Tim Anderson

Hands On Microsoft has released Windows Admin Center (formerly known as Project Honolulu) to general availability. Windows Admin Center is a browser application for managing servers and computers on a Windows network. What’s the point? Under the covers, Windows Admin Center uses Remote Powershell and WMI (Windows Management Interface …

Adobe Summit "We've emerged beyond just the company that’s known for Photoshop," claimed Adobe's Cody Crnkovich, head of platform, partners and strategy, today as he introduced AI and profiling features designed to enable marketers to deliver more creepy personalised advertising and comms. He has a point. The Adobe Experience Cloud, an …

Qcon "How you deploy Java, how you get access to updates and patches is all changing. Although Oracle has told people about this, they haven't been shouting about it," Azul Systems deputy CTO Simon Ritter told attendees at QCon, a developer conference under way in London. Java used to evolve with comfortable though frustrating …

MWC2018 Fancy a Flutter? Google is hoping users will take a bet on its new cross-platform mobile development framework, whose first beta was announced at Mobile World Congress last week. Flutter is based on Dart, an object-oriented C-style language developed at Google, where it was designed by Lars Bak and Kasper Lund. It was first …

MWC18 As Mobile World Congress draws to a close in relatively warm Barcelona (13°C - balmy), it's time to tally up on whether it delivered on the hype. The buzz ahead of MWC was that Samsung would launch the Galaxy S9 smartphone, that 5G connectivity would come closer to commercial reality, and that advances in AI and machine …

MWC18 Sony launched the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 compact at an early morning press event as Mobile World Congress opened in Barcelona. A key feature in the Samsung S9, super slow-mo video enabled by a 960fps camera (for short 0.2 second bursts), was already a feature in last year's Xperia XZ1, Sony reminded those present. Unlike Samsung …

MWC Samsung has formally launched its next-generation Galaxy 9 flagship smartphones just ahead of 2018's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This year's S9 and S9+ models feel like they're treading water versus last year's S8 and S8+. The screen spec is the same at 2960 x 1440 pixels, but Samsung says they're a bit brighter this …

Another year, another round of Windows 10 updates – most likely 1803 in March, and 1809 in September or thereabouts. The company calls this "Windows as a service", the idea being that users get a constant flow of improvements. The advantage for Microsoft is that it can begin to escape its legacy prison, where keeping …

Microsoft’s recent release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, with virtual and augmented reality built in, is a big moment. Microsoft was one-half of the duo with Intel – nicknamed Wintel - that during the 1990s made business computing a mass movement. Windows headsets paired with x86 PCs also promises this mass-market for …

Remember when Microsoft first hyped the Windows 10 development platform? "One Windows" was the theme. "Just one API and one package to reach all Windows 10 devices – PC, tablet, phone and more," said Windows developer corporate VP Kevin Gallo at the time. That was in April 2015. Just two months later, everything was different …

Hands On Just over two years after the introduction of both Windows 10 and the "Windows as a service" concept, Microsoft has released the Fall Creators Update aka version 1709, build 16299. We took it for a spin. Microsoft’s efforts in making in-place upgrade smooth have paid off. There will always be cases where things go wrong, but …

JavaOne Microsoft has announced Java support for Azure Functions, the serverless cloud platform which competes with AWS Lambda. The announcement was made at the JavaOne event under way in San Francisco this week. The service is now in public preview. Java is the latest language to be added following Microsoft’s redesign of the Azure …

Tens of thousands of tourists flocked to Florida's theme park town of Orlando last week, but they weren't there to see Mickey; they were there to imbibe the new wares at Microsoft's Ignite, which focuses on cloud computing and IT administration. Ignite is now Microsoft’s core conference, since cloud and server, rather than …

Ignite What’s new for Azure at Microsoft Ignite? The key point is not so much the list of new features, but the direction the company is taking with its cloud platform, which is to make it pervasive even for customers working mainly on premises. Azure Security Center began as a dashboard for monitoring the security of Azure virtual …

Ignite “It’s a big milestone for us as a company,” general manager Rohan Kumar told us, referring to the release of SQL Server on Linux, “the biggest server product from Microsoft”, announced here at the Ignite event in Orlando. SQL Server 2017 is being released simultaneously for Windows and various flavours of Linux: Red Hat …

Ignite At the Microsoft Ignite conference today, the expert panel on stage burst into laughter. “This box right over here behind us – nothing! That’s a quantum joke, that’s an excellent joke,” said Microsoft Technical Fellow Michael Freedman as the curtain failed to open to reveal it. It being a quantum joke, the audience in Orlando …

Microsoft held its Edge Web Summit on 13 September, announcing that the web browser now has “330 million active devices”, just over two years since its launch with Windows 10 in July 2015. The stat was explained as devices where someone actively uses Edge during the course of a month. Edge Web Summit: Microsoft Edge Web …

Hands On PC vendors are showing off Windows Mixed Reality headsets and controllers here at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, and this writer got to try new devices from Dell, Asus and Lenovo. Windows Mixed Reality is a key feature of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, with both hardware and software promised for general …

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 Insider Preview lets you link to an Android phone, with synchronised web browsing the first supported feature. Build 16251 also marks the moment when Microsoft forks the Windows 10 code between the RS3 (Redstone 3, the codename for the Fall Creators Update) and the version to follow. Testers now …

Microsoft has released a preview of Azure Container Instances, a new way to deploy containers which emphasises speed and ease of use above scalability and orchestration. A web application running in an Azure Container Instance A web application running in an Azure Container Instance The company already offers an Azure …

Hands on Microsoft made a big deal of Cortana skills at its Build developer conference earlier this year – the business of creating voice interactions with users via the digital assistant built into Windows 10 and also available for iOS and Android. Why does the company consider this strategic? The answer was given by a presenter at …

Exclusive Microsoft’s investment in cloud services is also improving its on-premises software, claims Azure and SQL Server boss Scott Guthrie. I first met Scott Guthrie in Las Vegas in September, 2000, where he was talking up a web development framework then called ASP+, which he had developed alongside Mark Anders. The framework was ASP …

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish security company F-Secure, spoke to The Reg at the launch of Sense, a consumer firewall device that aims to "secure your connected things". Hypponen says IoT is unavoidable. "If it uses electricity, it will become a computer. If it uses electricity, it will be online. In future …

Microsoft has released a new preview of Windows 10's Fall Creators Update, showing off elements of its new Fluent Design System and introducing a host of features. At the Build developer event last month, the company announced the Fluent Design System as a move away from the flat design language which characterised the "Metro …

Hands On Huawei this week launched three Intel devices running Windows 10: a slim notebook, a Surface-a-like 2-in-1, and a conventional 15.6" laptop. “We want to bring a full range of products for your digital life including a smartphone, a smart tablet, smart watch, wearable devices, and also notebooks, the PC,” said Richard Yu, CEO …