If Windows Autopatch arrives in July as planned, some of you will be able to say goodbye to Patch Tuesday.

Windows Autopatch formed part of Microsoft's April announcements on updates to the company's Windows-in-the-cloud product. The tech was in public preview since May.

Aimed at enterprise users running Windows 10 and 11, Autopatch can, in theory, be used to replace the traditional Patch Tuesday to which administrators have become accustomed over the years. A small set of devices will get the patches first before Autopatch moves on to gradually larger sets, gated by checks to ensure that nothing breaks.

If an issue crops up, the updates can be paused, rolled back or just the bits of an update that aren't broken rolled out. The cadence will also increase for urgent updates, such as zero-day threats.

Although Autopatch is available free for users running Windows 10/11 Enterprise E3 and above, there is a cost in terms of granular control. Earlier this month Microsoft confirmed it would not be possible to schedule rollouts only at certain days and times. It will also not be possible to individually approve or deny devices.

PowerShell fans will be disappointed to learn that "Programmatic access to Windows Autopatch is not currently available."

As for where Autopatch pulls its fixes, Windows updates come from the General Availability Channel and Office updates come from the Monthly Enterprise Channel. Teams and Microsoft's Edge browser are special cases – Edge has its own update service and the Teams client application is synchronized with changes to the Teams online service.

Drivers and firmware published to Windows Update as "Automatic" will also dribble down to users via Autopatch. Windows Server and Windows multi-session is not, however, supported.

While Patch Tuesday will continue for many of us, there is now an opportunity for administrators immersed in Windows at an enterprise level and tired of the monthly festival of fixes to free up resources and let Autopatch do its thing.

That's as long as admins are willing to trust that Microsoft is better at managing updates than it is at quality control. ®

Updated Microsoft's latest set of Windows patches are causing problems for users.

Windows 10 and 11 are affected, with both experiencing similar issues (although the latter seems to be suffering a little more).

KB5014697, released on June 14 for Windows 11, addresses a number of issues, but the known issues list has also been growing. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail to open (if using Windows Communication Foundation or Windows Workflow component) and the Wi-Fi hotspot features appears broken.

Microsoft has accidentally turned off its controversial hardware compatibility check, thus offering Windows 11 to computers not on the list.

Windows 11 does not install on computers that lack a recent TPM-equipped CPU, although there are exceptions (notably for some of Microsoft's own hardware, which failed to make the cut in the original list). It is possible to circumvent this limitation, although there is no guarantee that a future version of Windows 11 won't slam the door permanently.

However, users noted overnight that that PCs on the Windows Insider Release Preview ring without a qualifying CPU were offered the update without the usual terse rejection message.

Desktop Tourism My 20-year-old son is an aspiring athlete who spends a lot of time in the gym and thinks nothing of lifting 100 kilograms in various directions. So I was a little surprised when I handed him Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio and he declared it uncomfortably heavy.

At 1.8kg it's certainly not among today's lighter laptops. That matters, because the device's big design selling point is a split along the rear of its screen that lets it sit at an angle that covers the keyboard and places its touch-sensitive surface in a comfortable position for prodding with a pen. The screen can also fold completely flat to allow the laptop to serve as a tablet.

Below is a .GIF to show that all in action.

Microsoft has blocked the installation of Windows 10 and 11 in Russia from the company's official website, Russian state media reported on Sunday.

Users within the country confirmed that attempts to download Windows 10 resulted in a 404 error message.

The next major version of Windows 11 is drawing near with the code hitting the Insider Release Preview Channel.

Build 22621, which has been floating around the Beta Channel since May 11, arrived last night.

Back in May, Microsoft noted that the disappearance of the watermark from the desktop "doesn't mean we're done." However, its arrival in the Release Preview Channel means that, fixes aside, it is pretty much feature-complete and ready to roll.

Microsoft has treated some of the courageous Dev Channel crew of Windows Insiders to the long-awaited tabbed File Explorer.

"We are beginning to roll this feature out, so it isn't available to all Insiders in the Dev Channel just yet," the software giant said.

The Register was one of the lucky ones and we have to commend Microsoft on the implementation (overdue as it is). The purpose of the functionality is to allow users to work on more than one location at a time in File Explorer via tabs in the title bar.

The second coming of Windows 11 is almost upon us. Is it worth chancing an upgrade? We took a look at the latest release preview of 2022's take on Microsoft's flagship operating system.

Windows 11 launched in October 2021 with some controversial changes. The first was a considerably reduced list of compatible hardware (compared to its predecessor, Windows 10). The second was a redesigned user interface that seemed pretty much guaranteed to enrage customers still smarting from the Start Menu fiasco of Windows 8 and 8.1.

But hey, the window corners were rounded (sometimes) and you didn't really care about the fact that a right-click on the taskbar no longer gave a task manager options, did you?

Updated Two security vendors – Orca Security and Tenable – have accused Microsoft of unnecessarily putting customers' data and cloud environments at risk by taking far too long to fix critical vulnerabilities in Azure.

In a blog published today, Orca Security researcher Tzah Pahima claimed it took Microsoft several months to fully resolve a security flaw in Azure's Synapse Analytics that he discovered in January. 

And in a separate blog published on Monday, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran called out Redmond for its lack of response to – and transparency around – two other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by anyone using Azure Synapse. 

Microsoft has added a certification to augment the tired eyes and haunted expressions of Exchange support engineers.

The "Microsoft 365 Certified: Exchange Online Support Engineer Specialty certification" was unveiled yesterday and requires you to pass the "MS-220: Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Online" exam.

Microsoft isn't wasting time trying to put Activision Blizzard's problems in the rearview mirror, announcing a labor neutrality agreement with the game maker's recently-formed union.

Microsoft will be grappling with plenty of issues at Activision, including unfair labor lawsuits, sexual harassment allegations and toxic workplace claims. Activision subsidiary Raven Software, developers on the popular Call of Duty game series, recently voted to organize a union, which Activision entered into negotiations with only a few days ago.

Microsoft and the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which represents Raven Software employees, issued a joint statement saying that the agreement is a ground-breaking one that "will benefit Microsoft and its employees, and create opportunities for innovation in the gaming sector." 

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