Linux developers are preparing to make Intel’s ancient MultiMedia eXtensions an irrelevance. Intel introduced MMX in the Pentium era, but a patch expected to merge into mainline Linux 7.5 will remove the last remaining optimized software from the open-source OS. Expected to be released in 2027, the new kernel will wipe MMX-optimized code from its software RAID XOR code, explains Phoronix.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much left in Linux in terms of MMX optimizations. But few folks will be running the most modern kernels on Pentium MMX and Pentium II chips in 2026. And most other MMX-optimized code disappeared from the OS half a decade ago, when some MMX-optimized memory management code was removed. Note that, if you are a determined late-90s Pentium devotee, you can still use software RAID, but it will lack the MMX fast path.

This is a classic case of Linux code housekeeping. With this change, the kernel will lose over 800 lines of code and replace them with just 12.

Remembering MMX

Intel first introduced MMX Pentium chips in January 1997. Though I vaguely remember these processors being marketed as being enhanced by ‘MultiMedia eXtensions,’ Wikipedia insists that “MMX is officially a meaningless initialism[6] trademarked by Intel.”

In a subsequent trademark battle with longtime foe AMD, a document produced in court indicated that MMX stood for ‘Matrix Math Extensions.’ AMD relied on this to sidestep the trademark, as an initialism cannot be trademarked, according to the encyclopedic source.

Eventually, all rival x86 processors managed to integrate MMX instructions – so as not to be pushed into the shade during the multimedia boom. A surprisingly large number of non-Intel chips ended up offering MMX, too. Along with Pentium MMX chips, AMD, Centaur, Cyrix, Rise, and Transmeta eventually offered MMX CPUs.

After MMX's marketing success, AMD pioneered 3DNow! instructions, and about a year later, Intel fired back with SSE and SSE2.

Running your own email server is one thing. Keeping it alive for nearly three decades is quite another. One homelab enthusiast has finally decided to call time on his Microsoft Exchange installation after maintaining it since 1999, replacing the last remaining server with Postfix on Ubuntu Server LTS. The user, posting as Meta4X on Reddit’s r/homelab on November 5, said they had already moved their mailboxes and email delivery to Microsoft 365 a couple of years ago. Exchange was still hanging around, however, serving as a relay for alerts generated by hardware and software on their local network. With that final job now being handed to Postfix, the 27-year run is coming to an end.

Meta4X’s installation began with Exchange 5.5 running on Windows NT 4. Since then, they have upgraded through Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and finally Exchange 2019. They said access to Microsoft’s software through MSDN, TechNet and the Microsoft Action Pack had allowed them to keep the setup running over the years. The end of support for Exchange 2019 last year was one reason to consider keeping the server around. Microsoft has since moved its on-premises Exchange platform to Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE), which comes with ongoing licensing requirements. That said, the transition is not quite as straightforward as the original post suggests.

In the post, the Redditor shared a photo from 2003, when they upgraded from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003. The server did not have a conventional PC case, and its motherboard was strapped to the cardboard box it came with using zip ties.

One commenter pointed out that existing Exchange 2019 licenses can be used with Exchange SE under qualifying licensing arrangements. Meta4X admitted that they did not know that, adding that they were probably better off not knowing. “I did not know that, thank you! In hindsight, I'm glad I wasn't aware because I probably would have put off killing Exchange,” they wrote. In other words, the server was not necessarily being retired because there was no way to keep it licensed. The move gave its owner an opportunity to finally get rid of a system that had outlived its original purpose.

For context, the replacement is Postfix, an open-source mail transfer agent that will run on Ubuntu Server LTS. The enthusiast is also using the migration to address several pieces of technical debt that have accumulated during the server’s long life. “Moving to Postfix is a good opportunity to implement STARTTLS, move to Let's Encrypt certificates, implement boot encryption, and eliminate a bunch of other technical debt that has accumulated over the past 20+ years,” Meta4X explained.

STARTTLS upgrades an ordinary SMTP connection to an encrypted TLS connection, while Let’s Encrypt provides publicly trusted certificates that can be renewed automatically. Boot encryption adds another layer of protection by securing data on the system drive. These are planned improvements, though — the Reddit post does not establish that the new configuration is already fully deployed. Meanwhile, Postfix is hardly the only destination for Exchange refugees. Several commentators said they had moved Mailcow, while another recommended Grommunio as an alternative for people who still want to keep their mail infrastructure on-premises. Others were more than happy to leave email hosting to Microsoft and other cloud providers.

That said, the move to Postfix does not necessarily make email security a solved problem. Postfix’s own documentation explains that enabling TLS can encrypt SMTP sessions, but administrators still need to configure certificate handling and decide how connections should behave when a remote server does not support encryption. We have previously reported on a vulnerability in Exim that exposed millions of email servers, showing how flaws in mail transfers can put systems at risk. Ransomware has particularly been a headache, exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange. A more recent report highlights how Outlook silently falls back to unencrypted email connections

AI-powered software cloning is quite the hot topic. Software companies are likely unhappy with the notion of vibe coders ganging up to try and copy their software. Simultaneously, users tired of subscription models, price hikes, and drops in software quality are more than happy to rebel, as proven by the buzz around the Adobe-replacement ArtCraft. Now, OccupySaaS is the latest user-led revolt against the software system, aiming to create clean-room, open-source reimplementations of common services using AI tools.

The initiatives already underway in the project look to replace Auth0 and Salesforce with minty fresh alternatives called ZeroAuthy and SalesCompel, respectively. Given that these services all run on their companies' servers, there are no binaries to examine and decompile — the reimplementations are done referencing available documentation, APIs, development kit behaviors, and any applicable open standards. Judging from the project website, it seemingly wants new software to acts as a API-compatible drop-in replacement where applicable.

The project puts a sharp pin on its development ethics and requirements: all work must be a fully clean-room reimplementation, with no decompiled code, no confidential information (including source code) taken from any previous employers, and no copying of UI assets or any other trademarks.

Creating software in this manner is both easier and harder than usual. On the one hand, the only thing that matters is that whichever user inputs are processed and produce the same outputs as the original software, and those behaviors are largely defined by the aforementioned specifications.

At the same time, hosted software is effectively a black box with internal behaviors and "gotchas" that aren't immediately obvious. Just as with console emulators, any drop-in replacement needs to reproduce extant API bugs to be fully compatible — looking at you, Jira.

Besides the aforementioned services, OccupySaaS intends to find replacements for services offering document-and-wiki management, issue tracking, software feature flagging, software/server observability, and customer support. Our guesses for the targeted replacements in each of those categories are Confluence, Jira, LaunchDarkly, Datadog, and Zendesk.

The language of choice is Go, picked over Rust simply because it allows for easily compiling and linking all its dependencies into the one binary that doesn't need an installer and can just be copied to a target system and executed. According to OccupySaaS, that characteristic makes it ideal for packaging into a Docker container or other forms of self-hosting.

Some people may quickly point out that the entire point of renting a SaaS to begin with is that any snafu with the code or the infrastructure is always Someone Else's Problem, and that running your own instance is backwards. However, since OccupySaaS's software is Apache 2.0-licensed, there's nothing stopping anyone from providing a service for it. Examples include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, GitLab, and of course, Wordpress.

The project appears to be the brainchild of Thomas Meadows, a software engineer with two decades of experience. In his personal homepage, he claims is strong suit is project management, which is a good skill to have in this day and age of directing AI agents towards a goal. The website reads like a manifesto, pointing out that per-seat licensing taxes growth, and that the same people who created the software are now being fired — "the software built by the 99% belongs to the 99%."

Following a resurgence of 8GB RAM laptops earlier this year, and in the wake of promises to improve Windows 11 performance using just 8GB of RAM, Microsoft has today announced what it claims are a series of performance improvements. Driven by an ongoing global PC component shortage that is forcing manufacturers to dumb down specs, the company says that with 8GB of RAM, Windows is now 20% more responsive and 40% faster when it comes to multitasking.

The development shared today by Microsoft is an update to a commitment earlier this year to improve the quality and performance of Windows 11, a major bugbear of users since its launch. Microsoft says it has taken a three-pronged approach to memory optimization: making better use of memory in Windows 11 PCs, protecting interactions that need to feel instant, and ensuring key apps and Windows use less memory. While the company admits you'll be able to do more on 16GB or 32GB of RAM, it says "we're making sure you can do more, even with 8GB."

The headline performance gain is a claim that Windows is now up to 20% more responsive on 8GB PCs. Likewise, multitasking is now purportedly 40% faster in Microsoft's lab tests. Of course, these are internal tests conducted in favorable conditions by Microsoft.

Microsoft says it has tuned compression for useful apps and data, and can now keep up to 2GB more of your active data in memory, rather than moving it to storage. In practice, this should mean that apps and tabs left open should be less likely to reload when you go back to them.

The claim of 20% more responsiveness specifically relates to tasks like opening Start, searching, right-clicking, opening Settings, using the Snipping Tool, and opening File Explorer. The company says it has achieved this by backing off background tasks like indexing while you're using your PC actively. Edge now reportedly opens up to 33% faster. There's also an Efficiency Mode for Microsoft Teams, which can be set to on by default, improving launch times by 20%.

Microsoft says that its claims of 40% speed boosts to multitasking are based on a demanding workflow of 20 Microsoft Edge Tabs, a 4K video, large Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, Outlook, and File Explorer all being opened one after the other.

Other improvements include reducing committed-memory growth by up to 900 MB in apps like Microsoft Edge and 365 apps, and reducing the memory footprint of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook by 360MB. Third-party apps can also benefit from improved memory management, with Microsoft stating WhatsApp is already taking advantage.

Moving forward, Microsoft says it has plans to make memory compression even smarter and more efficient. Windows features and apps will share common parts, such as Search and Widgets using one web Engine, for instance. WinUI 3 apps like File Explorer and Notepad will be designed to use less memory and open faster, and Microsoft is working with PC makers and silicon manufacturers to reduce how much memory a PC needs to hold in reserve to support its hardware, making more space for Windows.

NTDEV, the popular developer behind the Tiny11 project, has once again pushed the limits of just how little hardware is required to run Windows 11. In a video shared on YouTube, the developer claims to have successfully booted the latest Windows 11 26H2 on a system with just 128MB of RAM. Despite severe memory constraints, the heavily stripped-down installation manages to load the Desktop and File Explorer, access the Start menu, and even run the classic Notepad app.

While it is an impressive achievement, the developer acknowledges that the system is "painfully slow," making this more of a technical experiment than a practical way to run Windows 11 on older hardware. According to Microsoft’s official requirements, Windows 11 requires at least 4GB of RAM, meaning NTDEV's latest experiment uses just 3.125% of the recommended minimum. The developer has not shared a detailed breakdown of every component removed or disabled to achieve the result, but the project builds on years of experimentation with stripped-down Windows installations.

This is not NTDEV's first attempt at pushing Windows 11 beyond its usual hardware limitations. Back in 2023, the developer managed to get the operating system running with only 176MB of RAM by extensively trimming its system components, drivers, and background services. That experiment relied on an IDE storage interface to reduce the number of drivers required, and sacrificed the standard Windows desktop environment.

Last month, the developer showcased another interesting experiment that squeezed an entire Windows 11 installation into a CD-ROM-sized ISO file. The experimental build created using the developer's upcoming Pico11 tool weighs in at 699,811,840 bytes and retains a functional Windows desktop. The stripped-down version of Windows 11 successfully boots into the desktop environment and runs basic applications such as Calculator, Settings, Notepad, and Paint. The test was conducted on a virtual machine with 4GB of allocated RAM, with the operating system using around 883MB.

Such experiments are a great way to showcase just how much of Windows can be stripped away while still retaining some of its core functionality. At the end of the day, they are primarily technical demonstrations with the intention of exploring the limits of Microsoft's operating system rather than providing practical alternatives to a standard Windows installation. Stripping away essential components, drivers, and background services comes with significant trade-offs, including reduced functionality, compatibility issues, and severely degraded performance.

Edit 11/1/2026 4:25am PT: Clarified title to state the bill still has to pass the Senate after being added to the budget.

France has approved a proposed tax that aims to tax the amount of internet data per gigabyte sent to French users in the country, with major companies like Google, Netflix, TikTok, and Meta now in the crosshairs. According to minutes released by the National Assembly, members voted 11-10 in support of the motion on October 30 — which now means the new law has been added to the country’s next budget, despite major opposition from the government side and the finance committee rapporteur. The law still has to pass through the Senate for final approval. The latest amendment, introduced by socialist lawmaker Laurent Lhardit, could see content providers pay €0.055 (roughly $0.06) to the government for every gigabyte of content distributed to French users.

With approximately 154 million users and counting in France, the proposal’s authors say such a tax could generate around €10 billion ($11.2 billion) in annual revenue for the government. “This amendment proposes a tax on digital data flows emitted by content providers, to be borne by the providers themselves. Its revenue is estimated at €10 billion.” Said Laurent Lhardit. The said proposal, though yet to be passed as it must survive further parliamentary scrutiny, aims at companies that generate substantial internet traffic as opposed to taxing their advertising revenue, profits and subscriptions. Its explanatory notes particularly mention Google, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, and content delivery network Akamai as major potential contributors. Notably, TikTok and other similar platforms could fall under this broader scope depending on how these rules are applied.

Internet service providers, including Orange Free and Liad, would be required to measure the volume of data and identify the companies responsible for sending it to French users. The Data will then be collected and submitted quarterly to France’s tax administration under the supervision of telecommunications watchdog Arcep. Aside from the €0.055 per gigabyte levy, the proposal also includes a cap of 15% of a company’s French revenue or 2% of its worldwide revenue. It also accounts for content delivery networks (CDNs), which store copies of online content closer to users to reduce loading times and network congestion.

Approximately 200 billion GB of data pass through French internet providers annually, with about five major companies identified in the amendment accounting for about half of that traffic. Lhardit argued that tax would primarily affect global technology companies because they generate most of the data traffic reaching French subscribers. He also disputed that those platforms would merely push additional costs to users, using Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which provide free access, as examples. “The rapporteur keeps arguing that the taxes will be passed on to consumers. However, I fail to see how a tax can be passed on to users of Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok since these services are free,” He stated.

How much money are you willing to spend during the Black Friday sales?

Lawmakers opposed to the proposal, however, argue that it is likely to endanger user privacy. Government Minister David Amiel questioned whether the internet traffic could be measured and attributed to content providers without introducing complicated monitoring requirements. Those concerns extend to potential consequences for French business. Lhardit, however, noted that businesses would pay relatively modest costs, citing TF1 as an example, which requires broadcasters to contribute between €200,000 and €300,000.

Several European countries already impose digital service taxes, generally based on revenue from Ads, marketplaces and other digital activities. In March, Meta announced it would introduce location-based fees of between 2% and 55 for advertisers to offset digital services taxes and other government levies in several countries, including France, Italy, and Spain, from July 1, 2026 . Previously, the European Commission has rolled out major enforcement actions against major technology companies, including a €5 billion fine against Google over Android antitrust violations, Facebook’s €100 million fine for misleading European regulators, and the EU’s investigation into Facebook’s ability to link WhatsApp accounts.

Last year, Apple and Meta were also fined €500 million and €200 million, respectively, a move that strained the relationship between Brussels and Washington, with the U.S. calling the penalties ‘a novel form of economic extortion’ that it will not tolerate. That said, the amendments' adoption in parliament is only the first step. If it can clear the remaining stages of France’s 2027 budget process, it can become law, with parliament scheduled to vote on the budget’s first section in early November.

A technology enthusiast claims that the oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11 is CDPLAYER.EXE from November 1992. The app had to run on Microsoft’s newest consumer OS without modifications or emulation involved to be chosen as the ‘winner’ of their experiment. Blogger Enlyth expected something from the early NT era, as Windows 11 doesn’t support 16-bit apps, despite its strong backward compatibility. Finding an app that is almost 34 years old that still works with a simple double-click is a remarkable result.

At the beginning of their journey to find the oldest Windows UI app that just works on Microsoft’s newest OS, Enlyth confirmed FREECELL.EXE from February 1993 would still run without issues. This game was distributed alongside the Win32s environment, designed to allow some 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit operating systems like Windows 3.1 and 3.11. Win32s was made available in beta in October 1992, but went mainstream in July 1993.

A tip Enlyth received via a tech forum suggested that FREECELL.EXE was a candidate for the oldest GUI app remaining compatible with Windows 11. However, the blogger wasn’t satisfied with this easy win and dug through “some early NT 3.1 pre-release versions that seemed promising.” Build 347 caught the detective’s eye, specifically CDPLAYER.EXE, linked on Nov 16, 1992. That indeed seems to be the earliest GUI app that works without modification or emulation on Windows 11. But this knowledge almost defied Enlyth’s eye as their system is, like many modern systems, optical-drive-less. Luckily, adding a small DLL (cdemu.dll) allowed Enlyth to emulate a CD drive and demonstrate that the 1992-era application still functions as intended.

I wanted to verify that CDPLAYER.EXE was still usable on the latest Windows 11 release. Unfortunately, the multi-part.ARJ archive of Windows NT 3.1 that I found on Archive.org threw up errors when I tried to pick through its contents. I have a USB-attached optical drive that plays CD audio in Windows 11, so I thought I could get CDPLAYER.EXE to run without any extra DLL.

Lastly, Enlyth wanted to push the envelope a little and see what even more ancient Windows apps might work if they got some help from the Winevdm project on 64-bit Windows. “Using otvdm does feel like cheating,” admitted the digital sleuth, and we’d agree. However, being able to run 16-bit apps in Windows 11 ratcheted back the wheels of time. The result was that Enlyth managed to enjoy “a fully playable version of REVERSI.EXE dated 15-Nov-1985.” That’s a GUI-driven game distributed as part of Windows 1.01 and is roughly 41 years old.

Is most programming code now made by AI? That's not hard to believe given the number of testimonies, but we now have exact figures behind that statement. GitHub, the world's largest code repository, says that over the course of this year, it added 4 million CPU cores, 160PB of storage, and 50 Tb/s of networking capacity to keep up with the influx of AI-generated code.

Raw repository activity saw a massive year-over-year increase, as per GitHub's technical report. Code commits (adding/removing code) grew sixfold, while merged pull requests (finalizing a feature or bugfix) jumped 4x.

The multipliers sound impressive enough, but the exponential growth pattern is even more so: half a year ago in April, there were already 1.4 billion commits per month — a figure that rose to 2.9 billion in August, and now sits at 7.4 billion for September. GitHub saw 17.9 billion code pushes in the past 12 months, which is more than all of 2024 and 2025 put together.

Predictably, the company says that agentic AI is behind the dizzying rise in the amount of code, and the need for it to both upgrade and rethink its technological infrastructure. By last September, over 40% of pull requests were started by an agent, up from 17% in March 2026. Moreover, repositories that kick off using AI generally see eight times the activity compared to handcrafted operations.

All this code activity puts disproportionate strain on CI/CD pipelines. In modern development, whenever someone commits code or merges a pending pull request, many actions are triggered: for example, checking for leftover "to-do" items, visually arranging code for consistency (linting), and running code and integration tests to check that the new code doesn't break existing functionality within the application and works correctly with associated programs, services, and APIs.

Triggering all of the above for each commit and/or pull request means that GitHub's hardware requirements have ballooned, now requiring massive amounts of computing power and I/O. The rise was so intense that the firm even had to reengineer its backend to try to decouple storage from compute as much as possible. Given how quickly demand is rising, GitHub is likely to have to upgrade sooner rather than later.

A new "Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)" option has been spotted in a version of Windows 11 made available to Windows Insiders on October 23, with the feature set to enable a boost in application performance on compatible chips. At the moment, those chips don't exist. But when they do, this feature is the one that you'll want to flick on if you're using one of them. The new toggle was reported by Neowin after it was first spotted by a poster on the X social network. The feature debuted in build 29295 as an Experimental build, so it's unlikely that it will make its way to the version of publicly available Windows 11 anytime soon.

Intel announced APX back in 2023, confirming that it features 16 additional general-purpose registers and three-operand instruction formats with a new data destination register for many integer instructions. Doubling the number of general-purpose registers from 16 to 32 will allow code compiled with APX to run with 10% fewer loads and 20% fewer stores than Intel 64's baseline, says Intel. APX has been available in the GCC compiler since version 14, with subsequent versions up to GCC 17, which is targeting a 2027 code freeze, adding additional support. LLVM and MSVC have preliminary support, as well. Although enablement has been going steady for the past two years, developers will still need to recompile their applications with the proper flags for APX-capable CPUs to leverage those instructions.

Not that there's any real need to rush just yet. The fact that no APX-capable chips are on sale yet means that enabling the feature in Windows 11 build 29295 does nothing currently. But it's clear that Microsoft is getting its ducks in a row ahead of time. Intel's Nova Lake Core Ultra 400-series chips are expected to be the first to feature APX support, but they won't break cover until early 2027. Even then, it's likely that the 28-core version will debut first, with the 52-core model made to wait until later in the year. These are consumer chips, of course, with Intel's Xeon 7 'Diamond Rapids' bringing APX support and up to 256 cores to the data center, also in 2027.

The good news is that you might not have to buy a new chip to enjoy improved Windows 11 performance. Five years after Windows 11's debut, Microsoft has already said that it's working to make its operating system play more nicely with machines with just 8GB of RAM. But what Microsoft gives with one hand, it soon takes away: an expansion of the Windows 11 Memory Integrity feature will reduce gaming performance on some systems.

Professional Windows crusher NTDEV has showcased their next-generation tool for compressing Windows 11 into the tiniest of tiny installs. Based on their newest and unreleased Pico11, they managed to create a “proof of concept I put together to see how small I could make a Windows 11 ISO while keeping a working desktop and a few familiar apps.” Moreover, it’s a perfect installer to shove on a 700MB CD-ROM without wasting space, with this demo version weighing in at 699,811,840 bytes.

The test system (a VM with 4GB allocated) used around 883MB of RAM.

In the above video, NTDEV demos a freshly installed Windows 11 ISO that had been processed with Pico11. The desktop looks familiar to anyone currently using Windows 11. “Calculator and Settings still open, Notepad saves files, and Paint still lets me draw questionable logos,” highlights the dev. However, it is also pointed out that “Task Manager might look a little older than you remember.” The older Task Manager seems to be a lightweight legacy version. It may have been possibly swiped from Windows 7, but its exact origin isn’t divulged by NTDEV.

At this time, NTDEV admits what you see is “an experiment, not a replacement for a normal Windows installation,” and that’s mainly because Windows Update and general servicing have been removed to fit inside the constraints of CDR capacity. If you are interested in creating Windows installs like this, the good news is that NTDEV says they are working on adding what they describe as Pico11 capabilities to the Tiny11 builder tool, which you can find on GitHub.

Tiny11 has already demonstrated impressive Windows 11 ISO building capabilities with its Tiny11 mode, Tiny11 Core mode, and Custom mode. Pico11 sounds most closely related to Tiny11 Core as it eschews servicing and recovery support. However, there appears to be some more under-the-hood tweaking, which may have been evidenced in this new showcase by the presence of the older version of Task Manager.

Tiny11 has historically been responsible for even smaller Windows 11 installs, but the extreme 100MB distillation of the OS, for example, came without any Windows 11 UI. Builds could also be remarkable for using tiny amounts of RAM – as little as 176MB. More typical and useful were custom builds powered by Tiny11 where 'bloatware' was removed and that weighed in at around the 2GB mark.

Hopefully we will learn more about Pico11 and get greater insight into its capabilities soon.

Denmark’s Ministry of Digitization, which has since been merged with other ministries and is now called the Ministry for Research, Education, and Digitization, has reportedly ended its experiment to replace Microsoft Office with an open-source alternative. According to Danish publication Computerworld [machine translated], the pilot project was launched in 2025 and involved 38 employees, all of whom would start using the British open-source Collabora office suite instead of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

The experiment was initiated by the then Digitization Minister Caroline Stage, who wanted to reduce the country’s dependence on American technology. Denmark isn’t alone in moving away from U.S. software, with France and the Netherlands both taking steps to replace Microsoft Windows. However, it seemed that the experiment fizzled out less than six months after it started. It had reportedly ended by the time the Danish government called for an early election in February 2026, with some employees complaining about issues with style, paragraph formatting, blank pages, and challenges with tracking changes.

But even though it’s been months since the experiment reportedly ended, Prof. Mikkel Flyberbom of the Copenhagen Business School complains that the project hasn’t been properly evaluated. “It’s a good idea to test alternatives in a pilot project,” the professor said in an email. “However, I wish that the ministry would take the opportunity to learn from the pilot project and share those experiences with other parts of the public sector.”

The Microsoft Office alternative had to work with the then Ministry of Digitization’s central case management system called F2, but it’s unclear why it only chose Collabora for the project. While Collabora is based on LibreOffice, which is one of the most popular and mature open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s office suite, there are also several other alternatives it could have tested, like OnlyOffice, OpenOffice, and Calligra. There have also been recent attempts to use AI to create open-source versions of subscription-based software like Microsoft 365 and the Adobe Creative Suite, but governments would likely want to choose a reliable and stable build instead of these experimental AI-built apps.

It’s still a mystery why the Danish government chose to work with only open-source Microsoft Office alternatives in its testing. It probably would’ve been better if different teams used three alternatives and then the project proponents conducted a review after the testing period to determine the best solution. Nevertheless, the question is moot with the apparent failure of the open-source experiment.

Windows XP became available at retailers for the first time on this day back in 2001. It was ushered in with Microsoft's largest and glitziest launch event since Windows 95, but the bigger news was its delivery of an OS with modern underpinnings and features. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype and would ensure nearly 13 years of favor among enthusiasts, but that might be partly due to the failure of the unloved Vista.

The NYC launch event for Windows XP in 2001 was the centerpiece of a lavish $500 million campaign Microsoft had planned for the new OS. However, celebrations were somewhat muted due to the aftermath of 9/11. Microsoft actually dumped its intended ‘Prepare to Fly’ launch slogan for ‘Yes You Can’ for this obvious reason.

Nevertheless, the launch was still a significant event and featured NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joining Bill Gates on stage. Gates framed the big launch as evidence that “New York is back and open for business.” There was also a free lunchtime concert in Bryant Park featuring Sting, followed by a Times Square NYC takeover. Meanwhile, retail stores like CompUSA, Circuit City, and Best Buy opened at midnight for eager tech beavers to grab a copy of Windows XP at its freshest.

At the launch presentation, Gates said that the debut of Windows XP represented the end of the era of MS-DOS, which had underpinned a UI or shell known as Windows for many years. For consumers, that stretched all the way up to the much maligned Windows Me.

As we mentioned in our 40-year retrospective of Windows last year, Windows XP was the real ‘Start Me Up’ moment. That’s because it brought the Windows NT core to consumer PCs – replacing the archaic DOS and its restrictions and drivers. Thus, Windows XP would become well regarded for reliability, performance, and security (after a few teething troubles), and its new UI was claimed to make tasks 25% easier to complete, too.

Some of the technical features that would be widely welcomed in XP included USB plug-and-play support that worked, built-in CD burning software, and ClearType support as new LCDs started to usurp bulky CRTs on desks.

During Windows XP’s supported life (October 2001 to April 2014), there would be three major Service Pack (SP) releases. It also saw DirectX 8.1 to 9.0c arrive for gamers. In the meantime, Windows Vista made something of an unwanted splash, launched to consumers in January 2007. Windows XP’s lengthy extended support meant that folks could skip Vista entirely and move straight to Windows 7 when it hit retail and new-build systems in October 2009.

Overall, it is interesting to observe that Windows XP’s lifespan was actually over two years longer than Windows 10, which was (in)famously launched as “the last version of Windows.”

Proton AG, which provides privacy-focused services like Proton Mail and Proton VPN, has decided to host the Flock camera map that security researcher Joshua Michael built from leaked Flock data. While the original Flock Surveillance Map is still available online, its creator is facing legal threats from the company, especially after Flock sent the researcher a cease-and-desist letter. In addition, Michael’s website is accessible only from within the U.S., requiring users outside the country to use a VPN to access it.

By contrast, Proton’s Flock camera map is easily accessible worldwide. Its location in Switzerland also makes it a little more complicated for the surveillance company to take legal action. Its move to preserve Michael’s work also follows the company’s privacy ethos.

“You have a right to know who’s recording you when you leave home, especially when a private company controls the data and it’s unclear how law enforcement uses that information,” the company said. “This map lets you search by ZIP code to see where Flock’s license plate readers are located. Use it [to] make informed decisions about how you move through your own area and whether you need to reach out to your municipal leaders.”

Flock and other automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras are at the center of the privacy debate between law enforcement and citizens. While the former argues these machines help make communities safer, many of the latter worry about the technology's potential misuse. Their fears aren’t unfounded, either — there have already been multiple cases of police officers misusing Flock cameras to stalk romantic partners and even one case of mistaken identity due to a lapse in police procedure.

However, Proton’s map is based on data from November 2025. This makes it more of a snapshot of the company’s network at that time, rather than a live map of Flock’s ALPR cameras. For a more up-to-date map, consider downloading MapQuest, which recently released an update showing the locations of ALPR cameras from Flock and other companies. This could help you plan your trip if you have privacy concerns and want to avoid getting picked up by an ALPR camera.

While Windows overclockers have spent years lazily sliding UI controls to adjust frequency curves and tweak voltages inside Ryzen Master, Linux users have largely had to treat their CPU tuning like an archaeological dig into the opaque veil of UEFI/BIOS firmware. Well, rejoice, Linux users, as AMD has officially published a fresh set of patches for the Linux kernel introducing AOD (AMD Overclocking Driver) support for Ryzen processors, Phoronix reports.

Instead of forcing developers to reverse-engineer closed-source firmware hooks or rely on messy, machine-specific ACPI workarounds, this new kernel driver is a direct pipeline to AMD's platform adjustments. By exposing core tuning capabilities straight through the standard sysfs interface, AMD is laying down an official, upstreamed foundation for software-level CPU management.

Right out of the gate, the driver handles platform-level SMT toggling, memory clock visibility, and power tunables. That's right: you can now toggle Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) dynamically through this driver interface. That works through the CPU hotplugging mechanism and acts as a clean alternative to passing the old 'nosmt' boot parameter to the kernel. The new driver also allows real-time monitoring of memory clocks, and initial power controls are being wired up, too.

Now, if you're expecting a polished, one-click official AMD application equivalent to Ryzen Master for Linux, just pump the brakes. AMD is following its open-source amdgpu graphics driver playbook here, building the kernel plumbing and then leaving the user-space presentation layer entirely up to the community. That means you're going to have to wait for utilities like CoreCtrl to build out interfaces for this new driver, but it shouldn't be long now before that work gets underway in earnest.

This approach is arguably a better fit for the Linux philosophy anyway. Because the controls are being exposed via clean kernel sysfs nodes, it won't be long before independent developers integrate these knobs into powerhouse open-source monitoring and tuning suites, or even write dedicated desktop environment extensions specifically for the purpose of tweaking Ryzen processors.

The new patches are currently winding their way through review on the mailing lists, meaning mainstream kernel integration is on the horizon. For a DIY enthusiast who loves squeezing every last MHz out of silicon while maintaining a fully open-source software stack, this is easily the most exciting hardware-enablement milestone I've seen in a long time.

MapQuest, a long-time online mapping and navigation service that predates Google Maps, just released an app update that added a new Surveillance Layer. The company said on Bluesky that it plots the locations of known license plate readers on the map and that it covers devices from Flock, as well as other companies like Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other brands.

The Roads Have Eyes! 👁️Turn on the Surveillance Layer in Map Options to see known license plate readers from Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other outdoor surveillance cameras.

— @mapquest.com (@mapquest.com.bsky.social) 2026-10-18T02:31:11.890Z

It’s unclear how the app developers found all this data, but it is similar to the Flock Surveillance Map that one security researcher built using Flock’s own data. Beyond showing each camera's location, it also indicates the direction it faces, allowing anyone who doesn't want to be captured by an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) system to avoid known cameras, if possible.

While cities and police forces argue that systems like these help keep people safe by making it easier to track potential criminals, many people say that they’re a massive invasion of privacy, citing multiple incidents of police officers abusing the system and administrative mistakes, like one resulting in the detention of an innocent car reviewer. This is why some cities whose constituents have complained have started removing them.

A Canadian YouTuber built a “Flock-like” camera that tracked police vehicles and was visited by officers who, in an ironic twist, raised privacy concerns. These are the exact concerns critics have about ALPRs, especially when they connect to a wider federal or national system that lets police officers from another city or state track vehicles without a warrant. It’s unclear how police would react to this functionality, but many police departments have previously complained when Waze released a 2015 update that let users report officers' locations.

This new MapQuest feature can help you get around known ALPR camera locations. But if your destination has heavy camera coverage, you’ll have no choice but to pass through one and be detected, unless someone in the neighborhood has put a “Flock Sock” on one of them.

After a few revisions of his position on AI-assisted contributions to the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds has posted his own first LLM-assisted patch. The development branch purports to fix an old issue with massive cache contention when many CPUs are reading the same file — a scenario potentially encountered when using shared libraries, databases, and web servers. Several developers had already made attempts over the years at fixing the issue, all with varied results, none quite ideal as an all-encompassing solution.

Torvalds posted his own draft for solving the problem in early 2024, and has used it on his own laptop since that time. However, he recently took the plunge and decided to "try to actually solve this thing using an LLM." He's now posted his solution in a development branch, and claims that he's seen a 23x performance improvement in a dedicated synthetic benchmark, though he notes that actual real-world impact will be far less significant, as "no real load" will witness those figures. If we had to guess, this improvement would benefit server workloads far more than desktop machines.

Over time, Torvalds has broadly taken a pro-AI stance on LLM tooling, at least within the purview of the tightly controlled, review-heavy environment of the Linux kernel code. Last July, he stated he's "willing to absolutely put [his] foot down" on AI haters, pointing out that an automated code review tool the kernel team uses outperforms humans, and that it caught basic programming mistakes that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place.

The team is even changing its policy to no longer require that patch authors disclose they used an AI tool when generating their code. Torvalds once again took an assertive stance, reiterating that users should treat LLMs as yet another tool, likening it to compilers or editors. In his view, he simply expects that "people do their best and [...] understand what they are doing."

Some might say that few people in the world are better-suited to properly employ an LLM than Torvalds, and by extension, kernel maintainers. There's an entire universe of difference between a senior master programmer using the LLM to speed up the boring parts of his work, and some newbie with a credit card going "claude make linux faster plz no mistakes."

However, It's not all roses. Thanks to how adept AI agents have become at recognizing common security flaw patterns, the Linux security mailing list became "unmanageable" earlier in the year. Linux has been fixing CVEs at an astonishingly rapid pace of around 2,000 per release. Still, the team's hand is being forced into dropping older hardware drivers, as they're often the target of numerous security reports, despite their negligible install base.

We’ve been sharing our passion for technology with you for 30 years, and today we’re introducing a faster, easier way to access all of our content while on the go. The official Tom’s Hardware app is live now, available for free on Android and iOS devices, bringing all of our content to your pocket in a clean, responsive application that is optimized for smartphones and tablets. Whether you’re hunting for parts for your latest PC build, evaluating prebuilt PCs, tuning your system, or just want to know the latest breaking industry news, the Tom’s Hardware app has the features you need.

The smart search feature allows you to quickly search through the thousands of deep-dive articles in our library to easily find what you are looking for, while push notifications allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest breaking tech news. You can also personalize your feed based on your interests, honing in on the topics that matter to you most, as well as bookmark articles for later reading.

We’ve also brought the functionality of Bench, our benchmark analyzer tool that allows you to quickly compare our internal lab-tested benchmarks of CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and laptops to refine your purchasing decision. This database not only holds tens of thousands of benchmark data points, but it also has detailed product pages with specs and pricing information. The app offers limited free access to Bench, but you can unlock unlimited use with a subscription to our Tom’s Hardware Premium service.

You can also access our Tom’s Hardware Premium service on the app. This subscription-based service provides our readers with longer-form news, analysis, testing, and features for those who want to dig even deeper into our core coverage areas.

The Tom’s Hardware app is now available, free of charge, at the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Brandon Thomas, developer of ArtCraft, a suite of open-source creative tools meant to replicate Adobe applications for free, has now announced apps to replace Microsoft Office tools such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, respectively, named GridCraft, DeckCraft, and WordCraft, that are created with Claude. Thomas has shared his new clones to ArtCraft GitHub, making them free for all to download.

After our previous story covering ArtCraft, we have since discovered that u/ai_art_is_art is Brandon Thomas, a highly talented software engineer with 15 years of experience under his belt. After his ArtCraft project became popular, many criticisms followed about vibecoded software and AI slop, to which Brandon responded on his X account, saying that he does know how to code.

One of the biggest pain points for these software programs is OS compatibility, while Adobe runs on MacOS and Windows, Linux requires additional compatibility layers and Windows emulation to work. One of ArtCraft’s biggest selling points is being able to run all the software across all three platforms while still giving an identical user experience regardless of OS — this is also part of the parity that ArtCraft wants to achieve. While Google provides these tools for free with Google Sheets, Docs, and Slides available on all platforms through a browser, the online-only model takes away the ownership aspect of the software, fearing that one day the tools would suddenly require a subscription and users would not have any say in it.

Microsoft sits among the most criticized companies for its business practices, similar to Adobe. What was once a one-time purchase now comes as a subscription package with various tools that many don’t need; many even have overlapping features and uses, essentially wasting some of the subscription value. It seems that Brandon Thomas is not only creating open-source alternatives, but is also creating a targeted protest against these practices.

ArtCraft’s Discord community is also growing very quickly, with constant recommendations of other software they would like to see, with CADcraft being commonly discussed among 3D printing and engineering enthusiasts who don’t like Autodesk, similar to Microsoft and Adobe. As many free alternatives as there were before the rampant vibecoding, it seems that this growing collection of tools is not only functional, but a message to the large companies as well. Most of these apps are still far from what they intend to replace, however, so we'll have to see how deep this message cuts.

After the rough reception of Windows Vista, Windows 7 launched in 2009 to largely positive reviews. Even 17 years later, it remains one of the most beloved versions of Windows ever released. But how does this nearly two-decade-old operating system hold up on modern hardware? We managed to install Windows 7 on a modern PC and put it to the test across eight DirectX 11 games and two DirectX 9 titles to see how its gaming performance compares to Windows 11 today. Surprisingly, Windows 7 still carves out many notable wins over its successor.

At launch, Windows 7 was very similar to Windows Vista in many respects. Vista had introduced significant changes under the hood compared to Windows XP, including technologies such as SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, ReadyDrive, new asynchronous APIs, and other I/O improvements. It also introduced native processor power management and various memory-management enhancements. On the visual side, Vista was the first version of Windows to feature Windows Aero, with its distinctive glass-like window borders.

Windows 7 retained many of these underlying technologies while addressing several of Vista’s biggest criticisms. One notable improvement was greater control over User Account Control (UAC), allowing users to adjust how frequently they received UAC prompts. In Vista, these prompts could appear far too often, becoming a major source of frustration for many users.

Windows 7 also benefited from something that had nothing to do with the operating system itself: more powerful hardware. When Vista launched, many mid-range and budget PCs struggled to deliver smooth performance, particularly when using more demanding visual features such as Windows Aero. By 2009, however, PC hardware had advanced considerably, and the performance required to run these features smoothly was no longer a significant concern for most users.

The Challenge of Running Windows 7 on a Modern PC

Getting Windows 7 running on modern hardware is not as straightforward as installing a current version of Windows. At 17 years old, the operating system predates many of the technologies used by modern PCs, meaning driver support is extremely limited. For example, Windows 7 does not include native NVMe or USB 3.0 support, so the necessary drivers have to be slipstreamed into the installation ISO. Microsoft did eventually release patches that added NVMe support, but without injecting the appropriate drivers into the ISO, the Windows 7 installer will not recognize an NVMe drive.

Our system is based on AMD’s AM5 platform (with the full system specifications detailed later in the article), which presents another limitation: there are no official Windows 7 chipset drivers for the platform.

Fortunately, we are using an RDNA 2 GPU, which does have Windows 7 driver support, allowing us to use a relatively modern graphics card for our testing.

The motherboard is also an important consideration. Modern motherboards that have dropped CSM (Compatibility Support Module) and legacy boot support can make installing Windows 7 considerably more difficult, and in some cases may prevent the operating system from booting altogether. Fortunately, our motherboard still supports CSM, so this was not an issue for our setup.

Test System

Windows 7 system specs

• AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT
• Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• 64GB (2x32GB) G.SKILL Flare X5 DDR5 @6000 MHz CL30
• Seagate Lightsaber FireCuda (530) NVMe SSD
• ASUS ROG STRIX B850-F Gaming WiFi
• Corsair Nautilus 360 RS AIO Cooler
• HAGS not supported by driver
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
• AMD Adrenalin 22.6.1 for Windows 7 (2022)

Windows 11 system specs

• AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT
• Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• 64GB (2x32GB) G.SKILL Flare X5 DDR5 @6000 MHz CL30
• Seagate Lightsaber FireCuda (530) NVMe SSD
• ASUS ROG STRIX B850-F Gaming WiFi
• Corsair Nautilus 360 RS AIO Cooler
• HAGS not supported by driver
• Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.9278)
• AMD Adrenalin 22.6.1 for Windows 11 (2022)

For Windows 7, we disabled Secure Boot, enabled CSM, and set Boot Device Control to Legacy OPROM Only. Enabling CSM means that we no longer have access to Resizable BAR (it's not supported anyway). For Windows 11, we disabled VBS (Virtualization-Based Security) and HVCI (Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity).

It is important to note that while we used Adrenalin 22.6.1 for both Windows 11 and Windows 7 testing, the two packages contain different internal driver versions. Although both packages were released in June 2022, the Windows 11 driver is based on a more advanced codebase than the Windows 7 driver.

In both cases, we performed a clean install of each operating system and filled the SSD to about 50-60%.

Performance Testing

We tested ten games in total: eight using DirectX 11 and two using DirectX 9. The DirectX 11 titles are the primary focus, as both systems support them natively. By comparison, our Windows 11 system will run DirectX 9 games through the D3D9On12 mapping layer, while our Windows 7 system will run them natively. There are ways to get around the use of D3D9On12 on Windows 11, but we want to evaluate the out-of-the-box experience that most gamers would encounter. As a result, we expect Windows 7 to have an advantage in the DirectX 9 titles.

It will become apparent in the results below that the advantages of each operating system will vary depending on whether we are CPU-limited or GPU-limited.

Metro 2033 Redux (DX11)

Metro 2033 Redux was released in 2014 and features a new lighting engine, higher visual fidelity, and new locations for certain levels. The game is predominantly GPU-bound, but there are moments when GPU utilization drops sharply as you traverse the game world. At these points, the CPU becomes the limiting factor, resulting in a corresponding drop in performance.

Although Windows 11 delivers a higher average frame rate, Windows 7 handles the CPU-related performance drops much better, resulting in significantly stronger 1% lows. Installing the AMD chipset drivers and enabling Resizable BAR improves 1% lows on Windows 11 slightly, but it still falls well behind Windows 7.

Windows 11’s more advanced graphics driver appears to provide an advantage in GPU-limited scenarios, while Windows 7’s lower CPU overhead offers more consistent frame pacing, though with lower peak performance.

Batman: Arkham Origins (DX11)

Batman: Arkham Origins runs on a modified version of Unreal Engine 3 and uses several DX11 enhancements such as Tessellation, Ambient Occlusion HBAO+, Percentage Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS), and Depth of Field (DoF).

When CPU-limited at 1080p, Windows 7 once again puts in a strong showing, outperforming Windows 11 in both average frame rate and 1% lows. Surprisingly, Windows 7 also comes out ahead at 4K in Origins, though with a far smaller advantage. As we will see throughout the remainder of our testing, however, this is a rare occurrence. Even so, Windows 7 maintains a slight performance advantage over Windows 11 at 4K in this title.

Batman: Arkham Knight (DX11)

Batman: Arkham Knight was both a critical and commercial success, despite a notoriously troubled PC launch plagued by severe bugs and major performance issues. Visually, however, the game still holds up remarkably well, and modern hardware is more than capable of brute-forcing this demanding PC port.

Windows 7 again delivers higher performance at 1080p when we are CPU-limited. Windows 11 jumps ahead when we become GPU-limited at 1440p and 4K.

Batman: Arkham City (DX11)

Batman: Arkham City was the second entry in the series, following Arkham Asylum, and the first to support DirectX 11. This introduced features such as tessellation, which adds greater geometric detail to characters and environments.

In Arkham City, our system is GPU-bound at every resolution tested, giving Windows 11 the advantage across the board.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (DX11)

The Witcher 3 faced some controversy at launch over reductions in image quality compared to its initial reveal. CD Projekt Red quickly released a patch addressing these concerns and improving the game’s visuals. From a performance perspective, however, the game was extremely demanding at launch.

While the game is very GPU bound in general, at 1080p we did encounter a slight CPU bottleneck, which gave Windows 7 an advantage in 1% lows. At 1440p and 4K, Windows 11 takes a slight lead.

Control (DX11)

Control is the newest title we tested for this comparison, having launched in 2019. While the game introduced several ray tracing features, these were exclusive to the DirectX 12 API. Since Windows 7 does not support DirectX 12, we tested Control using DirectX 11 on both operating systems. Even without ray tracing, Control remains the most graphically advanced title in our Windows 11 vs Windows 7 comparison.

Windows 11 wins across the board. This is not a surprise, as we are GPU-limited across all resolutions tested.

Hitman: Absolution (DX11)

Hitman: Absolution was released in 2012 and was the first game to use the Glacier 2 engine. The updated engine could handle crowds of up to 1200 characters, which was unprecedented at the time. The game also featured several DirectX 11 enhancements, including global illumination and tessellation.

This is another game that pushes the GPU hard, regardless of resolution. Our test system was GPU-limited even at 1080p.

Hitman 2 (DX11)

Hitman 2 was released in 2018, making it the second-newest game in our operating system comparison. It features detailed environments, dense crowds, and full reflections across many surfaces, making it an impressive-looking title overall.

Hitman 2 is another example where our test system is GPU-limited at every resolution, giving Windows 11 a clean sweep across the board.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (DX9)

We now move to our first DirectX 9 game. As previously mentioned, Windows 7 should have an advantage here because our Windows 11 system must use the D3D9On12 mapping layer for DirectX 11 games. But just how much of an advantage?

Significant advantages for Windows 7 in average frame rate and 1% lows, especially at 1080p and 1440p. The advantage is reduced at 4K, but the performance is still smoother overall in Windows 7. Another translation layer, such as DXVK, may close the gap.

Borderlands 2 (DX9)

Borderlands 2 is our second DirectX 9 game and the final overall game tested.

Once again, another massive win for Windows 7 at the lower resolutions. The performance at 4K is virtually identical.

Bottom Line

Windows 11 is optimized for GPU-hungry games

The results are interesting, but perhaps not entirely surprising. The DirectX 9 results are largely in line with our expectations, given that Windows 11 must run these games through the D3D9On12 mapping layer, yielding substantial advantages for Windows 7.

The DirectX 11 results are more nuanced, but a clear trend emerges: Windows 7 has the advantage when we are CPU-limited, while Windows 11 performs better when we are GPU-limited. This makes sense given that Windows 11 uses graphics drivers built on a more advanced codebase, while Windows 7 is a leaner operating system with fewer background processes and, consequently, lower CPU overhead.

Microsoft has recently detailed its K2 plan, which aims to improve the performance and reliability of Windows 11. We hope these continued efforts to improve Windows 11 pay off.

The lower CPU performance we observed in Windows 11 cannot be attributed to its most notable security features, such as VBS (Virtualization-Based Security) and HVCI (Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity), as we disabled both during testing. Notably, Windows 7 does not support VBS or HVCI at the software level, while Windows 11 supports hardware virtualization extensions (such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V) and Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). Additionally, fixed-function hardware can reduce the impact of virtualization to varying degrees, based on the CPU architecture's capabilities. However, additional telemetry and other background services still pop up and use precious CPU cycles.

Using the latest chipset drivers and enabling features such as Resizable BAR does not help Windows 11 close the gap in CPU-limited scenarios by any significant margin. Ultimately, we would like to see Windows 11 become leaner and more efficient, as our results suggest there is still some performance left on the table, particularly on the CPU side.

Microsoft just made a major change to its storage policy affecting Microsoft 365 subscribers with shared accounts. According to the company, the Microsoft 365 Family, Premium, and Pro plans will move from an assigned 1TB of cloud storage for each user to a shared 2TB for all users. This means that a subscription shared across six users will have its total cloud storage capacity slashed by 66.6%. This change will take effect on subscription renewals after May 2, 2027, unless the subscribers change their plan earlier. Some affected subscribers might also receive bonus storage when their account switches to the share limit model, although the company did not mention its eligibility requirements.

The company said it made this change so that the cloud storage allocation for Microsoft 365 subscribers will automatically go where it’s needed, and that individual users are less likely to hit individual storage limits. Aside from that, it also said that unused storage can benefit the entire family, and that any additional storage that the main subscriber purchases will benefit everyone.

This new setup is indeed advantageous for subscribers who only have one power user that uses up the majority of the cloud storage capacity, while all the rest take up a fraction. It would also be cheaper for an individual who intends to use more than 1TB of cloud storage to just switch to the Microsoft 365 Family plan (which costs $129.99 annually) instead of getting the Microsoft 365 Personal plan ($99.99 annually) and paying an extra $9.99 per month or $119.88 per year to bring their total cloud storage capacity to 2TB. However, if you have four users under one account using 500GB each, you will be forced to purchase additional capacity, starting at $1.99 per month for 200GB.

While Microsoft hasn’t increased the prices of its subscription, this move simultaneously reduces the burden on its storage servers while forcing accounts with multiple large users to purchase storage separately. This seems like a reaction to the storage shortage hitting the industry, with hard drive prices surging by 46% from September 2025 to January 2026. Enterprise SSDs have been hit hard, too, with 30TB drives now costing $22,600 while supply remains sold out until 2027.

Affected users could change their cloud storage providers, but even Google has been affected, with the company cutting the free cloud storage limit from 15GB to 5GB pending extra security measures. Even Backblaze, which offers “unlimited” backups, updated its terms of service to potentially throttle or terminate accounts that exceed “typical usage patterns” or “places an undue burden.” Users who have grown tired of paying monthly to secure their data could alternatively set up a NAS and populate it with the best hard drives — although this might be pricey in the short term and requires some setup, it could potentially save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the long run.