Microsoft

There is always a price to pay when using thinner materials and devices, in addition to the higher cost of making them as such. Glass breaks more easily and metal bends more willingly. With the new 11-inch iPad Pro having broken so easily in a bend test, it’s only fair that its rival, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6, get the same treatment. Fortunately, JerryRigEverything’s Zack Nelson has a wallet that doesn’t break as easily because that is exactly what he did.

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The holidays are a particularly good time to be a gamer, as many of the year’s biggest games are discounted for what can be the entire month spanning Black Friday to Christmas. As exciting as it may be for someone who actively plays games, it can be a bit more difficult to navigate the sea of deals and hot-ticket items if you’re not quite sure what you should be looking for. There are always too many games to count, and that’s especially true around this time of year when games are flying out of the gate at rapid succession, so this guide should help give you some gift-giving ideas for the gamer in your life.

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Imagine this scenario. You arrive at work and very gracefully place your smartphone on a specially marked area of your desk. Almost immediately, your desk screen lights up, showing you today's tasks. Before you know it, it's lunch time and you quickly pick up your phone and head to the office cafeteria and use your phone to catch up on your social networks. Later that night at home, you dock your phone to add some finishing touches to your presentation tomorrow before finally plopping down on the couch to stream your favorite nighttime show. That was pretty much the idyllic scenario that companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and even Ubuntu maker Canonical tried to sell the public. But despite that enticing vision, it failed to take hold in the market because, like many future visions, it failed to take into account the hurdles of the present.

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As time moves on, it's becoming more and more clear that relying on passwords isn't really the best way to keep our online accounts secure. In the name of beefing up security, a number of companies have started moving to two-factor authentication or password-less sign-in, and today, Microsoft added its name to that ever-growing list. Beginning today, Microsoft is letting users log into their Windows accounts using security keys or Windows Hello.

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This morning the folks at Microsoft responsible for Office 365 had a bit of a problem on their hands. It would appear that an error occurred at the point at which users sent themselves password resets. Because of this, any user who'd forgotten their password and reset said password were from that point unable to access their account at all, whatsoever.

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Windows 10’s October 2018 major update, a.k.a. version 1809, is turning out to be quite the nightmare, most especially for users. It was rolled out early lost month with a nefarious file-deleting bug that allegedly affected only a small number of users. Microsoft has since pulled out the update and re-released it but the nightmare is far from over. The latest is a still unfixed bug that is causing problems for iCloud users trying to sync their shared albums.

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Amazon's Echo speakers and voice assistant Alexa are most synonymous, obviously, with Amazon the online store, but we're now seeing both offered in more and more places. One of the most surprising has been Microsoft, which seems to have acknowledged the shortcomings of its own assistant Cortana by cozying up with Alexa over the last few months in a number of ways. The latest is that Echo speakers are now sold directly by Microsoft both online and in store.

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Microsoft has unveiled a fun new app that utilizes its machine learning technology to judge facial expressions imitating emoji. The Emoji8 tool is a sample UWP application, according to Microsoft, that uses a device's webcam to monitor users imitating randomly selected emoji expressions. Emoji8 is provided both through the Windows Store and on GitHub.

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By now, it's pretty clear that we're closing in on the end of the console generation. Though next-generation consoles likely won't be here until 2020 or 2021, both Sony and Microsoft have mentioned that they're working on new hardware. Before those new consoles can arrive, however, Microsoft might be planning another hardware revision for the Xbox One.

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Microsoft, we're sorry to say, is back at it again with its intrusive Windows 10 ideas. This time around, Microsoft has decided to start testing ads within the Windows 10 mail app. While it isn't exactly surprising to see Microsoft do this, we can't imagine that Mail users will be all too happy seeing these new ads.

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Next to the original Surface 2-in-1 tablets, Microsoft's next most innovative product is probably the Surface Studio all-in-one computer. From its sheer size and design, this PC is clearly meant to make you look good while you create good content. And you better be making good content to make up for its cost. Because while the Surface Studio 2 is now available for purchase, at least in some markets, you might want or even need to save up for one first.

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Over the weekend, Microsoft revealed that mouse and keyboard support will, at long last, be coming to Xbox One. The big day is today with the roll out of the console's November 2018 update. The first game on deck to get mouse and keyboard support is Fortnite, though Microsoft is planning to expand this functionality to a handful of other games by the time 2018 wraps up.

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