It's the end of an era. Today (January 14), Microsoft officially ended free security updates for Windows 7. If you want to keep using the operating system you'll need to pay an ongoing fee. Or do you? Turns out there's a trick to get ongoing Windows 7 support - for free.

Microsoft is finally turning off the tap for Windows 7 security updates but if you're looking to finally make the leap to Windows 10, there's a way to get it free for now. Here's how you do it.

Look out, world - there's a new Windows operating system on the block. Here's what you need to know.

Shutting down or restarting your PC every now and then is a good thing. It can even solve minor performance issues by clearing temporary files and freeing up memory—a classic troubleshooting technique—but many of us neglect this simple act of tech upkeep. It’s a lot easier to put a desktop or laptop to sleep (or hibernation) instead of shutting it down fully.

Deadlines are scary. I know. And Microsoft has thrown Windows 7 users a big one: Update to a more modern operating system by January 15, 2020, or you’ll never receive security updates ever again. Eventually, Microsoft will even start disabling key Windows 7 services—like Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers—throughout the year.

If your hard drive is starting to fill up, you may be wondering what exactly is taking up all that space. That’s where a disk space analyser comes in: it scans your disk and shows you, in graphical form, where all that space is being wasted, giving you an idea of where to start cleaning.

You’re typing an email, you paste in some text from a Word doc and suddenly half your email is a different font. Or you paste a headline into a Google doc and it shows up in giant 48pt text. This annoying paste behaviour is the default in most Windows, macOS and web apps. In outgoing docs and emails, it makes you look sloppy. Here’s how to fix it.

Doing stuff with your mouse is cool. Doing stuff with your keyboard is cooler. These are the most important keyboard shortcuts, ranked from best to worst. (Unless noted, we've listed the Windows shortcuts; Mac users substitute Cmd for Ctrl.) With one exception, despite any flaws, all the shortcuts below are fundamentally good.

Microsoft plans to roll out Edge via a Windows Update on January 15. We’ve had a great time playing around with it since the Chromium version of the browser debuted in April, and we’ll probably have even more to say before its official release next month. But it’s also OK to not want another browser on your desktop or laptop—unfortunately, you don’t get much of a choice in the matter.

The Game Awards were last night. And while we do love a pretty trophy (and are sad The Outer Worlds didn’t take top honours), there’s more to the event than pixel pageantry. Coinciding with the big day, there’s also a PC “Game Festival” going on—all on Steam—that features some great time-locked demos you can play right now.

Microsoft accidentally pushed yet another unnecessary Windows 10 update. This week’s “KB4532441" update went out to regular users of Windows 10, even though the update was meant for those using Windows Autopilot—a way for IT departments to set up and manage new computers. Microsoft even let loose with a number of reminders to non-Autopilot users to install the update, unnecessary as it was.

Another day, another ransomware alert threatening to undo your precious, if a bit broken, Windows 10 device. A team of researchers have found a particularly nasty package that forces your PC into Safe Mode and then exploits it. Here's what you need to know.

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.

Apple has always been good at keeping people within its own little bubble. The company has strived for an insular ecosystem which can certainly make it tricky for those on the inside looking to break out. But it's by no means impossible.

It sounds weird, but when you click that power button on the start menu to shut down Windows 10, you aren't shutting down Windows 10. Sure, Windows 10 goes through the motions of shutting down. And your computer sure looks like it shut down. And it sort of did, but it didn't.

One of the most frustrating issues you can encounter with a device, usually your computer, is when it starts doing something it never did before. Typically, this is something you didn’t want it to do: It takes 15 more seconds to boot, it’s emitting some strange noise, or it is unable to launch the application you’ve been using for the last three months. Weird things like that.

Microsoft is preventing certain PCs running older versions of AVG and Avast antivirus software and outdated Qualcomm Wi-Fi drivers from installing Windows 10 versions 1809, 1903, and 1909. Here’s why: Microsoft no longer allows Windows 10 to automatically update on any and all systems due to potential bugs and incompatibility issues.

I know, I know; it sounds a bit sacrilegious if you just plunked down $2,800+ for a new 16-inch MacBook Pro, but we live in a day and age where kittens and puppies can be friends. And if you want to run macOS and Windows 10 on the same system, you should feel you can do that without upsetting the Apple gods (or fanboys).

This simple thing never clicked for me before I saw it on Reddit: In many keyboard shortcuts on Windows and MacOS, adding the shift key makes the shortcut do the opposite of what it normally does.