Electronic Punk aka Patrick

Microsoft, after a brief delay, have finally released the latest version of Windows 10 to those outside of the Insiders program and you can download it today!

Other than Timeline, which I have disabled myself, there isn't really anything to jump around about this time around but there has been another good layer of polish applied to many areas of the operating system, culminating with not calling it the Spring Creators Update, which is good because I wasn't really feeling like there was anything focused particularly towards creators.


If that doesn't summarise things perfectly for you, there is a detailed overview below.

View       What's new in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update

It isn't quite on Windows Update yet, at least not for all users, but you can jump that queue.

Source    How to get the Windows 10 April 2018 Update

Microsoft have released a new build for Insiders this evening and as we approach the end of initial development, the number of changes are slim and the known major issues are null.

• We fixed an issue resulting in certain devices with BitLocker enabled unexpectedly booting into BitLocker recovery in recent flights.
• We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to change the display resolution when there were 4 or more monitors connected, due to the confirmation prompt hanging when you selected “Keep changes”.
• We fixed an issue where clicking suggested search terms when typing in the Microsoft Edge URL bar didn’t do anything.

Click to expand...

That is not to say there aren't minor issues, personally I still have 2 entries for recovery under disk management and the command prompt still has a registered trademark of 2017, my Logitech G933 headset still doesn't like to install the Logitech supplied drivers - but if that is the worst things I can find, then I can live with it!

There is wide speculation that this is the RTM build, although that is of course a dated term and development is always continuing, but now the next major features will come as part of the Redstone 5 testing which is due to ramp up.

If it is the final release build of the Spring Creators update, expect it to drop into the slow ring and finally the release preview ring, although its very likely it will see a cumulative update or two before its general release on April 10th.

View       Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17133 for Fast

Despite having released drivers for Sea of Thieves only a week ago, NVIDIA has released another set of drivers focused on making improvements to Far Cry 5. The older release was 391.24 released on the 20th March.

While the headline is all about providing the optimal gaming experience for Far Cry 5, it does have the following other fixes:

• GeForce 3D Profile Manager tool can't import profiles. [2076480]
• [GeForce Experience]: Memory leak occurs leading to poor game performance when using NVIDIA Freestyle. [2068039]
• [NVIDIA Control Panel][SLI][Diablo III]: With V-Sync on and SLI enabled, the game freezes after switching windows (ALT+TAB) a few times. [1951584]
• [Notebook]: The driver may fail to initialize the GPU. [200354056]

Amazingly it is a more security focused update once you get past the gaming fluff:



Worth downloading then, even if you don't game!

Software NVIDIA 391.35 drivers - Windows 10 32bit International
Software NVIDIA 391.35 drivers - Windows 10 64bit International
View       Other selections

Twitter increased the character limit for each tweet to 280 back in November 2017, but the Windows 10 application was still restricted to 140.

They have corrected this yesterday by releasing Version 6.0 which is also apparently a PWA (Progressive Web App) which, if you have alerts enabled might have been obvious as it informs you that a login via Microsoft Edge has just been completed.

While this was the biggest request from users in the Feedback hub, it did have other issues. Live Tiles are a big part of Windows 10 apps but Twitter previously only actually showed tweets and images from tweets (both of which made things slightly more interactive and pretty) if you were logged out. If you were logged in it only showed you notifications even if you have read and dismissed them on other devices. You would have to go into the app, read the notification in there, while having the start menu open and it would then go back its default blue live tile.

The update today does not have any live tile activity if you are logged in or out, it also seems to inform you "By using Twitter's services you agree to our Cookie Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, rationalisation, and ads." - even if you dismiss it, this notification returns each time you open the app.

Overall an improvement and nice to know it hasn't been abandoned, hopefully there are future enhancements forthcoming, there are very few interesting Windows 10 apps to populate the Start Menu so the most popular really need to put the effort in.

View       Microsoft Store
Source    Neowin

The very first information about HTC's 2018 smartphone, code named the HTC Imagine, have leaked onto the internet courtesy of Evan Blass from Venture Beat and as expected, combined with previous information received, it is shaping up to be a real animal.

At this point, we have only got a low quality render but it does show the front and back sides and along with that dual cameras on both the back and the front.

Information previously leaked suggests that the device will come with the Snapdragon 845 (par for the course this year), along with a 6 inch screen. 6GB of RAM, Oreo on board as expected and a larger battery than previous years. Other information suggests that this will be HTC's only flagship of the year, but that has been said before and still refreshed versions have been released.

HTC have obviously been struggling of late, but their Pixel 2 design was highly successful which led to the team behind that moving over to Google directly, so it remains to be seen what the long term impacts of that will be and if this is the start of something new, or another final nail in the coffin.