configured braille display when editing the contents with Narrator. We fixed an issue where certain Local Experience Packs (LXPs) may revert to English. We fixed an issue resulting in certain Wi-Fi adapters not being able to load (code 10 error) after upgrading from a previous release of Windows and needing to be disabled and re-enabled for it to work. Known issues The Reset this PC cloud download option is not currently calculating the correct amount of space you need to free up if you do not have enough disk space to proceed. To work around this until the fix is available, free up an extra 5GB beyond what is prompted. The Reset this PC cloud download option is not currently working when specific optional features are installed. The process will begin, but an error will occur and roll back the changes. To work around this issue, remove the optional features before trying the cloud download option. We’ll let you know once this issue has been resolved. The optional features are: EMS and SAC Toolset for Windows 10, IrDA infrared, Print Management Console, RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK), RIP Listener, all RSAT tools, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Storage Management, Wireless Display, and WI SNMP Provider. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. We are looking into an issue where, after updating to this build, adding a new Language Pack reports successful installation but is not installed. Certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, 3D Viewer) are incorrectly being treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality. During video capture, these 2D apps block their content from being recorded. When capturing a repro video while filing a bug via Feedback Hub in Windows Mixed Reality, you won’t be able to select Stop video, due to the protected content issue noted above. If you want to submit a repro video, you will need to wait 5 minutes for the recording to time out. If you’d like to file the bug without a repro video, you can close the Feedback Hub window to end the recording and resume filing your bug when you reopen the app in Feedback > Drafts. August Windows Insider Leaderboard now available See if you topped our lists on the new August 2019 Windows Insider Leaderboard, and try to make next month’s by giving us feedback for new builds, getting upvotes on your feedback, and completing quests through the Feedback Hub. Learn more about how you can be on the Leaderboard. Join the Bing Insider Program What’s your sign? Check your horoscope with Bing and see what your future holds. Bing makes horoscopes simple and easy to find. Simply choose your sign, and get your daily, weekly, or monthly horoscope! If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18980 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. 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Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are pleased to release a new Insider preview build of the Windows Server VNext Semi-Annual Channel editions. Available Content Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview The Server Core Edition is available in the 18 supported Server languages in ISO format and in VHDX format in English only. Windows Server Core App Compatibility FoD Preview Windows Server Language Packs Windows Admin Center 1908 Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, click here. The following keys allow for unlimited activations of Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel Previews Server Standard: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV Server Datacenter: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W This Windows Server Preview will expire July 31st, 2020. How to Download Registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. See the Additional Downloads dropdown for Windows Admin Center and other supplemental apps and products. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see GETTING STARTED WITH SERVER on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. For Windows Server, use your registered Windows 10 Insider device and use the Feedback Hub application. In the app, choose the Windows Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. In the title of the Feedback, please indicate the build number you are providing feedback as shown below: [server #####] Title of my feedback See Share Feedback on Windows Server via Feedback Hub for specifics. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. For Windows Admin Center, Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities. Known Issues There is an issue where the App Compatibility FOD cannot be added to the OS .wim image offline using DISM /image method. After upgrade, it is necessary to reinstall the new FOD using DISM /online method. Terms of Use This is pre-release software – it is provided for use “as-is” and is not supported in production environments. Users are responsible for installing any updates made available from Windows Update. All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Announcing Windows Server vNext Insider Preview Build 18975 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Technology can help automotive companies transform into smart mobility services providers https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/2019/09/shutterstock_1096130420-1024x609.jpg Karl Benz and Henry Ford revolutionized transportation with the initial development and mass production of the automobile. Now, more than a century later, the automotive industry is poised to transform transportation again, with a push to develop connected, personalized and autonomous driving experiences, electric vehicles and new mobility business models from ride-sharing to ride-hailing and multimodal, smart transportation concepts. This industry is expected to see significant growth, becoming a $6.6T industry by 2030, with disruptive business models accounting for 25 percent of all revenues, according to consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. From shared vehicle services to fully electric transportation, manufacturers are developing new products and services to enable large fleets offering mobility-as-a-service, which will increasingly replace individual car ownership. This involves modernizing the in-vehicle experience with productivity, entertainment, and personal assistants that are safe and secure, following users across different transport modes, adding value for businesses and consumers alike. This transformation requires a data-driven mindset. The automotive sector generates vast amounts of data. However, companies aren’t yet fully set up to turn it into relevant insights. Future success depends on the ability to identify and capture digital signals and evolve how the business approaches innovation. Through what we call a digital feedback loop, the entirety of the enterprise can be connected with relevant data— whether it is pertaining to relationship management with customers and partners, or engagement with employees, core product creation or enterprise operations— to drive continuous improvement in products and services, mobility companies must differentiate from their competition. We support the industry with unlocking this enormous potential by providing intelligent cloud, edge, IoT and AI services and helping automotive companies build and extend their own digital capabilities. To that end, this year, for the first time, Microsoft is joining Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) and showcasing our approach to working with the automotive industry. We want to empower automotive organizations of all sizes to transform into smart mobility services providers. Our automotive strategy is shaped by three key principles: We partner across the industry. We are not in the business of making vehicles or delivering end mobility as a service offerings. We believe data should be owned by our customers, as insights from data will become the new drivers of revenue for the auto industry. We do not monetize our customers‘ data We support automotive companies as they enhance and extend their unique brand experiences to expand their relationships with their customers. We are focusing our customer engagements along with our extensive global partner network to support their success in the five following areas: connected vehicle solutions, autonomous driving development, smart mobility solutions, connected marketing, sales and service as well as intelligent manufacturing and supply chain. Today, we are sharing updates about our approach and expansions to our partner ecosystem across these focus areas: Empower connected vehicle solutions The core of our connected vehicle efforts is the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP). It combines advanced cloud and edge computing services with a strong partner network so automotive companies can build connected driving solutions that span from in-vehicle experiences and autonomous driving to prediction services and connectivity. In addition to our partnerships with Volkswagen and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, new partners are using MCVP to do more: LG Electronics’ webOS Autoplatform offers an in-vehicle, container-capable OS that brings the third party application ecosystem created for premium TVs to in-vehicle experiences. webOSAuto supports the container-based runtime environment of MCVP and can be an important part of modern experiences in the vehicle. Faurecia is leveraging MCVP to create disruptive, connected and personalized services inside the Cockpit of the Future to reinvent the on-board experience for all occupants. Cubic Telecom is a leading connectivity management software provider to the automotive and IoT industries globally. They are one of the first partners to bring seamless connectivity as a core service offering to MCVP for a global market. The deep integration with MCVP allows for a single data lake and an integrated services monitoring path. Meet more partners in our MCVP blog. Our customers are also looking to provide conversational assistants tailored to their brand and customer needs, and make them available across multiple devices and apps. The Microsoft Azure Virtual Assistant Solution Accelerator simplifies the creation of these assistants. Accelerate autonomous driving function development We empower car makers, suppliers and mobility services providers to accelerate their delivery of autonomous driving solutions that provide safe, comfortable and personalized driving experiences with a comprehensive set of cloud, edge, IoT and AI services and a partner-led open ecosystem that enables collaborative development across companies. We support companies of all sizes from large enterprises such as Audi, that are leveraging Microsoft Azure to create simulations using these large volumes of data, to small and medium sized businesses and start-ups. Today, we are announcing Microsoft for Startups: Autonomous Driving, a program to accelerate the growth of start-ups working on autonomous driving and help them seize new business opportunities in areas such as delivery, ride-sharing and long haul transit. Learn more about our collaboration with start-ups like Linker Networks and Udelv in our start-up blog. This year in the Microsoft booth at IAA, Bosch, FEV, Intempora and Applied Intuition are showcasing their autonomous driving solutions. FEV is overcoming the central challenge to validating automated driving functions with a data management and assessment system developed in house, which uses Microsoft Azure. Intempora has recently unveiled IVS, the Intempora Validation Suite, a new software toolchain for the test, training, benchmarking and the validation of ADAS (Advanced Driver and Assistance Systems) and HAD (Highly Automated Driving) algorithms. Applied Intuition is equipping engineering and product development teams with software that makes it faster, safer, and easier to bring autonomy to market. Enable creation of smart mobility solutions Intelligent mapping and navigation services are critical to building smart mobility solutions. This is why Microsoft is partnering with companies like TomTom and Moovit. TomTom is integrating their navigation intelligence services such as HD Maps and Traffic as containerized services for use in MCVP so that other in-vehicle services, including autonomous driving, can take advantage of the additional location context. TomTom and Moovit are also partnering with Microsoft for a comprehensive multi-modal trip planner leveraging Azure Maps. The urban mobility app Moovit using Azure Maps also helps people with disabilities ride transit with confidence. This project supports Microsoft’s aim to make our latest technology accessible to everyone and foster inclusion and the use of our technology for the good so that every person on the planet can benefit from technological innovations. Empower connected marketing, sales and services solutions With Microsoft Business Applications, our automotive partners, suppliers, and retailers can develop new customer insights and create omnichannel customer experiences. With the Microsoft Automotive Accelerator, auto companies can schedule appointments and automotive services, facilitated through proactive communications. At IAA, we’re excited to have several partners onsite, including Annata, Adobe and Daimler: Annata is leveraging our Automotive Accelerator to help automotive and equipment companies meet business challenges while taking advantages of new opportunities in the market. Adobe and Microsoft’s strategic partnership and integrations allow an end-to-end customer experience management solution for experience creation, marketing, advertising, analytics, and commerce. Daimler launched eXtollo, the company’s new cloud platform for big data and advanced analytics. The platform uses Azure Key Vault, a service that safeguards encryption keys and secrets, including certificates, connection strings and passwords. Provide services to build an intelligent supply chain Driving end-to-end digital transformation requires an integrated digital supply chain–from the factory and shop floor to end customer delivery. Microsoft works with Icertis, BMW, and others to build intelligent supply chain: Icertis Contract Management natively runs on Microsoft Azure and seamlessly integrates with Office 365, Teams and Dynamics 365 so customers can extend the benefits from their Microsoft technology investments. BMW and Microsoft continue to develop the Open Manufacturing Platform to enable industrial manufacturers to work together to break down data silos and overcome the challenges of complex, proprietary systems that slow down production optimization. We are looking forward to meeting you at our Microsoft booth (Hall 5, C21) or at one of our IAA sessions. On your way to Frankfurt explore our Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform microsite. The post Microsoft expands its automotive partner ecosystem to power the future of mobility appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18975 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. IMPORTANT: As is normal with pre-release builds, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing any of the features in this build? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected. What’s new in Build 18975 Introducing the ability to move the Cortana window With the new conversational Cortana experience, we understand that you wanna keep the chat going sometimes, and the default position of the window isn’t always where you’d prefer to have it docked if you’re going to have a longer back and forth. That’s why we’re starting to roll out the option to be able to move the window (by dragging the title bar area), to anywhere you’d like on the screen–just like you can with other windows. You can also resize the window if you’d like. Currently, this change is rolled out to 50% of Insiders with the new Cortana experience, and we’ll continue the rollout as we validate the quality of the experience. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/d44b5fbd1afac429eca36baf56290b2f.gif Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Improvements See the latest improvements with WSL in the latest Insider Preview builds. Other updates for Insiders Announcing the first preview and code release of PowerToys Yesterday we announced the first preview and code release of PowerToys for Windows 10. This first preview includes two utilities: the Windows key shortcut guide and a window manager called FancyZones. Check out this article for all the details! https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/d10ef797f46a89a5f64341ecb8522f9f.jpg Update on Virtual Desktop renaming The ability to rename your virtual desktops is now available for all Insiders in the Fast ring! Thanks again everyone who shared feedback requesting this. To get started: Open Task View by selecting the Task View icon in the taskbar or pressing WIN+Tab. Select New Desktop. Select the desktop name (“Desktop 1”) and it should become editable, or right click the desktop thumbnail and a context menu will appear with a Rename entry. Input whatever name you’d like, and press enter. Done! https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/82f4136ebeec4bf5bdec9ede985f5c6c.gif General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed an issue resulting in the “Bluetooth and Other Devices” and “Printers and Scanners” not rendering correctly in the last two flights. We fixed an issue resulting in search crashing on launch for Insiders using certain display languages, including Polish. We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders receiving error 0xC0000142 when attempting to upgrade to recent builds. We fixed a recent issue resulting in some Insiders finding that various File Explorer settings were unexpectedly modified, and in some cases couldn’t be corrected. This impacted File Explorer’s navigation pane visibility, the option for the navigation pane to automatically show all folders, and showing the drive letters. Please note that while this fix will stop it from happening, if you were impacted, you will need to take steps to return these settings in File Explorer to be their desired state. We fixed an issue resulting in the minimize, maximize, and close title bar buttons not working for certain apps. For those who would prefer not to see the post upgrade setup page, we’ve added a new option to turn it off under Notification Settings. Note, it will only be visible for users eligible for seeing this setup page. We fixed an issue where the text candidate list, when typing in Korean using the touch keyboard, was in reverse order. We updated the Chinese Pinyin IME toolbar to now be light when using light theme. We fixed an issue that could result in the Chinese Pinyin IME not responding the first time you tried to select a text candidate in certain types of text fields. We fixed an issue that could result in the mouse cursor becoming transparent and not visible when HDR was enabled. We fixed an issue where if MS Paint was open in the background, using the arrow keys would result in the mouse cursor changing position despite MS Paint not being in focus. We fixed an issue when using your PC in Arabic or Hebrew, where when maximizing win32 apps you could see the title bar flip for a second to show the close button on the right instead of on the left. We fixed an issue impacting Action Center reliability in the previous flight. We’ve made some adjustments to help address potential out of memory issues over Remote Desktop that could result in you being unexpectedly logged out of your remote session. We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to setup Windows Hello during OOBE. We’ve updated our upgrade logic so that going forward, your preferred scheduled defragmentation settings will be preserved on upgrade. Thanks to those who shared feedback about this. We’ve made some improvements to help address out of memory issues resulting in users potentially getting logged out of remote desktop sessions. We fixed an issue impacting Your Phone reliability in recent flights that resulted in seemingly random crashes during use. We fixed an issue where, when taking a screenshot using the pen after rotating your device, the screenshot might not be in the expected orientation. We fixed an issue when taking a snip that could result in your screenshot being unexpectedly blacked out. We have removed the option to change Magnifier UI to a magnifying glass and be in the viewport. We would be interested to hear if this option was useful to you and why. Magnifier reading now supports reading in more places. Several issues have been resolved that caused the Magnifier UI not to scale or resize correctly when users adjusted the Make text bigger or the Make everything bigger settings. We resolved an issue where users could not use some Magnifier hotkeys after sign-in until Magnifier was restarted. We resolved an issue where Magnifier Docked and Lens mode would turn into Full Screen mode when User Account Controls were active. We resolved an issue in Notepad where the text cursor would display, but the text cursor indicator would not. We resolved an issue in Notepad where the text cursor indicator prevented users from double-clicking to select text. We resolved an issue where the text cursor indicator preview in Ease of Access settings was not usable when Dark Mode is enabled. We resolved an issue where the text cursor indicator was randomly filling in with black. We fixed an issue with Narrator stopping early when reading certain dialogs. Based on user feedback, we enhanced Narrator’s reading experience when arrowing through messages in Outlook. When the importance column is read the “importance” header is always spoken before the high or low. If a message has been flagged that column’s information will be spoken immediately after the importance column instead of at the end. We fixed a bug where Narrator did not play the error sound in certain scenarios. We raised the volume of Narrator’s link and scroll sounds. We fixed a bug when the Narrator page summary was not working in the Chrome browser. We fixed a bug where assistive technology (e.g. Narrator, Magnifier, NVDA) were starting after sign-in when only the before sign-in setting was set. Narrator is now presenting “flash messages” on a configured braille display as expected for reading the window title and when presenting suggested content. Narrator is now presenting cell contents on a configured braille display as expected when navigating a table. Known issues The Reset this PC cloud download option is not currently calculating the correct amount of space you need to free up if you do not have enough disk space to proceed. To work around this until the fix is available, free up an extra 5GB beyond what is prompted. The Reset this PC cloud download option is not currently working when specific optional features are installed. The process will begin, but an error will occur and roll back the changes. To work around this issue, remove the optional features before trying the cloud download option. We’ll let you know once this issue has been resolved. The optional features are: EMS and SAC Toolset for Windows 10, IrDA infrared, Print Management Console, RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK), RIP Listener, all RSAT tools, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Storage Management, Wireless Display, and WI SNMP Provider. There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. Some Insiders may experience a deadlock in netprofmsvc.dll on Builds 18967+. This can result in the upgrade to the build freezing at 98%, or if you’re on the build already you may find that various aspects of the system unexpectedly freeze and become unresponsive. We appreciate your patience as we work on a fix. We are looking into an issue where, after updating to this build, adding a new Language Pack reports successful installation but is not installed. There is an issue with this build where certain Local Experience Packs (LXPs) may revert to English. We are working on a fix. Certain 2D apps (like Feedback Hub, Microsoft Store, 3D Viewer) are incorrectly being treated as having protected content within Windows Mixed Reality. During video capture, these 2D apps block their content from being recorded. When capturing a repro video while filing a bug via Feedback Hub in Windows Mixed Reality, you won’t be able to select Stop video, due to the protected content issue noted above. If you want to submit a repro video, you will need to wait 5 minutes for the recording to time out. If you’d like to file the bug without a repro video, you can close the Feedback Hub window to end the recording and resume filing your bug when you reopen the app in Feedback > Drafts. Save the Date: The 20H1 Bug Bash is coming! We’re planning to run this bug bash from September 25th to Oct 2nd –we’ll have more details to share closer to the date. Join the Bing Insider Program Learn more with Bing. Use Bing to explore the probability of different outcomes when rolling dice. Need to get your math skills back in shape? The geometry calculator on Bing makes geometric equations easy. Simply choose a shape, input what you know, pick what to solve for, and get the answer! If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18975 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/d7d60286bc4f40bbf9a193da465757d0-1024x576.jpg “Gears 5 ” will be available Sept. 5 immediately following the television debut of its launch ad during the NFL season opener. This begins the four-day early access period for “Gears 5” Ultimate Edition owners and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members, who may begin playing four days before the game’s worldwide release on Sept. 10. For those eager to get started immediately the full game download is available now in advance of the game’s release. As part of a special offer, new subscribers can join Xbox Game Pass Ultimate today and get their first two months for $2 now through Sept. 30. Find out more on Xbox Wire. The post Early access begins for ‘Gears 5’ Ultimate Edition owners and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are releasing 19H2 Build 18362.10019 to ALL Windows Insiders in the Slow ring. IF you received Build 18362.10014 with 19H2 features turned OFF by default on 8/19 – you WILL receive Build 18362.10019 today with all 19H2 features turned ON. IF you received Build 18362.10015 with 19H2 features turned ON by default on 8/19 – you WILL receive Build 18362.10019 today with all 19H2 features turned ON. If you’re on the Windows 10 May 2019 Update and just joining your PC into the Slow ring to take 19H2 updates, you will also receive Build 18362.10019 with all 19H2 features turned on. Everyone in the Slow ring should be on the same build now with all the following 19H2 features turned on: Windows containers require matched host and container version. This restricts customers and limits Windows containers from supporting mixed-version container pod scenarios This update includes 5 fixes to address this and allow the host to run down-level containers on up-level for process (Argon) isolation. A fix to allow OEMs to reduce the inking latency based on the hardware capabilities of their devices rather than being stuck with latency selected on typical hardware configuration by the OS. Key-rolling or Key-rotation feature enables secure rolling of Recovery passwords on MDM managed AAD devices upon on demand request from Microsoft Intune/MDM tools or upon every time recovery password is used to unlock the BitLocker protected drive. This feature will help prevent accidental recovery password disclosure as part of manual BitLocker drive unlock by users. A change to enable third-party digital assistants to voice activate above the Lock screen. You can now quickly create an event straight from the Calendar flyout on the Taskbar. Just click on the date and time at the lower right corner of the Taskbar to open the Calendar flyout and pick your desired date and start typing in the text box – you’ll now see inline options to set a time and location. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/cc9a9d57f8c15907344cb5f718ca63ce.png The navigation pane on the Start menu now expands when you hover over it with your mouse to better inform where clicking goes. We have added friendly images to show what is meant by “banner” and “Action Center” when adjusting the notifications on apps in order to make these settings more approachable and understandable. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/6c36cef63ea624500333417377850ba7.png Notifications settings under Settings > System > Notifications will now default to sorting notification senders by most recently shown notification, rather than sender name. This makes it easier to find and configure frequent and recent senders. We have also added a setting to turn off playing sound when notifications appear. We now show the options to configure and turn off notifications from an app/website right on the notification, both as a banner and in Action Center. We have added a “Manage notifications” button to the top of Action Center that launches the main “Notifications & actions” Settings page. We have added additional debugging capabilities for newer Intel processors. This is only relevant for hardware manufacturers. We have made general battery life and power efficiency improvements for PCs with certain processors. A CPU may have multiple “favored” cores (logical processors of the highest available scheduling class). To provide better performance and reliability, we have implemented a rotation policy that distributes work more fairly among these favored cores. We have enabled Windows Defender Credential Guard for ARM64 devices for additional protection against credential theft for enterprises deploying ARM64 devices in their organizations. We have enabled the ability for enterprises to supplement the Windows 10 in S Mode policy to allow traditional Win32 (desktop) apps from Microsoft Intune. We have updated search in File Explorer to show web-powered suggestions in addition to files locally indexed on the PC. We have added the ability for Narrator and other assistive technologies to read and learn where the FN key is located on keyboards and what state it is in (locked versus unlocked). In addition to the 19H2 features being turned on for everyone in the Slow ring, this update also includes the general improvements for these features. NOTE: For an explanation as to why the 19H2 build number in the Slow ring is different than the 19H2 build number in the Release Preview ring – see this blog post. As always, Insiders are encouraged to report any issues they experience with these updates through Feedback Hub. Thanks, Dona and Brandon The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18362.10019 (19H2) appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/7034edd6e814629e9d28c4fad6ad9d5d-1024x683.jpg This week I had the pleasure of being in Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2019 to meet with our PC and IoT ecosystem partners. This is always an exciting time for me because I get to see all the new PCs and intelligent edge devices coming this holiday season. Over the last week, our partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo and Razer have announced new Windows 10 PCs that both consumer and commercial customers are sure to want. Modern PCs look different because they are different. They have better performance, innovative designs and new experiences. According to Microsoft research, people are happier when they get a modern PC. We have a lot of modern PCs in market already from all our device partners, and it’s great to see these benefits continuing to come to life in recently announced devices from our partners. Better performance Performance starts with a modern computer with solid-state drives (SSDs). SSDs make the computers fast, thin and light. Performance also considers how long the battery lasts and what processor is used. All these elements are critical for customers who want to use their device on the go and run multiple workloads at once. Today’s modern PCs are at least two times faster and can stay unplugged on average of 32% longer compared to HDD models. Intel’s recently announced 10th Generation Intel Core processors enhance the experience for many of these new devices with AI, Thunderbolt 3 and Intel Wi-Fi 6 technologies, all of which increase speed of connectivity. A great example is the new Dell XPS 13 now with an Intel 10th Generation processor. Whether bingeing a video series or working on the go, this device delivers performance gains needed for compute-intensive, demanding, multi-thread workloads – while still efficiently displaying beautiful 4K content. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/8551ad2f5df316c5f2d2259a05def1c5-1024x1020.jpg The latest Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops are great examples of devices engineered for an on-the-go workforce that needs higher performance to improve their workday productivity and security. These devices are optimized for long battery life and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/7b1c9855e7b2ddaf95e587c74280de73.jpg Razer announced the new Razer Blade Stealth 13 – the first gaming laptop with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1650. Powered by Intel’s new 10th Generation processor, the new Razer Blade Stealth 13 delivers true gaming performance packed into an amazingly thin 15mm chassis weighing only 1.3 kgs. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/ad9b8c3d8bc28892ca128bce2f9c66f6.jpg Innovative designs Being fast and powerful used to come at the expense of a beautiful device, but not anymore. Windows 10 PCs are designed to be shown off with touches like metallic finishes and backlit keyboards. Choice of form factors help you work the way you want with 2-in-1 convertibles, detachables and ultraslim designs. The new ASUS Republic of Gamers demonstrates this attention to design. By offering a new Glacier Blue hue for select Zephyrus and Strix family laptops, the company is reimagining the look and feel of gaming machines for a widening audience of gamers who are also streamers and creative professionals who want more than a black machine. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/64c217f16588139485081783922a8cff.jpg Great design also comes with devices that are thin and light. The Acer Swift 5*, a super light 14-inch notebook that is 15.95 mm thin, only weighs 990 grams and comes with a new discrete NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics option for high-powered gaming. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/7772606c733932c3ae03d8ea8a968608.jpg New experiences Finally, we want customers to have the best experiences with their hardware and software, and that begins with the applications and services that come with a Windows 10 PC. This includes multiple ways to interact, with ink and pen, voice and touch, and compatibility with other devices and applications. It also includes top-grade security with Windows Hello and the on-the-go productivity benefits in Office 365 enabled by the cloud. When it comes down to it, Windows 10 PCs help you achieve more. With a modern PC you get speed, security, durability and great design. While there is a lot of focus on PCs at IFA, we also see a lot of innovation from our partners around the Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge. By 2020 analysts estimate that 20 billion devices will be connected to the cloud, and Microsoft and our ecosystem of partners offer a unique value proposition because our Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge solutions are extra smart, secure and agile. For example, we have the Smart Home solution from digitalSTROM in our Microsoft booth where you can experience different ways to operate your Smart Home; e.g., order a cup of coffee from a robot or start the coffee machine with just a smile via a 3D Intel RealSense camera. From the latest in modern, powerful Windows 10 PCs to cloud-connected services, I am constantly amazed by the innovative ways our partners are building on our platforms to deliver rich experiences to customers. I think it’s going to be a great holiday season for Microsoft, our partners and our customers. Check back on the Windows Blog for more updates in the coming months. *Based on Acer’s internal survey as of August 29, 2019 of competing clamshell laptop designs available on the market, running Windows OS or OSX. The post The holidays come early at IFA 2019 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

At this week’s IFA event in Berlin, Lenovo introduced exclusive smart features that adapt to users’ performance needs on the new 14-inch Yoga C940 and Yoga S740: Super Resolution upscales video up to FHD 1080p on Windows Media Player [1] and Q-Control (named for device keys used to toggle modes), that has the potential to dynamically boost your PC’s battery life [2]. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/4edd8a492dc48baa9338cc1da1d94355-1024x768.jpg Lenovo Yoga C940 The 14-inch Lenovo Yoga C940 is the new 2-in-1 convertible laptop redefining smarter performance and design with its all-metal chassis and clever built-in features, like TrueBlock Privacy shutter, Windows Hello biometric authentication, and garaged pen with silo charging and Windows Ink. Enable Lenovo’s exclusive Q-Control [3] by pressing Function-Q to shift into Intelligent Cooling Mode for your PC to auto-adjust performance and optimize battery life based on tasks – up to 17.5 hours [4] in FHD and up to 10.5 hours [4] with a UHD display. With a full range of intelligent features, the 14-inch Lenovo Yoga S740 is designed to help people save time. Powered by up to 10th Generation Intel Core processors, it has a hands-free IR camera login. That IR camera can also detect your absence after a few seconds and enable instant log-off, or if you’re watching a video and need to walk away for a few minutes, your PC is intuitive enough to pause the video and automatically resume upon your return. You can even opt to blur your background during video calls, so your cat doesn’t make a surprise appearance during your next online brainstorm. This device will also have a new child safety setting that reminds kids to limit their screen viewing time in one sitting. The new Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch) is a 2-in-1 convertible with 9th Generation Intel Core processors, as well as a notched webcam bump on its lid for better grip, a garaged pen with silo charging, TrueBlock Privacy Shutter and Windows Hello biometric fingerprint authentication for confident security. The Lenovo Yoga S740 (15-inch) comes stacked with up to 9th Generation Intel Core i9 mobile processor and more powerful NVIDIA GeForce GTX1650 GPUs, making this all-metal, ultra-slim laptop a portable and multi-tasking powerhouse. Combined with theater-like specs like a 15-inch FHD HDR display and a TrueBlock Privacy Shutter, this laptop also has a longer-lasting battery. Listen to music or watch videos in crystal-clear sound with Dolby Atmos Speaker System with Smart Amp, designed to boost voice and content audio in slim form factors. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/31e79a85e92a385cf26b0cf2786d04be-1024x768.jpg Lenovo Yoga C740 The all-metal Lenovo Yoga C740 is available in a 14-inch or 15-inch screen size in Mica or Iron Grey. Flip smoothly from laptop to tablet mode and back. Lightweight with a color-matched keyboard, this 2-in-1 device has smart features that respond to your needs, including its TrueBlock Privacy Shutter and more secure fingerprint login. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/11738c0854d6f62ecac1ad10b90736d1-1024x768.jpg Lenovo Yoga C740 in tablet mode Finally, the 13-inch Lenovo Yoga C640 combines the performance of up to 10th Generation Intel Core i7 processing with the compact portability of a sleek 2-in-1, so you don’t feel anchored. This new convertible with optional integrated, ultra-fast 4G LTE frees users from reliance on hotspots and unsecured public Wi-Fi when on the go. Plus, it could provide up to 20 hours [4] of battery life, thanks to optimized CPU performance. You can also talk with Cortana [5] for instant help. Windows 10 Home OS is offered on both LTE and Wi-Fi-only models. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/3e5e5a5468f12bc75266b8516858340b-1024x768.jpg Lenovo Yoga C640 Go to Lenovo to find out more. [1] Super Resolution on media players may vary in China and other markets. Super Resolution feature requires rolling auto-updates form Lenovo Vantage in Q4 2019. [2] When the AI-enhanced Intelligent Cooling Mode is enabled it can monitor your device’s thermal attributes to better control its fan. [3] Yoga devices with up to 10th Generation Intel Core i7 and the visual identifier for the Project Athena program are Lenovo Yoga S740 (14-inch) and Yoga C940 (14-inch) only. New, smarter features enabled with rolling auto-updates from Lenovo Vantage throughout the rest of the year, include, Q-Control, EyeCare (2.0) mode and Super Resolution via Windows Media Player all coming in Q4, 2019. For more info, visit https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/devices-systems/laptops/laptop-innovation-program.html. [4] All battery life claims are approximate and based on test results using the MobileMark 2014 ver 1.5 battery life benchmark test. Actual results will vary and depend on numerous factors including product configuration and usage, software, operating conditions, wireless functionality, power management settings, screen brightness and other factors. The maximum capacity of the battery will naturally decrease with time and usage. See https://bapco.com/products/mobilemark-2014/ for additional details. [5] Cortana is accessible through the Windows 10 start menu. The post IFA 2019: Lenovo introduces smart features on new and refreshed Yoga laptops appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

At the IFA tradeshow in Berlin, ASUS celebrated its 30th anniversary and unveiled a lineup of digital solutions aimed at content creators and gamers. To meet the evolving needs of professional workflows in traditional content-creation fields, such as photography and videography, as well as provide new solutions for 3D designers, game developers and more, ASUS is introducing a brand-new lineup of ProArt products.https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/d5429758d476a4cf86b51f113e24863b-1024x1024.jpg ASUS touts the ProArt StudioBook One as its most powerful StudioBook ever. It’s the first laptop to feature NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics and is powered by the latest 9th Generation Intel Core i9 processor. NVIDIA Quadro RTX graphics provide users with more CUDA, RT and Tensor cores, enabling smoother and more efficient rendering of animations, 8K video editing and data calculations. ProArt StudioBook One has a powerful cooling system featuring a lightweight aerospace-grade Titanium alloy thermal module designed to optimize inlet and exhaust flow. All heat generating components, including the CPU, GPU and thermal systems are located in the lid to ensure comfortable use, even when placed on the user’s lap. When the laptop is opened, the outer cover of the lid opens automatically by 4.57 degrees to aid cooling. The ProArt StudioBook Pro X is the first Quadro laptop to feature the four-sided ASUS NanoEdge display. This display design provides a 92% screen-to-body ratio and 16:10 aspect ratio for immersive visuals. It also supports a wide color gamut with 97% DCI-P3 color space coverage and delivers high color-accuracy. This is also the first in the series to feature ScreenPad 2.0. This interactive secondary touchscreen upgrades the traditional laptop experience, providing you with an intuitive smartphone-like interface on which you can easily manage tasks and streamline your workflows. You can edit and render multilayered files with professional-grade NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 graphics, optimized for stability and performance with professional software apps. This device is powered by a 9th Generation Intel Xeon or Intel Core i7 hexa-core processor designed to handle complex, multithreaded applications. It is designed to operate at full load without the need to throttle the speed of the CPU or GPU, making it outstandingly reliable for even the toughest workloads. The ProArt Station D940MX is a compact workstation-grade desktop designed for content creators and media professionals. It has a dual-sided logic board to house its powerful CPU, GPU and memory. It’s powered by an Intel Core i9 processor with up to 64GB DDR4 2666MHz memory and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics. It also has dual storage with a 512GB PCIe SSD and 1TB HDD, and ultrafast connectivity, including dual Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front panel. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/5e5a01e27f376bc88d051eb4d5a8ca82-1024x1024.jpg Strix laptop in Glacier Blue The ASUS Republic of Gamers also introduced laptops at IFA 2019. The Zephyrus and Strix laptops in a new Glacier Blue hue are intended to appeal to graphic artists, 3D animators, game designers and video editors – to name just a few examples – who can speed up their work thanks to pre-installed NVIDIA Creator Ready Drivers that improve performance for creative apps and programs, such as the Adobe Creative suite, CINEMA 4D and Unreal Engine. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/82f846c794b9d585c756d3c855effda1-756x1024.png Zephyrus S Strix G elevates core gaming essentials in an affordable yet potent package, while Zephyrus M and Zephyrus S are hybrid powerhouses that offer a mix for work and play. Each is available with up to a 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H processor, enabling these machines to slice through serious workloads with speed. The new six-core CPU can hit frequencies of up to 4GHz on a single core with Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, and Hyper-Threading enables up to 12 parallel threads to accelerate heavy duty work. Add up to 32GB of DDR4-2666 memory, and each one of these machines can handle serious multitasking for gamers and content creators alike. Multimedia professionals can work on intensive projects, like video editing and 3D rendering, quickly and efficiently. Gamers benefit from the ability to broadcast high-quality streams, chat with the channel and play the latest titles – all at the same time. Find out more about ASUS at IFA 2019. The post IFA 2019: ASUS announces full lineup of ProArt series, ROG creator-ready laptops for gamers and more appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

At IFA 2019, Acer announced its ConceptD Pro series notebook family with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, built for peak performance and hours of uninterrupted use. The Pro series with Windows 10 meets the stringent requirements of applications in virtual reality, artificial intelligence and big data analytics. The notebooks also feature amber backlit keyboards. The new ConceptD Pro series notebooks featuring 9th Generation Intel Core processors and Windows 10 are designed not only for professional creators but also AI engineers and software developers. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/d3036cea5d10fa8a8b8bf6d6167fa836.jpg At the top end, the ConceptD 9 Pro is a 17.3-inch notebook that targets complex engineering simulations with up to NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 GPUs with 16GB VRAM and 32 GB of DDR4 memory. Thanks to Acer’s CNC-machined Ezel Aero Hinge, the 4K display (3840 x 2160) can flip, extend and recline for convenient collaboration between team members. It’s aimed to handle AI/deep learning, engineering simulations and large animation studios requiring power, flexibility and cross-compatibility. A Wacom EMR stylus is also included and magnetically attaches to the device. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/97ceaedd5fbd65960ad9693e3a293741-1024x819.jpg At 15.6 inches, the ConceptD 7 Pro is designed for power on-the-go with up to NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 GPUs with 16 GB VRAM and 32 GB of DDR4 memory. This model is ideal for data scientists, software developers, engineers and professional design studios who demand power, flexibility and compatibility that is tested with all certified professional software applications. The ConceptD 5 Pro is aimed at users in the advanced creative space and is available with 15- and 17-inch options – both with 4K UHD resolution – and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 GPUs. It’s a device geared for complex CAD design, animation and simulation workflows, so it’s designed to appeal to architects, 3D animators, special effects producers and small design studios. The ConceptD 3 Pro is a notebook for creators like photographers, industrial design students and graphic designers, featuring NVIDIA Quadro T1000 GPUs and a PANTONE-Validated display. Users can process all their media with true color reproduction and can login via a touch of the built-in fingerprint reader through Windows Hello for easy and more secure access. Finally, the new ConceptD CM2241W is a desktop monitor featuring a slim bezel, excellent color accuracy supporting 99% of the Adobe RGB color gamut and hyper-smooth viewing, with a refresh rate up to 75 Hz. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/2aad7b9e3f5a5e00d8f4389cf6e07eda.jpg Acer also introduced the Predator Triton 300 gaming notebook, which expands the Triton line with an affordable solution for mainstream gamers who also appreciate thin and lightweight designs. Up to a 9th Generation Intel Core i7 Processor is paired with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 GPU and 16GB of DDR4 2666Hz memory (upgradable to 32GB). To accommodate massive amounts of game storage, it will support up to two 1TB PCIe NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 and up to a 2TB hard drive. Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX 1650, along with Killer Ethernet, keeps the action moving quickly and lag-free. A bright 15.6-inch Full-HD IPS display with a narrow bezel design includes a 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms overdrive response time, delivering realistic graphics and colors that pop, highlight every detail and bring games to life. Now with a 300Hz 15.6-inch Full-HD display, the Predator Triton 500 is a powerful gaming notebook slimmed down to just .70 inches thin and weighing 4.6 pounds. It has a durable, all-metal chassis and narrow bezels for an 81% body-to-screen ratio. In addition to these announcements, Acer also debuted refreshed models in its popular Swift ultra-portable notebook and Aspire all-in-one desktop ranges, all powered by the latest 10th Generation Intel Core processors and Windows 10. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/c89e0220ce4e2b28b743acb027af32f5.jpg The latest generation, 14-inch Swift 5 weighs just 990 grams with a new discrete NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics option, or even less with solely integrated Intel Iris Pro graphics while measuring just 14.95 mm thin. The screen features a three-side narrow bezel with a high screen-to-body ratio of 86.4%. It has a full-function USB3.1 Type-C connector that supports Thunderbolt 3, dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and supports Windows Hello through a fingerprint reader. The Swift 3 packs a lot of power into its 15.95 mm thin chassis with up to a 10th Generation Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor and an optional discrete NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU, keeping everything running at its optimum speed. It also includes up to 512 GB PCIe Gen 3×4 SSD storage, 16GB LPDDR4 RAM and dual-band Wi-Fi 6, for a smoother and more enjoyable wireless experience, making it an ultra-portable, supercharged laptop for work and play. It delivers up to 12.5 hours of battery life and fast charging capabilities: 30 minutes charging can provide four hours of battery life in video playback conditions. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/b40cb5048d6c642c2b3c8c69f0dd1316-1024x819.jpg Within its space-saving design, the ultra-thin Aspire C all-in-one comes with plenty of practical features for both students and the whole family to enjoy. It is available with 27-inch, 24-inch and 22-inch Full HD IPS screen options, all powered by 10th Generation Intel Core processors and an optional discrete NVIDIA MX130 GPU. Find out more about all of Acer’s announcements at IFA. The post IFA 2019: Acer shows off ConceptD Pro family of notebooks, the Predator Triton 300 gaming notebook and more appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/35aba8f101b7c4710807982ee9d3993a-576x1024.jpg At this week’s IFA tradeshow in Berlin, Razer announced their new Razer Blade Stealth 13 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics, which the company is calling the “world’s first gaming ultrabook.” Powered by Intel’s new 10th Generation processor, it packs gaming performance into a thin 15mm chassis, weighing only about two pounds. Users can also render 3D models on the go. To optimize battery life and to ensure the right balance between power and productivity, the Razer Blade Stealth 13 GTX Models feature NVIDIA Optimus technology. You can choose from one that has Full-HD or one with a 4K UHD touch display. Both come with the latest Intel 10th Generation Core i7-1065G7 processor and a 512GB PCIe SSD, complete with Razer’s signature tone-on-tone matte black finish. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/09/f130d7429d853c9c76c1dbdf9deac0dc-1024x576.jpg The new Razer Blade Stealth 13 will also be available in a Mercury White edition, equipped with a higher-powered Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor at 25W. The 10th Generation processor comes with Intel’s latest Iris Plus graphics, providing users with more rendering prowess in either creative suites or casual games. Features carried over from the previous generation include a customizable single-zone Razer Chroma RGB keyboard, a Windows Hello IR camera for easy and secure access, and a large glass trackpad with Windows Precision Drivers. The new line of Razer Blade Stealth laptops will start at $1,499 USD MSRP and will be available starting at the end of September from Razer.com and select retailers in the United States and Canada and coming soon to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Nordics, China, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. For more information, head over to Razer. The post IFA 2019: Razer announces ‘world’s first gaming ultrabook’ appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders, today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18970 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring. Insiders will see a Cumulative Update Build 18970.1005 (KB4518974) offered at the same time as well. We are testing our ability to service a build at the same time it is released. The result for Insiders should be that they are on Build 18970.1005 after completing these updates. IMPORTANT: As is normal with pre-release builds, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some. If you take this flight, you won’t be able to switch Slow or Release Preview rings without doing a clean-install on your PC. If you want a complete look at what build is in which Insider ring, head over to Flight Hub. You can also check out the rest of our documentation here including a complete list of new features and updates that have gone out as part of Insider flights for the current development cycle. Not seeing any of the features in this build? Check your Windows Insider Settings to make sure you’re on the Fast ring. Submit feedback here to let us know if things weren’t working the way you expected. What’s new in Build 18970 Introducing a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 convertible PCs! https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/c46993288f79c5b8507ea75aeb371c91.png We are beginning to roll out a new tablet experience for 2-in-1 convertible PCs as a Beta to Windows Insiders. This new experience allows users entering tablet posture to stay in the familiar desktop experience without interruption, plus a few key touch improvements: Increased spacing between Taskbar icons. Search box on taskbar collapsed into an icon. File Explorer switches to touch optimized layout Touch keyboard auto invokes when you tap text fields. As part of this, we’ve also made a few small changes to the tablet section in Settings. This experience is currently available for a portion of Insiders as we evaluate the quality. Here are the steps once it becomes available on your PC: Use your convertible PC as a laptop as you normally would–opening apps and interacting with them. When you’re ready to pick it up and go or simply lean back on the couch, you can fold back the keyboard or remove it altogether, and it should switch to this new mode shown above. Now use your device as a tablet with touch. We’d love to hear your feedback about the new experience–share your thoughts here. Recovery Improvements Introducing a new Reset this PC option–Cloud Download Reset this PC now provides users a new choice to download Windows or use local reinstall. Previously, Reset this PC was only able to do a local reinstall and would build a new Windows installation from existing Windows files. When this feature was introduced in Windows 10 version 1507, it provided the advantage of enabling Windows to be recoverable without requiring extra disk space to store a compressed, backup copy of Windows in a hidden partition. We’ve heard feedback that some of you would prefer to use your high-speed internet connection to speed up this process by just downloading Windows. Important note: This is a recovery operation and will remove apps you have installed. Additionally, if the “Remove everything” option is selected, user data will also be deleted. For more information on Reset this PC and other recovery options visit aka.ms/win10recoveryoptions. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/30d81171f59ba1e9ed2a9dcd3d4b8b40.gif The cloud download option will reinstall the same build, version, and edition, that is currently installed on your device. This new cloud download option is available to all Windows 10 devices and is different from the “Recover from the cloud” feature available on some earlier Windows 10 devices. Known issues The cloud download option is not currently working when specific optional features are installed. The process will begin, but an error will occur and roll back the changes. To work around this issue, remove the optional features before trying the cloud download option. We’ll let you know once this issue has been resolved. The optional features are: EMS and SAC Toolset for Windows 10, IrDA infrared, Print Management Console, RAS Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK), RIP Listener, all RSAT tools, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Windows Fax and Scan, Windows Storage Management, Wireless Display, WMI SNMP Provider. Other updates for Insiders Continuing the Cortana rollout The new Cortana experience is now available to all Insiders in the Fast ring in the United States. If it’s available on your device and you haven’t tried it out already, we’d love to hear your feedback! We’ve posted a Quest in the Feedback Hub to help you get started. General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC We fixed a DWM memory leak that was impacting the previous two flights. We fixed an issue resulting in some WSL distros not loading (Issue #4371). We fixed an issue impacting a small number of Insiders, involving a lsass.exe crash and resulting in a message saying, “Windows ran into a problem and needs to restart.” We fixed an issue resulting in WIN+(period) closing if you tried to search for an emoji when focus was set to a text field in an Electron app. We fixed two issues that could result in Settings crashing when interacting with options on the Search page. We’ve done some work to help improve the launch performance of Settings when the Setters header is visible. We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders experiencing a bug check with BTHport.sys in recent flights. It’s important to periodically back up your data. Starting in recent Insider builds, Windows Home and Pro users without a first party backup solution will now see a friendly reminder to consider setting up a backup option that is included with Windows. If you’d prefer to turn this off, there’s an option to do so in the notification. We’re working on addressing feedback about the acrylic in certain surfaces not appearing immediately. In this build, it’s fixed for Start menu, the volume flyout, the network flyout, the clock & calendar flyout, and notification toasts. We’ve made some bug fixes and improvements to Magnifier reading capabilities. Improved Magnifier performance when moving the mouse around the screen. We resolved an issue where Control + Alt + L would not put Magnifier into Lens mode. No one likes bugs, so we squashed several of them related to the new text cursor indicator. Text cursor indicator now appears and disappears more reliably. We also fixed an issue where text cursor indicator preview in settings did not change size when text scaling was on. We have made improvements in Magnifier reliability. We fixed an issue where the File Explorer search suggestions weren’t being read out by Narrator. We fixed an issue in Narrator where it would speak “unknown” if you had the “Header Status” column enabled within Outlook as you arrowed between different email messages. We fixed a couple Narrator dialog reading issues. Narrator would sometimes speak “empty document” or stop the dialog reading too early. We fixed an issue where Narrator would not always speak the group name of a radio button on web pages. We fixed an issue with Narrator and Excel not speaking the column header when arrowing between cells in a table. We fixed an issue where Narrator would only speak “item” when navigating by table cells in an Outlook email instead of reading the entire cell’s contents. Narrator will now read webpages from the top of the page and not at the main landmark with a fallback to find a paragraph. Thank you for your feedback! Narrator now supports the aria-haspopup property. Improved Outlook performance and stability when reading mail messages in Outlook. We have made improvements in Narrator reliability. We made a change to Narrator input learning, so you just have to press Narrator + 1 once to turn input learning off. Thank you for your feedback. We fixed an issue when a user navigated to a webpage in Edge, Narrator would read just the URL field and not the webpage. We fixed an issue when a user was replying to an email in Outlook, Narrator was automatically reading the message while the user was trying to type. Known issues There has been an issue with older versions of anti-cheat software used with games where after updating to the latest 19H1 Insider Preview builds may cause PCs to experience crashes. We are working with partners on getting their software updated with a fix, and most games have released patches to prevent PCs from experiencing this issue. To minimize the chance of running into this issue, please make sure you are running the latest version of your games before attempting to update the operating system. We are also working with anti-cheat and game developers to resolve similar issues that may arise with the 20H1 Insider Preview builds and will work to minimize the likelihood of these issues in the future. Some Realtek SD card readers are not functioning properly. We are investigating the issue. We’re working on a fix for an issue resulting in the minimize, maximize, and close title bar buttons not working for certain apps. If you’re using an impacted app, Alt+F4 should work as expected to close the app if needed. Text on Devices pages in Settings for “Bluetooth and Other Devices” and “Printers and Scanners” isn’t rendering correctly. Search isn’t working for Insiders using certain display languages, including Polish. If you are impacted by this, switching your display language to English then back to your preferred display language should resolve it. Join the Bing Insider Program Whether your allegiance lies with the Big Ten or Pac-12 or somewhere in between, get the latest on college football with Bing. Explore the NCAA Football schedule, rankings, and news. Have a favorite team? Get specific info including weather reports to prepare for gameday. If you want to be among the first to learn about these Bing features, join our Bing Insider Program. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18970 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Ahead of the annual IFA consumer electronics show, Lenovo unveils its latest consumer lineup for 2019. Here’s a first look at the intelligent features set to debut on these new Lenovo laptops, monitors and an all-in-one desktop. Two new 13-inch Windows 10 Lenovo IdeaPad laptops provide up to 10th Generation Intel Core mobile processors and a memory upgrade of up to 16GB DDR4 to get you through all your online tasks—giving you more time to binge-watch your favorite shows with up to an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/1eb69d3b587a38510ea01df7a3bd1c5c-1024x942.jpg At just 2.8 pounds, the 13-inch Lenovo IdeaPad S340 is designed to fit conveniently in your bag. With the Dolby Audio Speaker System, front-facing microphones and quieter, intelligent fan thermals – your laptop stays charged longer with up to 8 hours [1] of battery life and stays cooler than before. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/0bff2db9f9bda3f91cc4923537b7952e-1024x697.jpg The ultra-slim, all-aluminum Lenovo IdeaPad S540 is a step up with a high-quality QHD display option, Dolby Audio Speaker System and your choice of three hues It has RapidCharge [3], plus Cortana and Alexa smart voice capability [4]. It uses Windows Hello and its motion-sensing IR camera for smarter interaction and hands-free user log-in with biometric authentication. Manually direct power and performance modes based on your needs with Lenovo’s exclusive Q-Control [5] feature or choose to dynamically boost your laptop’s battery life with auto-adjustments enabled by new AI technology. When enabled, Q-Control uses machine learning to monitor the tasks running in the background and your device’s thermal attributes to control its fans and optimize a longer battery life on its own. For example, movie watchers will appreciate the lower power mode with quieter fan, while content creators will enjoy the turbo-boosting mode for a quicker computing response. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/4d7610cdaed3a01daf5ec062a966d57e-1024x745.jpg The Lenovo IdeaCentre A540 is the new all-in-one Windows 10 desktop with a high-resolution screen offered in two sizes, 24-inch and 27-inch. Its smart, functional base wirelessly charges your Qi-Certified mobile device—even if your PC is switched off. [6] Its metallic steel stand curves slightly. Its pull-out IR camera comes with an integrated TrueBlock Privacy shutter for an extra layer of security, while a narrow bezel design and rear cable collector round out a clutter-free look. With up to 9th Generation Intel Core i7 CPU and discrete Radeon RX560 graphics, the 27-inch model has a high-resolution QHD display option that provides vivid color while Dolby and JBL by Harman speakers deliver crisp stereo sound. An AMD Ryzen CPU option is also available on the 24-inch model, and a 10-point touchscreen is optional on either display size. The new mainstream Lenovo L28u Monitor delivers 28 inches of vivid color with a 4K In-Plane Switching (IPS) wide-angle display, pixel-perfect resolution and ultra-thin bezel. If your device has AMD graphics [7], eliminate image stuttering and screen tearing for smoother gameplay with AMD Radeon FreeSync. Tilt your monitor to the way that best suits your viewing angle and count on Lenovo’s TÜV Rhineland Eye Comfort-certified anti-glare display that minimizes eye fatigue. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2019/08/8597c7cc577f9f46dd3c681c01bad839-1024x768.jpg The Lenovo G34w Gaming Monitor has 1500R curvature and an ultra-wide, industry-leading 21:9 aspect ratio. It has a 34-inch panoramic Wide Quad High Definition (WQHD) display that’s four times clearer than HD. Find out more about Lenovo at IFA. [1] All battery life claims are approximate. This is based on test results using the MobileMark 2014 ver 1.5 battery life benchmark test. Actual results will vary and depend on numerous factors including product configuration and usage, software, operating conditions, wireless functionality, power management settings, screen brightness and other factors. The maximum capacity of the battery will naturally decrease with time and usage. See MobileMark 2014 ver 1.5 – BAPCo for additional details. [3] Charge one hour in standby mode or while powered off, for up to 80 percent battery life based on test results using the MobileMark2014 ver. 1.5 battery life benchmark test. See MobileMark 2014 ver 1.5 – BAPCo for additional details on testing standard.  [4] Cortana is accessible through the Windows 10 start menu, and Alexa for PC is accessible through Lenovo Vantage during the initial set-up. Alexa is available on select Lenovo PCs in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. Laptop lid must be open to activate mics. [5] Lenovo Q-Control (also called Intelligent Thermal Solutions, or ITS) will be enabled via a Lenovo Vantage update in fall 2019. [6] List of Qi-certified devices: https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/products#Qi-Certified%20Product%20Database [7] FreeSync requires a monitor and AMD Radeon graphics, both with FreeSync support. See www.amd.com/freesync for complete details. Confirm capability with your system manufacturer before purchase. GD-127. The post IFA 2019: Lenovo unveils consumer lineup loaded with intelligent features appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

The definitive edition of “The Bard’s Tale IV” from inXile entertainment arrives on Xbox One and PC with Xbox Game Pass. Return to Skara Brae to defeat a newly awakened evil. In this upgraded and extended version of the acclaimed 2018 RPG you’ll create and control a party of adventurers, explore new lands and dungeons, assist locals with quests, recruit fighters and engage in deep, tactical turn-based combat. The Director’s Cut features hours of additional content, thousands of fixes and tweaks, and new features and accessibility options. In addition, it arrives as a Play Anywhere title, allowing you to pick up and play on your Xbox One, and then continue that same game on your PC. Find out more at Xbox Wire. The post ‘The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut’ arrives on PC and Xbox One appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Hello Windows Insiders! Today we are pleased to release a new Insider preview build of the Windows Server VNext Semi-Annual Channel editions. Available Content Windows Server vNext Semi-Annual Preview The Server Core Edition is available in the 18 supported Server languages in ISO format and in VHDX format in English only. Windows Server Core App Compatibility FoD Preview Windows Server Language Packs Windows Admin Center 1907 Symbols are available on the public symbol server – see Update on Microsoft’s Symbol Server blog post and Using the Microsoft Symbol Server. Matching Windows Server container images will be available via Docker Hub. For more information about Windows Server containers and Insider builds, click here. The following keys allow for unlimited activations of Windows Server Semi-Annual Channel Previews Server Standard: V6N4W-86M3X-J77X3-JF6XW-D9PRV Server Datacenter: B69WH-PRNHK-BXVK3-P9XF7-XD84W This Windows Server Preview will expire July 31st, 2020. How to Download Registered Insiders may navigate directly to the Windows Server Insider Preview download page. See the Additional Downloads dropdown for Windows Admin Center and other supplemental apps and products. If you have not yet registered as an Insider, see GETTING STARTED WITH SERVER on the Windows Insiders for Business portal. We value your feedback! The most important part of a frequent release cycle is to hear what’s working and what needs to be improved, so your feedback is extremely valued. For Windows Server, use your registered Windows 10 Insider device and use the Feedback Hub application. In the app, choose the Windows Server category and then the appropriate subcategory for your feedback. In the title of the Feedback, please indicate the build number you are providing feedback as shown below: [server #####] Title of my feedback See Share Feedback on Windows Server via Feedback Hub for specifics. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Server Insiders space on the Microsoft Tech Communities forum to collaborate, share and learn from experts. For Windows Admin Center, Send us feedback via UserVoice. We also encourage you to visit the Windows Admin Center space on the Microsoft Tech Communities. Known Issues There is an issue where the App Compatibility FOD cannot be added to the OS .wim image offline using DISM /image method. After upgrade, it is necessary to reinstall the new FOD using DISM /online method. Terms of Use This is pre-release software – it is provided for use “as-is” and is not supported in production environments. Users are responsible for installing any updates made available from Windows Update. All pre-release software made available to you via the Windows Server Insider program are governed by the Insider Terms of Use. No downtime for Hustle-As-A-Service, Dona <3 The post Announcing Windows Server vNext Insider Preview Build 18965 appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

I’m old enough now to have experienced several distinct waves of transformation brought by digital technology. As a kid, the personal computing revolution captured my imagination and energy with gaming and programming and new ways to create and do work. As a young adult, personal computers were everywhere and the internet and the World Wide Web connected them, and more importantly, the people using them, in ways that allowed communication and information to flow freely, and for work, commerce, creativity and leisure to be done in radically different ways. In my 30s, the smartphone and an incredible ecosystem of apps and services extended the internet to our pockets, making our connections to information and each other more ubiquitous, helping us navigate our way through the physical world, allowing us to buy almost any good or service we can think of, entertaining us in wonderful new ways, and making collaboration to get our work done more powerful than ever. Even though that’s already a lot of transformation in a short period of time, and technology has never been more present in our lives, I feel like we’re just getting started. The next wave – one that’s already happening – comes when cheap connected devices with powerful sensors become truly ubiquitous in all of our physical environments, and when those devices become powerful enough to use the techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with their surroundings and the people in them. We call this combination of connected devices with powerful sensors and AI the Intelligent Edge. A year ago, I shared my belief that the Intelligent Edge would unfold as a platform over the next several years in ways that would surprise us by its breadth and diversity. And it already has. The Intelligent Edge is proving to be the last mile in the convergence of the digital and physical worlds. –whether it’s a mixed-reality device like HoloLens providing a technician with a digital overlay of analytics, diagnostics and documentation for a piece of equipment they are servicing, or smart devices making the places where we live, work and shop more responsive and interactive, safer and more efficient. Intelligent Edge technologies are already making our homes smarter, improving the yields of our farms, monitoring the environment, helping us navigate our work more effectively, and improving our health and safety. We’re in the middle of a revolution that is more than just smart speakers, security cameras and clever thermostats. Right now, we have in excess of 12 billion devices connected to the internet. It’s forecast that by the end of this calendar year, that number will rise to 20 billion. We anticipate that billions more of these devices are going to connect to the internet in the next few years. It’s a staggering thought. This Internet of Things (IoT) is already many times larger than the universe of personal computers and smartphones combined, and devices on it are becoming more powerful and more intelligent every day. With the advent of 5G, with its higher throughput, lower latency to the cloud, and higher device densities at the edge, we are likely to see the growth of the Intelligent Edge accelerate even further. It probably comes as no surprise that I’ve been super stoked by each of the big technology platform waves that I’ve personally experienced, from PCs, to the internet, to smartphones. The Intelligent Edge is no different. I can’t keep from tinkering with these technologies, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’m using bits of the Intelligent Edge platform to build, of all things, an AI-powered siphon vacuum coffee machine. Instead of screens and buttons, my machine has a camera, a microphone, a speaker, a small digital brain and a connection to the cloud. When you focus your attention on it, it notices, and will ask “Would you like a cup of coffee?” When you respond “Yes,” it guides you through the brewing process with a short dialogue. And if you like, it will remember you and your preferences so that you can get your next cup of coffee more quickly. My coffee machine probably won’t be commercially viable, and no one should mistake my weekend tinkering for a product that might one day show up in the Microsoft store. But one thing that’s become very clear to me as I build this machine is this: The Intelligent Edge parts of the device are neither especially hard nor expensive. I’m having a tougher time designing a safe steam boiler than I am with the AI! The hardware I’m using to run some of the local AI is cheap and readily available, and the software techniques I’m using to split the AI computations between the edge and the cloud are relatively straightforward. The Intelligent Edge and Intelligent Cloud platform that’s already out there for everyone to use is already quite capable. And even though to some, my coffee machine sounds like a crazy sci-fi project, making it a reality doesn’t feel as challenging as writing my first PC program, internet service or mobile app felt in the early days of those platforms. What I’m most excited about with the Intelligent Edge is not what we’ve already done, nor even what I can imagine might be done with this new platform, but rather, what others will imagine and create as tens of millions of developers, entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers start building new products and businesses with this technology. Given the magnitude of growth ahead of us, and the fact that the platform is becoming more powerful every day, the opportunities for creators, entrepreneurs and businesses are huge. As with any successful platform, the true measure of the Intelligent Edge’s success will be in the breadth and diversity of the things built on top of it. There, I have infinite faith in the vision and ambition of others. The IoT Signals Report (an annual research survey published by Microsoft) identifies key, industry-relevant trends in IoT. The survey, conducted by individual interviews with more than 3,000 IoT professionals based in Europe, Asia and North America, found that IoT is considered mainstream. Businesses are seeing tremendous value and opportunity in their ability to improve their bottom lines through IoT adoption. Right now, we’re seeing significant advancements in what I call a new world order with the demise of Moore’s law[1] and the collapse of Dennard scaling[2]. This means that compute is no longer becoming cheap at the exact same time that machine learning is becoming an insatiable consumer of compute power. But while this shift is impacting PCs, we will still see a few years where the power and compute capabilities of Intelligent Edge devices will continue to improve exponentially without much increase in cost. IoT devices that are part of the Intelligent Edge provide businesses with invaluable insights on how to transform processes for operational efficiencies, such as improving the maintenance of vital of equipment before a costly shutdown and accelerating innovation while simultaneously improving safety, for example. As the IoT landscape continues to expand, we can bank on critical breakthroughs in areas that benefit humanity, such as healthcare, conservation, sustainability, accessibility and disaster recovery. [1] Moore's law - Wikipedia [2] Dennard scaling - Wikipedia The post The Intelligent Edge revolution appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog. Continue reading...