The next version of the Surface Pen could be a much smarter stylus capable of being used across all your devices, automatically switching between different profiles and configurations as appropriate, if a recently discovered patent (spotted by Windows United) is accurate.

Microsoft’s patent describes an active stylus which is “compatible with a plurality of touch-sensitive devices”, including not just Surface tablets, or PCs, but also the likes of smartphones, and even smart TVs are mentioned.

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The idea would be that the stylus can easily and seamlessly switch between all your touch-enabled devices (of course, any piece of hardware would need a touchscreen to work with the pen).

Usage across multiple devices would be a painless affair, with the active pen searching for and hooking up with any device it’s brought into contact with automatically.

The patent document also notes that the search process could be honed with the stylus intelligent enough to know which devices the owner often uses, which would be searched for more often (thereby saving on power usage in terms of not having to hunt for lesser-used pieces of hardware so regularly).

The user may be able to manually tweak the search preferences, too, or they might be further refined using data regarding the devices any given user owns which could potentially be pulled from the cloud.

Plethora of profiles

Furthermore, with each different device the stylus is used with, it could have set profiles, meaning that you could maintain different configurations for each piece of hardware, and these would be automatically switched over to.

All in all, there are some pretty neat ideas here for potentially making the Surface Pen a smarter peripheral, but as ever, these could merely be experimental concepts that never make it past the research or prototyping stages.

Other patents we’ve seen recently regarding Microsoft’s stylus include a nifty new method for making the pen more accurate, not to mention the possibility of including haptic feedback with the peripheral.

• These are the best 2-in-1 laptops of 2019

Via MS PowerUser

The Xiaomi Mi Band 4 is confirmed to be in development, but a new certification suggests we may see the fitness tracker in the near future.

Spotted by DroidShout, the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 has appeared on the official website of Taiwan's NCC certification agency. It also comes with the first images of the wearable too.

You can see the photos below, but they aren't high quality marketing shots. They do offer some quick glimpses of different angles of the health band for certification purposes.

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The images don't teach us anything new about the tracker though. It looks remarkably similar to the Xiaomi Mi Band 3 - as has been expected - and it's likely to sport similar tech such as the heart rate tracker, which you can see in the first photo, as well as a small black and white display.

The certification listing confirms the company plans to make a separate variant of the Mi Band 4 with NFC onboard for contactless payments, but it's expected the company will only include that on a China-only model.

Previous leaks suggested the same thing, as well as the fact we'll get lower power Bluetooth 5.0 tech in the new fitness tracker.

We don't know a specific release date for the Mi Band 4 - considering a Xiaomi executive teased it back in March, we'd hope to see it by the end of the year - but a certification listing does suggest it's nearing completion so we may hear more soon.

• Everything we know about the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 so far

Middle East companies are on pace with their global counterparts when it comes to the adoption of artificial intelligence but have some distinct differences, such as how management views AI and their trust in the technology, industry experts said.

According to a survey conducted by Forbes Insights, about 62 percent of the executives believe that AI is emerging rapidly in their industry and executives in the region look to AI as just one part of digital transformation, and slightly more than half see themselves as being only at the start of executing that plan.

The report was revealed at the first edition of the two-day Ai Everything Summit taking place in Dubai.

AI to generate $100b in extra growth for UAE

Quoting the report, William Thompson, publisher at Forbes AI, said that the UAE and Kuwait have demonstrated the strongest commitment in the region to implement AI. In 2017, the UAE announced a national strategy to become a world leader in AI by 2031.

“The AI strategy aims to make UAE as the top adopter of emerging AI technologies as well as attract top AI talent to experiment and work in sophisticated secure ecosystems to solve complex problems in our government,” said Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr, director General of Smart Dubai.

She added that the vision is to make UAE as the as a world leader and generate up to around $100 billion in extra growth.

Data is the new oil

Three in five in the Middle East agree that they have identified AI as a key enabler of future success, in line with global executives while lack of budget is far less a barrier for organisations in the Middle East, instead, they are challenged by the availability of IT staff with AI expertise.

Bashar Kilani, region executive at IBM Middle East, said that data is the new oil for the 21st century.

“It all starts with data and the quality of the data. There is no AI without IA (information architecture). We have an abundance of data and it has to be utilized properly to take benefit of the data using AI,” he said.

Why AI?

The top three reasons Mideast executives are implementing AI are to improve efficiency, enhance customer acquisition and improve the customer experience while globally, companies appear less concerned about using AI with customers and find that the most important business value is improved product and services innovation.

According to research firm International Data Corporation, investment in AI in the UAE is expected to be $56.03 million this year compared to $37.54 million last year, registering a growth of more than 49 percent while the investment in the Middle East and Africa is expected to reach $263 million this year compared to $200 million last year.

“This investment is expected to grow between 25 per cent and 30 percent annually. At least a quarter of the investment is coming from the UAE,” said Jyoti Lalchandani, vice-president and regional managing director for research firm International Data Corporation.

• Ai Everything: What you need to know

The Honor 20 Lite has been officially announced and it's the first handset to bear the 'Honor 20' name ahead of the Chinese firm's May 21 launch event where we will see the flagship Honor 20 and Honor 20 Pro.

However, Honor has decided to give the 20 Lite its own chance at stardom by announcing it earlier than its namesakes, and it'll even go on sale before its pricier siblings have been announced.

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The Honor 20 Lite release date is set for May 15, and it's priced at £249.99, which is reasonable when you consider what you're getting in return.

There's a 6.21-inch Full HD+ display, Kirin 710 chipset, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, microSD slot, 32MP front-facing camera and Android 9 Pie (coated in EMUI 9.0). It's what's on the rear that's the real talking point though.

Snap happy

The Honor 20 Lite boasts three rear cameras, with a 48MP main sensor, 2MP depth sensor for portrait mode, blurred backgrounds and a wide-angle, 120 degree 8MP snapper allowing you to fit more of your surroundings into each shot.

That's an impressive line-up, especially when you consider its similarly placed rivals are only packing dual cameras.

There's also a rear facing fingerprint scanner, while a headphone jack joins a speaker and microUSB port on the base of the 20 Lite.

You'll be able to pick the Honor 20 Lite up from a number of retailers on May 15, including Carphone Warehouse, Amazon, John Lewis, Argos, AO.com and Very. 

It will be available in two colors - Phantom Blue and Midnight Black - with the black version exclusive to Carphone Warehouse for the first six months.

• Everything we know so far about the Honor 20 and 20 Pro

We’re approaching the first anniversary of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unfortunately, some companies still aren’t making the grade when it comes to protecting data. 

Most notably, Google earlier this year was fined €50 million by the French data protection authority CNIL for violations under GDPR. It was widely reported that the tech giant was penalised for not being transparent enough about how data is collected for the personalisation of ads and not getting proper user consent. While the financial penalty may be a drop in the ocean for Google, it shows that regulators are serious about leveling fines against companies that gather and use customers’ data without appropriate disclosures and permissions. 

Considered the most important change to data privacy regulation in 20 years, GDPR has inarguably impacted the way in which data is protected and shared across every business sector. For organisations at risk of running afoul of GDPR rules and facing penalties of their own, there are a few problem areas they should first look to correct. 

• The ramifications of GDPR
• Google fined €50m by French data regulator
• Satya Nadella calls for global GDPR

Two key problem areas

Firstly, it cannot be stressed enough that getting serious about data privacy means organisations must begin by getting really serious about data security and data visibility. Gaining true data visibility means an organisation knows where their data is, how it’s being used, who’s sharing it and for what purpose. Today, it’s increasingly difficult to determine where data is because it isn’t restricted just to user endpoints. It also extends beyond traditional security perimeters to cloud collaboration services. Achieving true visibility over data, and therefore having an accurate inventory of data, is a considerable challenge for many security teams.

Secondly, companies must establish continuous data handling practices to ensure that data is always used and shared properly — or face the penalties. Without the proper security tools to achieve data visibility, companies won’t be able to implement a sustainable auditing process, which is necessary in order to validate that they are using data in line with their data privacy program.

Privacy starts with visibility 

Because GDPR is not a once and done regulation, it places an imperative on companies to implement programs, processes and technologies that provide ongoing visibility to data regardless of where it lives and moves. With the help of the right technology tools, organisations can more easily evaluate how their data is used and shared. 

These visibility requirements are motivating organisations to look for data security solutions that streamline and strengthen their data handling processes so they can meet GDPR requirements and other regulatory measures. These solutions are characterised by the ability to:

• Provide point-in-time, comprehensive data inventory so companies always know where their most important data is located. Manual data inventories are no longer sustainable due to the speed at which data moves and evolves within an organisation.
• Monitor file exfiltration activity to provide full visibility into all files being moved or shared with external parties.
• Preserve files to satisfy security investigations and retention requirements related to compliance and legal needs.
• Audit data use. Most companies don’t take this important step to verify they are using data in line with the data privacy policies they set.

In today’s increasingly regulated world, it’s important to have the tools in place to verify with confidence that a data privacy program is working properly. The right data security solutions offer companies peace of mind that they have upheld their commitment to data privacy and complied with regulations.

Richard Agnew, VP EMEA at Code42 

• This is everything you need to know about GDPR

The launch of the new Garmin Forerunner 945, Forerunner 245 Music and Forerunner 45 will literally be music to the ears of anyone wanting to ditch their phone when running.

The navigation and fitness brand has finally updated its Forerunner range with new devices to bring music to the trotting masses as well as more advanced insights into training - helping improve the chances of that elusive PB.

The headline upgrade is the Forerunner 945 - taking the best bits of the popular Fenix range but offering it in a sleeker package. 

The new 945, taking over from the Garmin Forerunner 935, can hold up to 1,000 songs from Spotify or Deezer, can track your all-day fitness metrics (such as stress, oxygen levels in the blood with a Pulse Ox sensor or sleep levels) as well as monitor your training load.

•  Is the Garmin 645 Music any good? 
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•  You need some decent tunes - these are the best running headphones 

The latter feature isn’t new, but the way it categorizes your training into different categories so you can see if your speed, endurance or strength fitness is improving.

The multi-sport watch offers inbuilt mapping on the color screen, you can make contactless payments with Garmin Pay (although there still aren’t a huge amount of financial services worldwide that can use this service) and you can run for up to two weeks on a single charge when used as a ‘normal’ watch.

If you’re using the GPS tracking mode, 36 hours should see you through most ultra-marathons - although if you’re using the music playback too this drops dramatically to 10 hours before needing another charge.

The Garmin Forerunner 945 price has been set at $599 / £519.99 (around AU$840) although a Tri bundle, with more swim-friendly heart rate monitors is offered for $749 / £649.99 (around AU$1,000) - and it’s available now.

A better option for most?

If you’re thinking that you don’t want to spend that much on a running watch, then the new Garmin Forerunner 245, Forerunner 245 Music, Forerunner 45 or Forerunner 45S are likely more your thing.

With the Forerunner 245 Music you’re getting a huge upgrade on the popular 235, with stress and sleep tracking, far more sports to monitor and space for 500 songs so you can ditch the phone before your run.

The new watch uses the more advanced user interface from Garmin, which means the wrist-based heart rate monitor can track the oxygen levels in your blood, daily stress levels and give you feedback on how hard you’re training - with adjustments for things like heat.

The battery life sees you get 24 hours of GPS tracking from a single charge, or seven hours’ use if you’re bumbling along to tunes… enough to see nearly every marathon runner through the hell of the race.

If you’re not bothered about music (and don’t fancy the higher cost of the Forerunner 245) then the Forerunner 45 is designed for the newer runner (and comes in awesome 'Lava Red'). 

It doesn’t have all the advanced monitoring systems of the watches above, but does come with a multitude of sports for you to track, including yoga and strength training as well as running around.

The Forerunner 45 does offer all-day stress monitoring and the ‘Body Battery’ feature, an interesting idea that brings a deeper understanding to how things like exercise and sleep can affect your daily productivity.

The Forerunner 45S is also now available, which is designed for the smaller wrist with the 39mm case compared to the 42mm option on the ‘standard’ Forerunner 45.

The Forerunner 245 Music price is set at $349.99 / £299.99 (around AU$500) while the normal version without music is $299.99 / £249.99 (around AU$420).

The Forerunner 45 price will start at $199 / £169.99 (around AU$280), and both it and the Forerunner 245 are also available to buy now.

•  Why using a Garmin Fenix 5 Plus makes me so incredibly guilty 

Amazon's got a brilliant deal on the AMD Ryzen 5 2600, which knocks 24% off the asking price, making it great if you're looking to give your PC a decent performance upgrade without spending a huge amount of money. 

This deal (which you can see below) gets you this impressive processor with six cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 3.4GHz and a boost clock of 3.9GHz for £132.98, which is the cheapest price yet for AMD's second generation Ryzen processor.

This new low price for the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 makes it an ideal choice for building a gaming PC on a budget. The six cores and 12 threads also mean you can multitask with ease – for example streaming to Twitch while you play.

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a great mid-range processor, like the slightly faster AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, which is our pick for the best mid-range CPU in the world right now.

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is almost identical to the 2600X, but it has slightly lower clock speeds out of the box, and doesn't come with quite as good a cooler. If you're not too fussed on overclocking your CPU to eke out more performance, then we'd recommend going for the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 – especially at this price.

We're not sure how long this deal will last, but if you're looking for a real bargain on a great CPU, we wouldn't hang about.

• Here's our pick for the best CPU of 2019
• The best cheap processor prices and sales

Via Tom's Hardware

Buying an Android tablet at just the right time can mean making a decent saving. But we didn't see a discount this big coming at this time of year and on Samsung's excellent Galaxy Tab S4 too.

The iPad Pro rivalling Samsung tablet is the most expensive in the South Korean company's lineup and rarely gets a decent discount. So when we saw £150 smashed off the original £599 price today at Amazon, we just had to share it with you. If you've been thinking of picking up Samsung's top slate, this is the deal you've been waiting for.

Don't miss this Samsung tablet deal

The Tab S4 is a step up from the older tablets as Samsung has provided an optional desktop experience to the operating system to make it compete with Microsoft's professional-facing Surface devices. As with those devices though you'll need to buy the keyboard and mouse separately if you need them.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 review
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If the Galaxy Tab S4 is a bit much for your needs, there are far cheaper options available in our Samsung tablet prices and sales guide. Or if you fancy checking out the rival Apple devices, we've compared the latest iPad deals for you too.

Chromium-based Edge has finally been graced with in-line spellchecking functionality, for those who are playing around with testing Microsoft’s revamped browser.

Preview builds of the new Chromium-powered spin on Edge (Dev and Canary versions) have been available to download since early April, and the Canary channel build v76.0.144.0 has just seen spellchecking go live, as spotted by MS PowerUser.

This is a pretty fundamental feature for a browser, and you can enable this handy piece of functionality in the Settings menu.

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However, according to observations on Reddit, not everyone has access to the spellchecker just yet, with the option being grayed out for some folks. It seems that Microsoft is doing some limited testing to begin with, before rolling the feature out more broadly, which is pretty much par for the course.

Spellcheck yourself before you wreck yourself

The spellcheck works as you would expect: right-click on a word, and if it’s misspelled, you’ll get suggestions of what the word should probably be, as well as the ability to add it to the dictionary if it is indeed a genuine word (you can also remove words from the dictionary if necessary).

It might seem strange that a basic capability such as spellchecking wasn’t in Chromium-based Edge earlier, but Microsoft has probably had to rework the feature to play nice with other platforms, seeing as the revamped Edge is not going to be tied purely to Windows 10, but will be available across all versions of Windows – and other operating systems for that matter.

Indeed, we recently heard that the macOS version of the browser could be here sooner than you think, and we might even see an initial reveal of the browser for the Mac at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in May.

• Surf the web on one of our best laptops of 2019

Oppo is planning a major push across Europe as it looks to establish itself as a major player in the global market, the company has said.

Speaking to TechRadar Pro, Oppo vice president Brian Shen said that the company’s goal is “to make more British people aware of our brand, and to like our brand...this is more important than sales.”

“For us, the most important thing is to communicate better with the local market, employ the local people...then gradually and steadily, we make more people like our brands.”

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Shen highlighted Oppo’s “glocal” strategy, which looks to ease the company’s transition into new territories through in-depth integration and consumer campaigns.

"When we enter a new market, we want to fully understand it - not just as a quick way to enter a market and advance sales,” he said.

“We don’t just think a business should be a sales figure, we want to provide our consumers with a very unique, but also united experience”.

Shen noted that when Oppo moves into a new market, it aims to ensure 90 percent of its staff there will be local, giving it an advantage over rivals.

Oppo’s push into the UK and Europe is also stepping up as the summer approaches. Last week, the company unveiled a new partnership with the All-England Lawn Tennis Club, marking the first time that the iconic Wimbledon Championships has an official smartphone partner.

Shen is enthusiastic about the effect the partnership can play in promoting Oppo’s devices across the world, with a global TV audience getting exposure to the brand, many of them possibly for the first time.

Wimbledon tennis is a “unique, beautiful and elegant sport...just like Oppo,” Shen says. “We are a technology company...but we would like to combine art and technology together to bring the best user experiences for our consumers.”

“The partnership with Wimbledon tennis is a very important step for us within our global strategy,” he said. 

“Although we are Chinese we think that global markets are one big market - sport is always one of the best ways to communicate with consumers all around the world, no matter your age or gender.”

• The best mobile deals for April 2019

While the number and severity of cyber-attacks increases year by year, it seems that companies are failing to see the lessons learned by streamlining their security policies. Weak passwords and clumsy habits are far too prevalent and businesses must ramp up their efforts to mitigate this.

Yet more often than not, organisations are unable to grasp the extent to which they are at risk – even those with password managers. Why? They are in the dark about their policies’ effectiveness. They seem oblivious to their employees’ password conventions. They lack comparative data on how businesses of a similar size, industry or location are performing.

To address these issues, we undertook a study of 43,000 organisations, large and small, across different industries that use the LastPass password manager and analysed the password conventions of their employees. The report sheds light on real workplace password habits while also providing CISOs and other IT professionals with the necessary insights to compare how their organisations are performing against similar businesses and how they can strengthen password security.

• Google boosts password security with Password Checkup Chrome extension
• The Digital Transformation of the CISO, from backroom to boardroom
• The dangers of password sharing at work

Organisations are exposed to an abundance of easily avoidable risks as a result of insecure, generic, old and perhaps compromised credentials. When it comes to password security, our data makes clear that the majority of companies (52 out of 100 on average) are middle performers and could certainly do better, underlining the need for more stringent policies and improved education around cybersecurity. Organisations of all sizes, industries and locations are vulnerable as a result of password risk and it is something that every company could and should work on to improve security.

A problem scaling with size

In a survey of 43,000 organisations, we found that the larger the company, the lower its security score on average. Organisations that use LastPass with 25 employees or fewer demonstrated the highest average security score of 50, but that score drops as the company size increases – up to a point. Organisations with more than 500 employees displayed stagnant scores, sharing similar challenges in improving password hygiene regardless of whether they had 1,000 employees or 10,000. These larger organisations make it more challenging for IT to hold all employees to password security standards, increasing opportunities for dangerous password behaviours. 

Still, that doesn’t mean larger organisations are beyond help – some of the top performers overall were large businesses, showing that size is merely a factor that IT professionals should account for when implementing security policies. The larger the organisation, the more difficult it is to address certain challenges, from budgets to bureaucratic red tape. Smaller companies still face similar challenges, just on a smaller scale. Despite having fewer resources, it’s simpler to ensure near-perfect passwords and multifactor authentication for all employees when the employee base is smaller.

Password sharing provides the perfect example for a challenge that increases in scale with larger companies. On average, any given employee shares about six passwords with coworkers. Imagine the impact at a company with 100 employees. Now imagine the same for a company with more than 10,000 employees. Password sharing is frustrating for employees and IT administrators alike, with users resorting to using weak-but-memorable passwords that present potential backdoors into the business. As teams become more distributed and technology-dependent, the ability to protect, track and audit shared passwords is more complicated – and more necessary – than ever.

Cyber-security: an issue which knows no boundaries

Technology and not-for-profit organisations achieved the highest security scores, with retail and insurance trailing behind. Given the need to comply with privacy and data laws and the tech-savviness of this industry, it’s no surprise that technology companies lead the way. Even so, other heavily-regulated industries such as banking, health, insurance and government – all frequently targeted by cybersecurity attackers – demonstrated lower security scores, revealing an opportunity for these industries to commit to more effective password security. 

With a reputation for security and the adoption of standards like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies in Germany ranked higher than the global average in terms of security score, closely followed by the Netherlands. The United Kingdom falls behind in sixth place, so even though the country has a number of strong top performers, we have a lot of work to do overall. In particular, the UK leads other European countries in multifactor authentication adoption but still ranks far lower than the United States. Ten percent of companies using multifactor authentication are in the UK, while about 63 percent are based in the U.S.. It’s evident that despite the growing usage of this technology overall, many countries are still slow to adopt this security trend. 

A step in the right direction

Improving overall security is a work in progress, but no matter the size, industry or location, all organisations should take steps toward more efficient password management – and we’re already seeing a positive selection of companies doing something for passwords. 

We found that one year after implementing a password manager, most companies increased their security score by an average of nearly 15 points. For businesses looking into implementing a password manager or trying to measure their own password security for board reporting, this report should serve as a helpful benchmark, offering realistic goals and best practices. 

Password security is definitely a tricky hurdle to overcome. Realistically, how could you measure security if you lack detailed insights into those areas most vulnerable? A password manager does just that, while also making people more productive and helping to improve brand perception and employee satisfaction as companies have the tools to fend off future threats.

Gerald Beuchelt, Chief Information Security Officer at LogMeIn

• We've also highlighted the best free password manager

Condensing down the giant price tags of the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro, the newest addition to the family - the Huawei P30 Lite - is bringing affordable price tags to Huawei's newest range. 

But as if the sub £20 monthly costs weren't already good enough, Carphone Warehouse is now offering an additional offer when you pre-order the device from them.

With the tempting offer of a £40 voucher for Uber Eats, H&M, M&S or Tesco on any Huawei P30 Lite deal bought before May 9, Carphone Warehouse is taking a pretty impressive mobile phone deal and making it irresistible.

Not to mention the fact that Carphone Warehouse is including a free pair of Huawei Freelaces with all P30 Lite pre-orders, an offer you can acquire from any retailer stocking the Huawei P30 Lite. That adds up to £139 in free incentives with this device.

If you want this affordable handset with all of the added incentives, scroll down to see how to make use of this promotion and check out our guide to the best Carphone Warehouse deals. Make sure you go through this link first as it will not count if you buy the phone contract first.

PLEASE NOTE that you will not be able to claim your voucher if you click through and buy straight from the site. In order to make sure you do not lose out on that reward, you must register at this link first and follow the below instructions.

Huawei P30 Lite not the phone for you? Carphone Warehouse has a similar offer on all mobile phone deals from them, but it is only £20 value on other devices. This offer ends on May 5

How to claim your eGift Card:

• Or check out all of today's best mobile phone deals

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has slowed down once again in terms of the pace of its rollout.

This is according to the latest figures for April from AdDuplex, which show that the October 2018 Update is now running on 29.3% of PCs (as measured by the firm’s ads which are displayed in Microsoft Store apps, with a sample size in excess of 100,000).

Compare that to March, when the October 2018 Update was on 26.4%, and you can see that the increase in adoption didn’t quite reach 3%. From February to March, there was a 5.2% increase in adoption of the upgrade, and in January, we witnessed more of a leap of 8.8%.

• May 2019 Update raises the minimum storage requirement for Windows 10
• Here’s how to fix any October 2018 Update problems
• This is what’s coming with the Windows 10 May 2019 Update

So as you can see, as the months have rolled on since the start of 2019, the pace of adoption has gradually slowed to the level where it’s back to a crawl, and the speed it was moving at last year (when the update was famously paused for the best part of a month, which hardly helped things).

As ever, we have to bear in mind this is just one set of sample statistics, so not a definitive overview by any means, but it certainly paints a rather dire picture of things for Microsoft, considering that the October 2018 Update still hasn’t even reached 30% of PCs.

And with the May 2019 Update taking the baton later next month, the October 2018 Update is effectively about to run out of road.

Missing by a mile

Previously, AdDuplex had speculated that the October 2018 Update wouldn’t reach half of PCs before the next upgrade came out, and folks began to jump directly to that instead. However, it seems that the October offering will barely reach a third of Windows 10 machines, never mind half.

Speaking of the May 2019 Update, that’s already on 0.8% of PCs, which represents the ranks of testers trying out the update before its official release (which is expected to happen later in May).

Microsoft is taking its time with the May 2019 Update to ensure that it gets things right, and avoids any nasty gremlins in the works of the sort we witnessed with the halting of the October 2018 Update (namely a scary file deletion flaw).

And for starters that means curing the worrying stumbling block that the May 2019 Update has hit with USB drives, whereby drive letters – including internal system drives – can be reassigned with potential nasty complications.

• Some of the best laptops of 2019 run Windows 10