There's certainly a market out there for a lightweight version of Windows 10; long have the masses complained about the increasingly bloated size of the OS over the years. And, while a "Lite" SKU has recently been spotted in the wild, it's not the skim-flavoured thing we'd like it to be. Rather, it's aimed at Chromebooks, going from reports.

If you have a laptop with switchable graphics, odds are you're familiar with the option to force which GPU — Intel or NVIDIA / AMD — your PC should use when running a particular program. However, Windows 10 has introduced another per-app feature that lets you pick which performance profile should be used, handy is you want every drop of speed from your hardware.

At this point, Microsoft should probably call it a day on Windows 10's troubled 1809 update. Last week, the company again had to block the patch for some users. There's a tiny ray of sunlight for Microsoft however, with the blame falling — at least partly & on Intel's shoulders.

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We've pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year's Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity, internet/communications, music/photos/video and utilities.

Since the late 1980s, when the mouse became the main way people invoked actions from the applications they use, the art of the keyboard shortcut has slowly disappeared. I started using a PC in the time when a pointing device was an expensive option on laptops.

So, I became pretty adept at using keyboard shortcuts. But it turns out the creators of our software still include them even though we are more likely to use a touchpad, mouse or touchscreen these days. What are some of the lesser known keyboard shortcuts you can use with Windows?

Over the last month, Microsoft's done an amazing job of convincing people to never install Windows again, after a data-deleting Windows 10 update made it through QA. Now, relenting to pressure from enterprise users, Microsoft has begun work on a "status dashboard" for updates to prevent IT admins from being caught flat-footed in the future.

While Dark Mode seems to be all the rage with software makers, Microsoft is bucking the trend. Although there is a dark mode option in Windows 10 (Edge and Microsoft Office have their own dar modes if you don't want to go dark system-wide), they are offering a new Light Mode in the latest test build of Windows 10.

Researchers at the Netherland’s Radboud University have uncovered serious security issues with several solid-state drives that use hardware-based encryption—vulnerabilities. This could allow an attacker to access a drive’s “encrypted” contents without needing the password that decrypts it.

I was recently tasked with setting up a Windows 10 system for a friend on an oldish laptop. While the machine is about five years old, it does have an SSD and ran Windows 7 and 8 pretty well. So, I needed to create installation media for the system. But, as my main system is a Mac I needed to find a way to create a bootable USB or SD Card. Here's how I did it.

Last week, Microsoft quietly re-released the Windows 10 1809 Update to Insider users after an alarming file-deleting bug forced a global halt to the rollout. Unfortunately, the latest 'fixed' version is still plagued with data loss issues and users are pissed off. Oh, Microsoft.

When it was discovered earlier this month that the 1809 build of Windows 10 was deleting user files just because, Microsoft halted the update until the problem was fixed. Shame, then, that another not-as-bad-but-still-bad file overwriting bug has now reared its head.

When's the last time you sat down and thought about how many apps automatically launch whenever you fire up Windows 10 on your desktop or laptop? You probably can't remember, because it's not really a thing most people do. But you should, because you don't need a bunch of unnecessary apps eating up your system's resources for no reason. If you have an underpowered PC, you're only making your situation worse. And, at minimum, having a bunch of background apps is going to make Windows 10 take longer to load.

Microsoft has announced the removal of the Windows 10 1809 release following numerous complaints about user files being deleted. Here's what to do if you've already begun an install.

Microsoft's big October update for Windows 10 is here. If Microsoft hasn't rolled it out to your Windows machine yet, you can force a manual update by simply clicking on your Start button, typing in the word "check," and selecting the "check for updates" option. Click on the grey "Check for updates" box under Windows Update, and it should appear.

We are scratching our collective heads as to how the Windows 10 October Update ever made it past Microsoft’s QA teams. According to numerous reports, something about the update could delete the contents of your Windows 10 user folders — you know, your documents, photos, music, videos and so on.

Microsoft is rolling out the October 2018 Update to Windows 10 users now, and with it comes a ton of new features. Microsoft releases these updates twice a year, and they're packed with too many new features and changes in one place - especially when most of them probably won't be noticed by the majority of PC users.

So, here's a list of new Windows 10 features that might have the most impact for users on a day-to-day basis. And, hey, maybe you'll learn something new that you can incorporate into your daily routine. (Personally, I'll be making an effort to use Timeline and the new Cloud Clipboard more often.)

Microsoft's newest release for Windows 10 - version 1809 - sports a range of noteworthy improvements to the OS, including a dark theme for File Explorer, a clipboard you can synchronise between devices, a new-and-improved tab bar, a screenshot capturing tool and an updated Game Bar featuring an FPS counter.

However, the biggest improvement is arguably the introduction of Your Phone - a new baked-in app that links your PC and Android devices together. Among other things, this allows you to send text messages straight from your PC without even glancing at your phone. Here are the details.

You may have noticed that Microsoft began rolling out a new version of Microsoft Office early this week. That means that there are now three versions of Microsoft Office out in the wild — Office 2016, Office 365 and the brand-new Office 2019.

Say what you will about Microsoft, it does a good job when it comes to system maintenance tools. Sure, apps like Check Disk and Defrag might be bare-bones, but they get the job done. Disk Cleanup is easily the best of bunch, reclaiming space even dedicated third-party programs can't. Now, Microsoft is putting DC out to pasture, in favour of something new.