PCWorld September 2017

When Consumer Reports stopped recommending the Microsoft Surface Laptop and latest Microsoft Surface Book, it did so based not on those specific products’ reliability. Rather, the company used reliability surveys of earlier Surface devices (including Surface 3, Surface Pro 3, and the early Surface Book), according to a report the publication released recently. Microsoft apparently privately confirmed this as well, via an internal memo obtained by Thurrott.com, which shows that while return rates of products like the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Book were initially atrocious, they improved substantially over time. Later Surfaces, like the Surface Hub, also never really suffered from the same issues. In addition to removing its “recommended” rating from four Microsoft Surface devices, Consumer Reports stated it wouldn’t recommend any Surface products at all. Devices receiving the no-confidence…

Get ready to facepalm, Intel fans. The company’s upcoming Coffee Lake CPUs apparently won’t work with existing stocks of motherboards, a manufacturer confirmed on Wednesday. In a Twitter post by Asrock last Saturday, the company flat-out said the new CPU won’t work with today’s motherboards. When asked by Evan Jensen “...will the Z270 Supercarrier get support for the upcoming @intel Coffee Lake CPU’s?” Asrock’s official twitter account, @ASRockInfo replied: “No, Coffee Lake CPU is not compatible with 200-series motherboards.” PCWorld reached out to Asrock for comment on the tweet but has not heard back. Intel officials declined to comment on the statement by Asrock, saying that it doesn’t comment on future products. So was the post just a rogue and uninformed social media post? A hack? Nope. According to at least one reliable source outside…

Microsoft isn’t quite finished developing Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update after all: Four new features were added as part of Windows 10 Insider Build 16251, including new Cortana capabilities and more communication between Windows and your phone. If there’s a theme to the new build, it’s following up on promises that Microsoft made earlier. At its Build developer conference, Microsoft promised that phones and Windows would begin to communicate with one another, so tasks begun on the phone could be completed on the desktop. Voice commands to shut down and reboot your PC have also been enabled via Cortana—who now has greater freedom to provide answers without launching a browser. Finally, if you do need to reboot your PC, you can program your PC to skip the authentication process. Why this matters:…

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

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

Adobe Flash, one of the most controversial elements of the web, will be phased out by 2020, Adobe said recently. Browser makers, including Microsoft and Google, simultaneously announced plans for a gradual phaseout over the next few years. Adobe said that enough progress had been made within open web standards like HTML5 that it was time to phase out Flash. “Adobe and Macromedia provided innovation to the web, through browser plug-ins, before the underlying web standards could support the interactivity and creativity our digital media publishers and consumers craved,” the company said in a blog post. “By the end of 2020, we firmly believe that all of these required media capabilities and standards will be widely deployed and natively available to customers within browsers.” Specifically, Adobe Flash Player will be end-of-lifed by…