Russell Smith

This Week in IT, Microsoft Teams is bringing a Facebook-style storyline to users, the February CU for Windows 11 brings several new features and updates to File Explorer and the Taskbar, and government users in Australia think Microsoft Copilot isn’t quite as good as they’d hoped. Links and resources Episode overview This week’s IT news…

This Week in IT, Microsoft shuts down its Defender VPN service, hackers are targeting ADFS, and the last Cumulative Update (CU) for Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 gets delayed for extended testing. Links and resources Episode overview This week’s IT news highlights Microsoft’s shutdown of its Defender VPN service, hacker attacks on ADFS, and delays in…

This Week in IT, Surface Copilot+ PCs go all in with Intel, Microsoft announces DeepSeek support is coming to Windows, and the WSUS driver sync service is being retired. Links and resources Episode overview This Week in IT covers various updates from Microsoft, including new AI support, device releases, and service changes.

This Week in IT, the US government’s Stargate project causes upset with US Tech Bros but will likely benefit Microsoft, Windows Server 2022 stops booting, and Microsoft is retiring Azure AD APIs at the end of this month. Episode overview This week’s IT news covers the US government’s Stargate project, Windows Server 2022 issues, and…

This Week in IT, Microsoft announces Copilot Chat and pay-as-you go agents – Outlook and Teams is getting a unified contacts experience, and Patch Tuesday causes a problem for some Citrix users. Episode overview This Week in IT, we look at Microsoft’s new Copilot Chat feature, a unified contact experience for Teams and Outlook, and…

This Week in IT, Microsoft is set to layoff underperforming employees, website certificates could be set to expire much faster, and Microsoft urges orgs to patch AD domain controllers as a new vulnerability is identified. Episode overview This week’s IT news highlights Microsoft’s plans for layoffs, changes to website certificate expiration, and a new Active…

Newly provisioned devices should use Microsoft Entra Join directly rather than starting with on-premises Active Directory (AD) and syncing to Entra ID. This way, organizations can fully benefit from modern Windows features and streamlined management. But many organizations get stuck using Entra Hybrid Join without plans to move to cloud-native setups. One major blocker is…

This Week in IT, I look at the year in review with stories about new features that came to Microsoft Loop, the beginning of the end for WS Update Services, a new Microsoft app for hybrid teams, how Teams got a Slack-like makeover, and the timeline for phasing out the legacy Outlook client for the…

This Week in IT, Google asks US government to break apart Microsoft’s exclusive deal with Open AI, organizations are struggling to keep up with AI storage requirements, and some Windows news for enterprises and Copilot+ PC owners. Links and resources Episode overview This week’s IT news covers Google’s request to break apart Microsoft’s deal with…

This Week in IT, Microsoft talks Windows 11 hardware requirements as Windows 10 gets closer to end of life, a new search experience is coming to Windows, plus some important security updates. Links and resources Episode overview In this week’s episode, Russell discusses various updates and news related to Microsoft, including Windows 11 hardware requirements,…

This Week in IT, Microsoft isn’t collecting your data to train AI models and a rundown of the most important Copilot updates from Ignite 2024. Thanks to Semperis for sponsoring this episode of This Week in IT! Episode overview This Week in IT, there’s a rumor circulating about Microsoft using customer data to train AI…

Security firm ESET is warning that RomCom, a Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group, is actively exploiting two zero-day security flaws to plant backdoors on systems. Firefox is being exploited through a use-after-free bug (CVE-2024-9680) in the animation timeline feature, which can lead to code being run in the restricted context of the browser. The…