Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s Netflix-like video games subscription service is already a great way to try new games on Xbox One, but Microsoft is now leveraging its Microsoft Rewards program to encourage even more discovery. The company has just announced seven Xbox Game Pass quests for January, which will allow gamers to earn Microsoft Rewards points by playing any game in the catalog.

“Members can earn up to 2100 Microsoft Rewards points by playing any game from the Xbox Game Pass catalog. It’s easy to rack up points that you can spend towards your membership or DLC for your favorite games — just play the games you love and watch your rewards grow,” the blog post on Xbox Wire reads.

Three of the seven Xbox Game Pass quests for January will require you to play Tom Clancy’s The Division, Strange Brigade and the two Metro Redux games, but the four other quests can make you earn Microsoft Rewards points by playing any game in the catalog. You can find the full details about the different quests below:

• Extraction Expert: Complete two specific extraction achievements in Tom Clancy’s The Division to get up to 200 points. You earn points with each achievement. Complete this before January 31.
• Metro Redux: Play Metro 2033 Redux and Metro: Last Light Redux to complete four specific achievements and get up to 200 points. You earn points with each achievement.
• Adventurer: Bring out your inner adventurer and get up to 200 points when you complete two specific achievements in Strange Brigade. You earn points with each achievement.
• Achievement Hunter: Get points with your first achievement and continue to complete up to 21 achievements in any combination of Xbox Game Pass games to get a maximum of 600 points.
• Genre Explorer: Get 300 points when you complete an achievement in three games from different genres.
• Play something new: Complete an achievement in a Xbox Game Pass title that was added in December to get 100 points.
• Quest Master: Complete all Xbox Game Pass quests to get an additional 500 points.

This kind of synergy is a pretty great way to encourage Xbox gamers to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass and spend more time playing and discovering new games. Since Xbox Game Pass launched back in June 2017, Microsoft has observed that “members increase their total time gaming on Xbox by almost 20% more than before and are also increasing their total number of games played by almost 40%, including titles outside the Xbox Game Pass catalog.”

Unfortunately, Xbox Game Pass quests are restricted to the US for now, but it’s apparently not a limited-time experiment. “We’ll have new quests lined up every month and will unlock the next set of quests on February 4,” the company said today. If you live in the US, you can head to the Xbox Game Pass membership area on your Xbox One console to check out your quests and start earning those Microsoft Rewards points.

Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork in Office 365, is getting three new capabilities to help Firstline Workers be more productive, the company announced today. The first new feature is a customizable Teams mobile experience, which will allow IT administrators to enable specific features like location sharing, the ability to record and share audio messages, as well as a “smart camera.”

This customizable Teams mobile experience is available starting today, and this is all about giving Firstline Workers easier access to the tools they really need. “This capability can be used for employees in any role, with the option for IT to create a custom policy or use the newly available Firstline Worker configuration policy template. Employees can further customize their experience by pinning the modules they need most from their module tray to their navigation bar,” explained Emma Williams, Corporate Vice President of Modern Workplace Verticals.

The second new feature that Microsoft announced today is Shifts, a schedule management tool that is now available for all customers. With Shifts, managers will be able to plan shift schedules that team members can access right within the app, with the ability for Firstline Workers to make schedule change requests. The Graph API for Shifts, which will enter public preview this quarter will also allow integrations between Shifts and enterprise scheduling systems.

Lastly, Microsoft Teams is getting a new Praise feature that looks like a mix of LinkedIn recommendations and modern gamifications systems. With this new Praise tool, managers will be able to send praise to employees by using different badges such as “Problem Solver,” “Team Player,” and more, and all badges will be viewable by team members

“Firstline Workers such as retail associates play a key role in representing a company’s brand, but this segment of the workforce experiences some of the highest turnover rates. Taking steps to engage and recognize employees can go a long way to improving their satisfaction and reducing turnover,” explained Williams. This new Praise tool will roll out later this quarter.

This week’s Deals With Gold and Spotlight sales are now online on Microsoft’s Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles with a massive list of video games being given discounts from just 10% all the way to 85%.

Among the best discounts on the Xbox One are Alekhine’s Gun (with 75% off), Battle Worlds: Kronos (85%), Darksiders III – Deluxe Edition (25%), Dead Alliance (75%), Dex (85%), Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (75%), Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty – Deluxe Edition (75%), The Surge (75%), and We Sing Pop (85%).

Worthwhile discounts on the Xbox 360 include Darksiders II (85% off), Deadfall Adventures (85%), Destroy All Humans! (85%), MX Unleashed (85%), Red Faction: Armageddon (85%), and Zombie Driver (85%).

The full list of discounted games can be viewed within the Store section on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One console. Note that the Deals With Gold games require an active Xbox Live Gold description to receive the discount. The individual product pages for each game will mention what sort of discount is available.

Are you going to buy any Xbox video games this week? Share your purchases with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

An image of a newly discovered Chinese tomb, which bears a remarkable resemblance to Microsoft’s Xbox logo, was posted on Twitter by user, Xbao, earlier this week. The image quickly garnered a lot of attention from gamers and even received a response from the official Xbox account which jokingly replied, “Ah yes, that’s the Xbox 220 BC.”

Ah yes, that's the Xbox 220 BC.

— Xbox (@Xbox) January 7, 2019

While such an image could easily be faked, it appears to be authentic and is taken from a CCTV10 video on the Chinese social network, Weibo.

The official description for the video describes it as the unearthing of a mysterious pre-Qin dynasty tomb and the Chinese viewers in the comments also appear to have caught the similarities between it and the Xbox logo with some joking about it being a paid sponsorship.

Amusingly, the official Xbox China Weibo commented with just “…..” which is currently the most-upvoted comment on the video.

Want more Xbox content like this? Make sure to check out our Xbox One coverage here and then follow us on Pinterest for all the latest Xbox gaming news.

Like other PC manufacturers, Dell unveiled a handful of new laptops for consumers and businesses during CES 2019 that included an update to its Latitude line up with a new frost white casing as well as a new XPS 13 housing a quad-core 8th generation Intel processor and two Inspiron 7000’s with Active Pens included and 13-inch and 15-inch display options.

However, Dell may be the only company producing a relatively modular laptop in its Alienware line up in 2019.

Alongside its Alienware Legend PC for 2019, Dell is introducing the Alienware Area-51m. Described as “the world’s most powerful 17-inch gaming laptop”, when fully tricked out, the 51m is Dell’s flagship gaming laptop with upgradable graphics and processors and holds the title as being the only laptop housing a 9th Generation 8-core desktop processor.

Other 51m features include stock 64GB of memory, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet technology, narrow bezel display, and a significant 50 percent increase in performance due in part to it’s cutting-edge thermal and cooling technology.

The Alienware Area-51m starts at $2,549 and should be going on sale around January 29, 2019.

Dell also announced its Alienware m15 and m17 this year that sport lightweight 17-inch gaming chassis for relative portability. The m15 weighs about 4.76lbs for the m15 and 5.79 for the m17 variants while both house the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series GPU, Cryo-Tech Cooling technology and 8th generation Core i5 and i7 option.

The m15 and m17 will be available January 29, 2019, starting at $1,379.99 and $1,649.99 respectively.

While not traditionally known as a purveyor of clocks and smart screens, Lenovo is joining the parade of manufacturers who are building out connect experiences through platform flexible digital assistants.

New at CES 2019 are three digital assistants powered Lenovo devices called the Lenovo Smart Clock, Lenovo Smart Tab M10 and P10. The Smart Clock makes use of Google Assistant while the Smart Tab M10 and P10 use Amazon’s Alexa assistant.

Lenovo Smart Clock with the Google Assistant

Price: $79.99 Available: Spring 2019

Similar to Google’s Home Hub, the Lenovo Smart Clock comes with particularly soft fabric-covered exterior and four inch-IPS screen. Lenovo designed the Smart Clock with nightstands in mind as the clock “delivers visual experiences when you wake up, and when you’re ready for sleep.”

In addition to looking a lot like the Google Home Hub, the Smart Clock also operates in a similar fashion with support for Google’s Assistant’s gentle wake-up routine, “Hey Google” voice commands for alarms, music play, and calendar management.

Powering the audio on this tiny bedside device are a full-range 6W speaker and two passive radiators tuned with Dolby’s background noise reduction.

While intended for the nightstand, the Smart Clock can also function as a home hub with hands-free voice support for playing audio across multiple devices in separate rooms with Chromecast.

Lenovo Smart Tab M19 and P10 with Amazon Alexa

Price: M10 $199, P10 $249 Available: January

The Lenovo Smart Tab is as described, an Android tablet that converts from a handheld experience to a Smart Screen via Lenovo’s Smart Dock technology.

Both the M10 and the P10 come with FHD multitouch displays, a Snapdragon 450 processor, up to 4GB of RAM and 32 GB storage capacity.

Additional features include Dolby Atmos support on the tablets as well as Lenovo’s Smart Dock that also houses dual 3-watt full range speakers for music streaming and video watching as well as 3 far-field microphones for better voice recognition.

For $199 US, the M10 offers a max of 3GB of memory, 32GB of storage, a smaller battery at 4850 mAh, and fewer sensors and lower resolution camera options.

However, shelling out an additional $100 for the P10 gets buyers 4GB of memory, 64GB of storage, larger 7000 mAh battery, 4 front facing speakers (instead of 2), higher resolution cameras as well as a fingerprint reader for security.

Lenovo’s accessories development has shown some tremendous growth in 2019 and it’ll be interesting to see how its new products trickle into the home and workspaces of its customers in 2019.

Microsoft has announced an important change regarding Windows 10 and reserved storage yesterday. Starting with the next Windows 10 update, which Microsoft explicitly named “1903” in the blog post (this is a first, to our knowledge), the desktop OS will now reserve disk space for OS updates, apps, temporary files, and caches. For the most part, this is about helping users to install system updates without having first to free up space on their PCs.

“Reserved storage will be introduced automatically on devices that come with version 1903 pre-installed or those where 1903 was clean installed,” wrote Jesse Rajwan, Program Manager at Microsoft. When reserved storage is enabled, it should take around 7GB of disk space, though Microsoft noted that the amount of storage will vary over time depending on optional features and installed languages that users choose..

Here is how the feature will work on Windows 10 version 1903:

Every update temporarily requires some free disk space to download and install. On devices with reserved storage, update will use the reserved space first. When it’s time for an update, the temporary unneeded OS files in the reserved storage will be deleted and update will use the full reserve area. This will enable most PCs to download and install an update without having to free up any of your disk space, even when you have minimal free disk space. If for some reason Windows update needs more space than is reserved, it will automatically use other available free space. If that’s not enough, Windows will guide you through steps to temporarily extend your hard disk with external storage, such as with a USB stick, or how to free up disk space.

If you want to enable Reserved storage on your PC, you’ll need to be running Windows 10 Insider build 18298 or higher. The feature is actually hidden for now, but you can enable it in the Registry Editor and it will light up after you upgrade your PC to the next available build. You can get more details about how to turn on reserved storage by following this quest on the Windows 10 Feedback Hub.

Reserved storage should be a useful feature for most consumers, but it may be somewhat problematic on PCs with just 64GB of storage or less. “Over the last several releases we’ve reduced the size of Windows for most customers,” explained Rajwan. “We may adjust the size of reserved storage in the future based on diagnostic data or feedback,” he added.

Microsoft Planner, the company’s visual tool for organizing team work is now available for US Government cloud customers. The Trello competitor is now included with Microsoft 365 Government GCC and Microsoft 365 Government GCC High, with Microsoft 365 Government DoD coming soon.

“Since Planner first launched, we’ve heard a ton of interest and excitement from US government customers for a tool like Planner. End users in government agencies, from state and local to federal organizations, wanted a simple, intuitive, and collaborative task management tool to help them visually organize their team’s work. IT admins wanted to provide their users with a simple work management solution while still meeting the strict security and compliance requirements of the US government. We’ve been hard at work to make sure Planner would do both,” wrote Eray Chou, PM on the Planner and Project team.

For now, a couple of Planner features including Microsoft Teams integration, SharePoint integration and email notifications aren’t available for US Government customers, but Microsoft plans to add them later this year. “New Planner features will arrive in Microsoft 365 commercial cloud first and in US government cloud offerings shortly thereafter due to increased audit and certification requirements,” explained Chou.

Samsung has arguably gone back to the drawing board for its 2019 lineup of laptops, incorporating diamond cut re-designs and unique textile-patterned chassis.

During CES 2019, Samsung unveiled two new notebooks; a business-oriented Samsung Notebooks 9 Pro and a Gigabit-Wifi enabled Samsung Notebook Flash..

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro

Available: Early 2019

As the title would imply, this is the iteration of the Notebook Pro but brings a new redesign to the product line. With a cool metal exterior making use of diamond-cut edges that leave ridges along the length of the device, the Samsung Notebook 9 is now easier to handle and open in day to day use.

Aside from the aesthetic changes, that include reduced bezels on the screen, customized LED Indicator Bar and a more MacBook like keyboard re-design, the Notebook Pro 9 brings the industry standard 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 250GB of PCIe NVMe storage, active pen, fingerprint reader all in a 2.84lb package.

Samsung is claiming that the Notebook 9 Pro will get up to 14 hours of battery life running Windows 10 Home, presumably using synthetic benchmarking.

As a 3-in-1 device, Samsung including its Active Pen and additional S-Pen like technology in the Notebook 9 Pro is definitely noteworthy as Samsung’s Active Pen supports up to 4,000 levels of pressure sensitivity, making this device every bit as competent as a Surface Pro or iPad for creative tasks.

Samsung Notebook Flash

Available: Early 2019

Alongside its Pro offering, Samsung is testing the waters of Always Connected PC’s with its Gigabit-Wifi enabled Samsung Notebook Flash.

The new laptop, offered in charcoal grey, is making use of a unique textile-patterned chassis, similar to the Surface Pro Laptops, for its 13.3-inch screen and Samsung ‘typewriter keyboard’.

Unlike other recent PC offerings, the Flash falls short on the grandiose battery claims only sporting 10-hour battery capacity.

The Flash represents Samsungs lower tier offering but still packs plenty of useful everyday necessities such as two USB-C ports, Fingerprint reader, and 1920 x 1080 anti-glare 13.3 FHD LED display.

Samsung has already unveiled a slew of monitors, TV displays and connected speakers at this years CES, but we’re expecting to see a few more items presented by the company in the coming days.

It seems Razer is ready to ship its keyboard and mouse combo for couch gamers later today, as the company announced availability at  CES 2019  earlier today according to a report from Windows Central. The Razer Turret also saw its way to the Microsoft Store in the form of a pre-order last month, and is expected to begin shipping at the end of March. However, it might be possible Razer wants to give a few units to gamers early by opening orders on its website.

The Razer Turret has been specifically designed for Xbox One gamers in mind, now that the console now supports fifteen games that have can take advantage of the new(ish) available input method for the latest consoles. Xbox One enhanced experiences include a dedicated Xbox key, which allows users to open the Xbox menu to access games, settings, and to turn off the console, and “Xbox Dynamic Lighting,” which changes the colors of the keys depending on the action happening in the supported game. Moreover, it should also work on just about any device that supports keyboard and mice, including Windows 10.

As we have already mentioned, as many as fifteen games on the Xbox One gained support for keyboards and mice on the Xbox One, The list includes games such as Fortnite, PUBG, Warframe, and The Sims. However Windows Central also pointed out the presence of a few new titles were gaining support for it, including Gears of War, The Sims 4, Roblox, Sea of Thieves, and Surviving Mars. Minecraft has had support since 2017 due to the high volume of requests for the feature.

Absolver is finally available to play on the Xbox One beginning today. The game is an online multiplayer action title with a heavy focus on fighting style variety and flow in battle. Absolver is also an Xbox One X Enhanced video game and will play in 4K resolution when played on Microsoft’s Xbox One X console.

Here’s the official game description and trailer:

Absolver is an online multiplayer combat experience where players are placed behind the mask of a Prospect by the ever-present Guides, the new rulers of the fallen Adal Empire that will determine your worth in joining their elite corps of enforcers. Prospects will wander forsaken lands, encountering others to learn new combat skills, acquire weapons and armor, and engage in solo duels and intense three-on-three battles.

Players will define their Prospect’s approach by picking a combat style, a weapon of choice, and arranging attacks in their Combat Deck to design their unique and personal attack flow. Through battle with opponents, sparing with friends, and even taking on a mentor players will expand their knowledge and mastery of combat with new moves, weapons, and armor on their journey to Absolution. Gameplay modes include solo play, online cooperative modes, and online versus modes.

In addition to launching on Xbox One consoles for general sale today, Absolver is also available to play for free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s Netflix-like monthly video game subscription service.

Have you been waiting to play Absolver on Xbox One? Let us know why or why not in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

Download
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Absolver

Developer:
Devolver Digital

Price:
$29.99

Despite Lenovo’s chief association being the enterprise solutions and utility company, the PC manufacturer continues to exert itself in the PC gaming community with industry-competitive software, laptops, desktops, and accessories.

Alongside its Yoga and ThinkPad lines, Lenovo is also unveiling its 2019 edition of Legion gaming hardware that includes a new 17-inch, 144hz laptop with NVIDIA G-SYNC support and Super-wide 43.4-inch borderless gaming monitor, among other offerings.

Lenovo Legion Y740

Starting at 15″ $1749.99 – 17″ $1979.99 Available: February 2019

In 2019, the Lenovo Legion Y7 series is getting updated with 8th generation Intel Core CPUs, a yet unannounced NVIDIA GeForce GPU, brighter 500 nits custom Dolby Vision HDR panels, improved 144hz refresh rate displays, and narrower 6.7mm bezels among other improvements.

Lenovo Legion Y540

Starting at $929.99 Available: May 2019

For the gamer on a slightly reduced budget, Lenovo is updating its Y5 series with similar NVIDIA GeForce GPU support, Intel Core processors, narrower 6.7mm bezels but also including Harman Speakers with Dolby Atmos Audio, improved Legion Coldfront Cooling System and an improved aluminum display hinge for more panel stability.

Lenovo Legion Y44w Monitor

Price: $1199.99 Available: April 2019

Lenovo is also rolling out a bundle of new gaming-focused display monitors and chief among them is the new Legion Y44w monitor.

The Y44w is a Super-wide 43.4 borderless display with a similar 144Hz refresh rate as the laptop offerings but also has a minimal 4ms response time for reduced streaking and ghosting.

Other features include support for AMD FreeSync technology, USB Type-C supported port option, Picture-by-picture management, and an optional detachable Harmon Kardon speaker.

Lenovo Legion Y27gq Monitor

Starting at $999.99 Available: April 2019

Offers similar gaming features as Lenovo’s 2019 flagship display but at a reduced price tag. For $999.99, gamers can grab the Legion Y27gq Monitor with detachable Harmon Kardon speaker, borderless 27″ QHD display with anti-glare finish and latest NVIDIA G-Sync and R3 technology.

While gamers might lose out on the 144Hz refresh rate that the Y44 monitor offers, the Y27gq does provide a 90% DCI-P3 color gamut and audio combo jack for those necessary isolationist gaming moments.

Legion H500 7.1 Pro Gaming Headset

Price: $99.99 Available April 2019

With gaming headsets inching toward the $200.00 marker, it’s nice to see Lenovo offering a lightweight pair of over-the-ear headphones with 20 Hz – 20 kHz earphone frequency range and 100Hz – 10kHz microphone frequencies as well as driverless 7.1 surround sound and passive noise canceling retractable microphone.

The H500 7.1 also offers both USB and 3.5mm connections and rotatable ear cups with cushioned PU leather for comfort.

Lenovo Legion H30 Gaming Headset

Price $59.99 Available: April 2019

The Legion H30’s offer passive noise canceling retractable microphones, in-line analog audio controls, rotatable ear cups and Lenovo’s soft cushioned PU leather casing all for under $60.00.

Lenovo Legion K500 RGB Mechanical Keyboard

Price: $99.99 Available: April 2019

Just as vital as the PC, Lenovo is paying customer service to its keyboard offerings with a new minimalist RGB mechanical keyboard. The K500 includes dedicated media keys, detachable textured palm rest and 104 keys anti-ghosting keyboard with the support of 16.8M colors on a 3 zone customizable RGB board.

The keyboard does weigh a hefty 2.45lbs despite its slimmer footprint.

Lenovo Legion M500 RGB Gaming Mouse

Price: $59.99 Available: April 2019

Alongside the keyboard, Lenovo is providing a customizable gaming mouse with advance Pixart 16,000 DPI resolution sensor, Omron mechanical switches and colorful 3 zone RGB lighting.

Other features include an adjustable weight cartridge, easy on-the-fly DPI switch and 7 customizable programmable buttons, all for $59.99.

While not as high profile as the PlayStation or Xbox brands, Lenovo’s Legion hardware is very well known quantity in the gaming community and 2019’s lineup looks to only expand the manufactures cache in th industry.

Over the past 48 hours, companies such as HP, Asus, Acer, LG, Samsung, and Dell have unloaded their laundry list of wares on to the Consumer Electronics Showcase floor that includes everything from portable Surface Pro-like gaming rigs to 75-inch bezel-less wall-mounted displays.

Not to be outdone by the competition, Lenovo is now set to unveil its slew of products to help improve the average and niche workspaces.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Starting at: $1709.00 Available: June 2019

Once again, Lenovo is rolling out its ThinkPad X1 Carbon device but with specs for the 2019 customer. This year, customers are being treated to a ThinkPad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) starting at around $1709.00 in the US. For the relatively hefty price tag, buyers have gifted a laptop with a new woven carbon fiber finish option in addition to the slate black, thinner (14.95mm) hardware footprint with Intel’s latest 8th Gen processors and new RGB & IR camera with the increasingly popular ThinkShutter switch.

ThinkPad X1 Yoga

Price: $1929.00 Available: June 2019

A new 4th generation ThinkPad Yoga is also making a debut and bringing a device with a 17% smaller footprint than last year, new CNC aluminum chassis covered in Iron Grey, 11% slimmer bezels around the screen and up to 500 nits of brightness across a 4K panel.

The X1 Yoga also comes with industry standard 8th Gen Intel processor, Dolby Atmos support, RBG color calibration and backlit keyboard.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (6th Gen)

Starting at $1929.00 Available: June 2018

Technically introduced last June, Lenovo is reannouncing its ThinkPad X1 Yoga 6th, Gen, on the 2019 CES floor. Not much has changed from its initial unveiling that included a 14″ FHD IPS Touch panel, up to 16GB LP DDR3 RAM, up 2 TB PCIe SSD, Dolby Atmos Sound System, and Fingerprint and IR Camera biometric authentication options.

ThinkVision P44W

Price $1299.00 Available: April

Connecting to Lenovo’s new breed of laptops and tower PCs is the dual screen ThinkVision P44W that offers an immersive 32:10 aspect ratio with HDR400 certification, smooth 144Hz refresh rate and 4ms response time as well as support for the latest AMD FreeSync technology.

Other P44W features include USB Type-C connectivity, dual video input management, detachable Harmon Kardon certified speakers and a hidden USB Hub called ‘Push n Push.’ The P44W will also offer up to 99% sRGB, BT.709, and DCI-P3 color accuracies.

Lenovo VoIP 360 Camera Speaker

Price: $249.99 Available: March 2019

Shift just a bit away from more traditional desktop offerings, Lenovo is rolling out a new portable 360-degree camera and speaker device for cleaner on-the-go video conferencing.

The new VoIP 360 Camera Speaker looks like a desktop speaker but packs noise cancellation (AEC) and noise suppression (ENS) technologies as well Plug and Play connectivity with support for USB-C. In addition to the obvious Skype support, Lenovo’s little conference speaker and camera also support Jabber, Webex, Google Hangouts and QQ out of the box. Standing only 3.5 inches tall, the new speaker packs a lot of convenience into this speaker-looking accessories.

Lenovo 700 Ultra-portable Bluetooth Speaker

Price: $249.99 Available: April 2019

Lenovo is offering an actual Bluetooth speaker to accompany the faux-speaker looking VoIP camera. The Lenovo 700 comes with a rechargeable battery that Lenovo claims up 8hrs of continuous playback.

Perhaps, more important than the length of the playback is support for the new Bluetooth 5.0 technology as well as USB-C. The Lenovo 700 also houses quick charge technology and can fully charge the speaker in as little as 2 hours and comes with IPX2 splash-proof water resistance.

Lenovo Powered USB-C Travel Hub

Price: $79.99 Available: January 2019

As the tech industry continues to move towards a USB Type C powered future, Lenovo is aiming to help its customers with the transition by providing a new USB-C travel hub (dongle).

The new dongle comes with six port connections that include: HDMI, VGA, RJ45 Network, Two USB-A, and an additional USB-C connector. At only 1/4 of a pound and ‘hideaway’ wrap cable, the Travel Hub becomes the perfect travel accessory for anyone who needs the functionality of their docking station but doesn’t have the room in their bag.

Lenovo is set to unveil even more on the CES show floor but for businesses, these new laptops and accessories are big news and should be gracing desktops, travel bags and conference rooms in the near future.

Our friend Michael Gillett, who created WallpaperHub.app, a repository for Microsoft-centric wallpapers in a variety of themes and sizes, has just introduced a fun new addition, one he calls Bliss at Night. As you can see in the Featured Image above, the wallpaper is a riff on the classic “Bliss” wallpaper from back in the glory days of Windows XP.

We had a quick chat on Twitter with Michael (who as you may know created our Office 365-inspired social media icons), and he had this to say:

(N)ow that there’s going to be a light and dark theme throughout Windows I think there should be versions of the default wallpapers to match (maybe like the new macOS feature)

If you’re a classic Windows enthusiast as well as a dark theme type, head over to Wallpaperhub.app and download your favorite size, and while you’re at it, check out Michael’s great collection of Windows wallpapers, including favorites from Bing, some great Surface wallpapers, and some original images sure to capture your imagination.

Good job, Michael!

In 2018 it was reported that Microsoft had entered into a partnership with Walmart, arguably one of the largest retail chains in the US.

The partnership between Microsoft and Walmart is designed to help move Walmart’s digital communications and operations onto Microsoft’s Azure platform and services while offering Microsoft the opportunity to test the scalability of its cloud platform.

The Walmart and Microsoft partnership arguably also signifies the need of Microsoft’s modernization tools for two to keep pace with the rapidly evolving retail changes put forth by Amazon and Google.

As of January 7, 2019, Microsoft will once again be testing the elasticity of its Azure cloud as it partners with Kroger, America’s largest grocery retailer and global technology company on two new pilot connected experiences.

In a press release provided by Microsoft, the company details the nature of the new Kroger partnership as well as some of the desired outcomes.

Transformative customer experiences
By using Microsoft Azure to store and process the data generated in stores, near the smart shelves and on Kroger’s app, the digital stores will introduce never-before-seen shopping experiences, including the latest generation of EDGE™ Shelf (Enhanced Display for Grocery Environment), a shelving system that uses digital displays, instead of traditional paper tags, to indicate everything from prices and promotions to nutritional and dietary information. Using Microsoft Azure AI, EDGE Shelf will connect with Kroger’s Scan, Bag, Go®, creating a unique guided shopping experience for customers.

Greater employee insight and productivity
For store associates, a pick-to-light productivity solution can reduce the time it takes to fulfill curbside pickup orders by using visual cues to help them quickly find items. Additionally, solutions like Microsoft Azure-powered video analytics will help store associates identify and address out-of-stocks to ensure customers can locate products on their shopping list.

Similar to its Walmart partnership, Microsoft is aiming to help Kroger redefine the shopping experience by providing the company with transformative big data analysis as well as marketable product for other retail businesses called Retail as a Service.

RaaS is a commercial product that was created through this partnership with Kroger and powered by Microsoft Azure, which intends to provide a suite of capabilities that focus and support specific business KPIs, collection of customer insights, hyper-personalization, employee productivity and improve out of stocks, all with the intention to provide a better customer experience.

Microsoft and Kroger are pitching the new RaaS as “enablement software built by a retailer for retailers,” and the two have plans to expand the current offering to someday include: Scan, Bag, Go, Virtual Store Manager, sensor network, point of Sale, and inventory management systems.

The first RaaS service on the market today is Edge Shelf which allowed Kroger to generate additional revenue through digital advertising to consumers on packaged goods (CPG) brands. Specifically, with the use of video analytics Kroger was able to produce personalized offers and ads to specific customer demographics.

Edge Shelf is being offered as a pilot program to select retail business with expansion plans throughout “2019 and beyond.”

Similar to a Chromebook, Microsoft’s Windows on ARM platform consist mostly of a browser-based workflow.

While Microsoft, its chipset manufacturers, and its PC partners are promising similar 3rd party application workflows to current Intel-based devices, the reality is that development on the ARM64 architecture has been anemic at best, leaving the experience 2nd rate to Google’s offering, and a distant third option to regular Intel-powered Windows 10 devices.

With that being said, it’s becoming more vital that Microsoft expedites its Chromium-based internet browser replacement development, but in the meantime, Mozilla is stepping up to the plate with its new made for ARM64 Firefox browser.

Please note that these builds are even nightlier than our normal nightlies on other platforms: they have *not* gone through our usual automated testing process, bugs are almost certain to crop up, etc. That being said, I have been using builds off automation (manually updating them) for several weeks now and have had a pleasant experience.
There are still a few areas that we know need work: the Gecko profiler is not functional but should be by the end of the week. The crashreporter does not work. Our top-tier JS JIT (IonMonkey) is not turned on. WebRTC is not turned on. EME (Netflix, etc.) does not work yet. And so forth…Did I mention that these are nightlies?

The ARM64 version of Firefox’s Nightly release is finally up for download and install on their website now despite the company offering ARM64 support in previous public builds for the past month.

For anyone with a Window 10 S Mode device looking to try another ARM64 browser to keep battery consumption low, remember that this Firefox Nightly release is still a .exe and will require a switch out of S Mode.

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

Xbox One controllers could be getting new features according to new patents

New patents filed by Microsoft for Xbox One controllers show that the company has been looking into enhancing the vibration feedback. Currently, Xbox One controllers use precision vibration, allowing users to accurately feel the vibration of weapons in a game, but it appears Microsoft wants to take this further by allowing games to independently control the vibration of the triggers, and more.

Minecraft: The Movie finds its visual effects supervisor after significant delays

Following significant delays in finding a visual effects supervisor, progress looks to have been made on Minecraft: The Movie, as Jim Berney joins the team as visual effects supervisor, having previously worked on films such as Aquaman, The Polar Express, amongst others.

Visual Effects Supervisor Jim Berney (‘Aquaman’, ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’) has joined the crew for ‘MINECRAFT: THE MOVIE’. (EXCLUSIVE) pic.twitter.com/UcxWNas6vx

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 2, 2019

OneDrive’s Files On-Demand feature rolls out to Mac users

Mac users are now receiving OneDrive’s Files on Demand feature, allowing files to show on the computer as placeholders and only be downloaded to the local system when needed.

NewsGuard arrives on Microsoft Edge beta for iOS and Android

Microsoft is integrating NewsGuard into its mobile apps for Microsoft Edge. The feature is currently available in beta on both iOS and Android. NewsGuard helps inform users which news sources are trustworthy and accountable, and which aren’t.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Microsoft news.

Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client is expected to get support for notifications natively in Windows 10, meaning that they will be logged into the Action Center for later viewing should they appear while the user is away. This also gives the user greater control over these notifications as well, as native support in Windows 10 also means they can be disabled automatically when Focus Assist is turned on.

Thunderbird is Mozilla’s email client. It can serve as a great alternative to the Mail application pre-installed on Windows 10 devices, especially as it uses Mozilla’s reputable Gecko layout engine, which renders emails much better than what Word does in Mail.

Mozilla hasn’t given an timeline of when support for the Action Center be available, but the organization is also working on other ways to improve the email client, such as enhancing support for Gmail, overhauling UI elements such the application settings, and improving email encryption. Perhaps with enough improvement, Thunderbird could potentially regain the attention it once had before Google popularized webmail.

Despite the fact that digital assistants like Cortana and Alexa are more ubiquitous than ever, there are certain situations when talking to a machine can feel weird. This is especially true in public spaces, when you just want to fit in and avoid having strangers hear any personal information.

We’re now seeing connected speakers and PCs with far-field microphones that can catch your voice in very noisy environments, but these mics still don’t allow you to use voice commands without being noticed. Microsoft is apparently aware of this, a new patent spotted by Windows Central describes a “silent voice input” apparatus that could push voice recognition technology to the next level.

According to the patent description, the silent voice input module could be integrated into a cellphone or any other type of electronic device, including wearables. It would require users to put the module very close to the mouse before issuing voice commands, and Microsoft explains that users would also need to utter words with ingressive airflow instead of whispering.

Implementations of the subject matter described herein provide a silent voice input solution without being noticed by surroundings. Compared with conventional voice input solutions which are based on normal speech or whispering that use egressive (breathing-out) airflow while speaking, the proposed “silent” voice input method is performed by using opposite (ingressive or breathing-in) airflow while speaking. By placing the apparatus (e.g. microphone) of the apparatus very close to the user’s mouth with an small gap formed between the mouth and the apparatus, the proposed silent voice input solution can capture stable utterance signal with a very small voice leakage, and thereby allowing the user to use ultra-low volume speech input in public and mobile situations, without disturbing surrounding people. Besides of air flow direction (ingressive and egressive), all other utterance manners are same as our whispering, so that proposed method can be used without special practice.

It’s not clear is this “silent voice input” technology could really change how we interact with digital assistants, but as with most patents, it may not end in an actual product anytime soon. In the meantime, most users will probably continue to behave in public and continue to do things the old-school way. And as of today, it still often faster to use touch input than voice commands that don’t always get understood properly.

Happy New Year everyone! Hope all of you are enjoying all that the new year brings. For us here at OnMSFT.com, that’s quite a bit, as it turns out.

First, a bit of backstory: WinBeta.org, our predecessor until we changed our name some two years ago, for most of its tenure, and most of OnMSFT’s, was run by our Editor Emeritus Ron, who was passionate about both Microsoft and this site. In the past year or so, though, his available time to devote to OnMSFT diminished, and a few months ago he turned the reins over to me. In that time, though, the site didn’t get the attention it needed, and market forces have changed the landscape for consumer-centric Microsoft blogs.

So for the past month or so I’ve been preparing a cleanup of the site, including the WordPress code it runs on, the database that runs everything, and the services we use to get the results of our Microsoft enthusiasm out to you. Last night, I flipped the switch and moved our site from Rackspace, a premium host provider that was maybe a bit too rich for our needs, to a Virtual Machine running on Azure. As it turns out, the Azure VM boasts about the same specs as our old host, for about half the cost. I’ll be writing some more about Azure and the little guy as we move forward, but for now, it’s enough to say that we’re eating the dogfood.

Our next project will be to complete a new WordPress theme, as you may notice there are a few immediate changes, but most of the work was done on the back end to fix some problems, clean up some code, and make a new theme possible. You can think of this as a placeholder for now: we’ve stripped down the car, cut out the rust, sanded things down, and applied a coat of primer. A shiny new paint job is in the works, but all that prep work had to be done first, and here we are.

Luckily, we were able to accomplish this over the holiday break, when Redmond becomes a ghost town, and our readers spend more time setting up their new Surface or their new Xbox than they do reading about what’s coming next. But as soon as next week with CES, the news cycle is going to be ramping up again, and we can’t wait! It is going to be a big year for Microsoft, and by this time next year we’ll know a lot more about HoloLens, about Surface, about Windows and Cortana and Edge and, yes, about Azure.

Thanks for reading OnMSFT.com. Please be patient over the next couple of days as I work through some known issues, but feel free to leave a comment below on what you see, and especially what you’d like to see.

Happy New Year!

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As 2018 is coming to a close, today is the perfect time to look back at everything Microsoft achieved and missed over the past 12 months. This year has been a very good one for Microsoft, and as of this writing the company remains the most valuable US company ahead of Apple. And even though Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft allowed Apple and Google to dominate the mobile market, Satya Nadella’s Microsoft is a completely different beast that managed to find a lot of other sources of growth.

Despite great financial results quarter after quarter, there has been some less shiny areas this year. I’ll do my best to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly for Microsoft in 2018.

The Good

The cloud and enterprise stuff

As expected, Azure and Office 365 have continued to grow very fast this year, and we expect this to continue next year. Even though Azure is booming, keep in mind that it still has a very long way to go to catch up to market leader AWS. Microsoft is well aware of this reality, and the company’s first acquisition of 2018 was Avere Systems, a company specialized on hybrid cloud infrastructures.

If Office 365 remains a very important business for Microsoft, the company has continued to heavily promote its “Microsoft 365” offering this year. Microsoft 365 is a complete enterprise package that includes Windows 10, Office 365, and Enterprise Mobility + Security, and we should continue to hear a lot about it in 2019.

Microsoft Teams, the company’s Slack competitor, also reached new milestones this year. 329,000 organizations are now using Teams worldwide, including 87 of the Fortune 100 companies. According to a recent study from SpiceWorks, Microsoft Teams is expected to experience the biggest growth collaborative chat apps over the next two years.

Surface

Microsoft released several new Surface models this year including the affordable Surface Go, the Surface Pro 6 and the Surface Laptop 2. Since its launch back in August, the 10-inch Surface has already become the fourth most popular Surface device according to AdDuplex, right ahead of the Surface Pro 6.

Surface is now a billion dollar business for Microsoft, and the company also became one of the top five manufacturers of PCs in the US market this year. With the launch of new accessories like the Surface Headphones, Surface is slowly but surely becoming a lifestyle brand with premium products that can easily rival with Apple’s. When you remember that the first Surface device was launched only six years ago, that’s quite a big achievement.

Even though there is a lot to like about Surface devices, they also received criticism for being hard to repair, and the lack of USB-C ports on the Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 is really hard to justify in 2018. Hopefully, this is something that Microsoft will finally address with the next generation.

Some great mobile apps

Windows Phone is still dead in 2018, but that’s not really a problem since Microsoft is now fully supporting iOS and Android devices. Android has obviously become Microsoft’s mobile OS of choice these days, and the company managed to create great synergies between Windows 10 PCs and Android phones thanks to apps like Your Phone and the Microsoft Launcher.

Microsoft Edge is another app that gets frequent updates on iOS and Android, and it has become a key part of the Microsoft ecosystem thanks to new features like Timeline integration. We’ll have more on Microsoft Edge below, but if you have yet to try Microsoft’s web browser on iOS and Android, you really should.

Xbox

It will likely take years for Microsoft to fix the Xbox’s exclusive games problem, but the company proved this year that they’re finally ready to address this issue. The Redmond giant acquired several game studios this year including Playground Games (Forza Horizon 4), Undead Labs (State of Decay 2), Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice) and Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas). Let’s not forget about The Initiative, a brand new studio led by former Tomb Raider boss Darrell Gallagher who has been hiring top talent this year.

A lot of new exclusive games are hopefully in the pipeline, but in the meantime Xbox continues to lead on the services front. All first-party Microsoft Studios games are now available on day one on Xbox Game Pass, and the subscription service has also welcomed many great games from Bethesda, Square Enix, Capcom and more this year.

Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or just joined, thanks for playing with us this year. Find your next favorite game in January! pic.twitter.com/Rm6kZRvFYM

— Xbox Game Pass (@XboxGamePass) December 28, 2018

Microsoft also pushed hard to make gaming more inclusive in 2018, starting with the Xbox Adaptive controller. Inspired by an internal hackathon, the accessible controller has been ranked one of the top inventions of 2018, and we hope that the video games industry will follow Microsoft’s lead in the near future

Thanks to Microsoft, cross-platform play is also no longer a taboo subject. After months of bad buzz, Sony finally caved and enabled cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One gamers on Fortnite. It’s still not clear if other games will follow, but game developers like Blizzard and EA have already expressed interest in bringing support for cross-play in their games.
Crossplay

The bad

Windows 10

The botched releases of the Windows 10 April 2018 and October 2018 updates will definitely leave a mark. Microsoft having to pause the release of the October 2018 Update due to a file deletion bug was a quite PR disaster for the company, and hopefully a learning moment as well.

Despite having millions of beta testers in the Windows Insider program, there’s an ongoing feeling that the quality of major Windows 10 updates has been decreasing over the years. This has forced Microsoft to be more cautious during the rollout of the October 2018 Update, which as of this month may be running on less than 10% of Windows 10 PCs according to AdDuplex.

Maybe Windows 10 is in need of an “iOS 12” update: less new features, but a bigger focus on stability and consistent design. And yeah, I still think that the dark theme on macOS Mojave is much better than the one on Windows 10.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge was supposed to be the company’s modern, lightweight browser that can finally replace Internet Explorer, but so far Windows 10 users have continued to prefer Google Chrome, Firefox, and other alternatives. The slow pace of updates has always been a big issue, but websites not being optimized for the EdgeHTML engine was an even bigger problem. Well, Microsoft has finally given up on EdgeHTML, and the company plans to launch a Chromium-based version of Edge next year that will also run on macOS and older versions of Windows.

This should be good news for Edge users, who will get a better browser that is compatible with all Chrome extensions, but it’s definitely not great news for the web. It was pretty bad when all websites were optimized for Internet Explorer, and we could soon end up in the same situation where Chromium and Google Chrome become the de-facto standard. Microsoft’s decision will leave Mozilla and its Quantum engine remain the last alternative to Chromium-based browsers and Apple’s Webkit-based Safari, and that’s not a great look for the web in general.

Always connected PCs

We’ve seen Microsoft’s OEM partners launch the first Windows 10 on ARM PCs this year, and the first generation has been quite disappointing. All these Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-powered (a smartphone chip) have been overpriced, offering disappointing performance when running emulated Win32 apps.

Things got slightly better with the second generation devices using the more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip, but Windows 10 on ARM PCs still don’t offer a good enough price/performance ratio for most consumers. Things should change once developers start to compile their apps for the ARM64 architecture, and hopefully we’ll see Google Chrome and other browsers run natively on Windows 10 on ARM next year. In the meantime, you should probably keep your money and wait for new models powered by Qualcomm’s upcoming 8cx chip.

Microsoft let its OEM partners lead the charge this year, but we’re waiting to see the company launch its first Windows 10 on ARM Surface device. Intel reportedly blocked an ARM-based Surface Go this year, but it’s probably a good thing that Microsoft avoided another Surface RT situation with a compromised product.

The ugly

The Microsoft Store and UWP/PWA Apps

After all these years, the Microsoft Store is still in pretty bad shape. Quality apps and games are still hard to find, and the overall experience hasn’t really improved since 2015. As of today, the Microsoft Store app often struggles to download big apps and games, and like many other UWP apps, it can feel pretty slow to use.

With app developers neglecting Microsoft’s UWP platform, the company was expected to fill the app gap on the Microsoft Store by automatically adding Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) using the Bing crawler. However, this didn’t really happen this year: So far, Twitter seems to be the only developer that cares about PWAs, though the Twitter PWA probably isn’t as good as other third-party clients.

Ironically, the best apps you can find on the Microsoft Store today are bridged desktop apps like iTunes, Spotify or Microsoft’s own Office desktop apps. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was halting work on its Office Mobile UWP apps, which probably tells a lot about the general disinterest for the UWP platform.

Cortana

At this point, Cortana has pretty become the new Windows Phone. The digital assistant still has its fans, but it’s being ignored by most consumers, developers, and Microsoft. Despite launching in 2014, Cortana is currently only available in 13 regions worldwide, and the Cortana mobile app is still pretty much a US/UK affair. This is a big missed opportunity for Microsoft, and it’s almost like the digital assistant has been PC-focused for too long.

While Amazon and Google have released many smart appliances over the years, we’ve only seen Cortana show up on the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker and the GLAS smart thermostat. We doubt that other manufacturers will consider integrating Cortana into their products in the future, and they really don’t have to: Microsoft teamed up with Amazon to integrate Cortana with Alexa, and Amazon’s digital assistant is now available on Windows 10 PCs as well as Xbox One consoles.

Following the departure of head of Cortana Javier Soltero last month, it’s still not clear what Microsoft plans to do with its digital assistant. Cortana’s main purpose seems to be its ability to access Outlook.com/Office 365 data, but now that Alexa can check your emails for you, maybe Cortana is about to lose all of its exclusive features.

Microsoft really accomplished a lot this year overall, even though from a consumer point of view, it can look like Windows 10, Cortana and other products are fading in the background. It’s true that Windows isn’t as important as it was 10 years ago, but the company still cares a lot about software. Because Redmond now makes its own hardware, the company can’t afford to stop innovating on the software front.

2019 should be an even more interesting year for Microsoft fans thanks to new Surface and Xbox hardware, a new Hololens headset, and maybe a Windows-based foldable mobile device. There’s also Project xCloud, the company’s new game streaming service that will work on all devices, including phones and tablets. Last but not least, after the company acquired LinkedIn and GitHub, we can’t wait to see what will be Microsoft’s next big acquisition. See you in 2019 for even more Microsoft news!