Microsoft has raised Windows OEM licensing fees by 7-10% starting in July, on top of a memory shortage already driving PC prices up. The hike doesn't touch standalone Windows 11 licenses, only what OEMs pay to preinstall it, but it's arriving right as Microsoft's own earnings call shows Windows OEM revenue sliding.

Windows Latest tested apps before and after installing Windows 11's August 2026 update, and found CPU frequency spiking to near-max the instant apps launch, a sign Low Latency Profile now covers app opening, not just the Start menu and Search. Apps like the Epic Games Store visibly load faster too.

KB5121003 skips a headline feature this month. Voice Access gets noise-cancelling Voice Isolation, File Explorer sizes finally make sense, Windows Hello works with external fingerprint readers, and dozens of quiet reliability fixes land across the taskbar, Start menu, and networking stack.

Windows 11 KB5121003 is now rolling out, and it may not look like a big release, but it can make your apps launch faster on low-end PCs

Windows 11 shipped in 2021, and five years later, Microsoft seems to have made peace with the fact that Windows 10 refuses to die.

Raymond Chen explained in 2003 that Microsoft gave users a way back to old UI while they adjusted, then removed it once complaints stopped. That discipline broke down over the years, leaving Windows 11 full of unfinished replacements, from Control Panel to WebView2 apps burning over a gigabyte of RAM.

To illustrate how Windows’ importance within the company has been overtaken, let’s look at some financial data.

Windows Latest obtained exclusive first-look images of Lenovo's Project Swan, an unannounced ThinkBook laptop with a horizontally expanding display. The photos show a shortened, centered hinge and a rear panel consistent with the rail mechanism used on the Legion Pro Rollable.

March Rogers explains why Windows 11 won't get more transparency controls, citing usability, accessibility, and a developer community already filling the gap with Windhawk. Windows actually did glass effects first with Vista's Aero back in 2007, before Microsoft dropped them in Windows 8.

Microsoft is backing down on OneDrive Photos, and you'll soon be able to remove it without also removing the OneDrive sync client.

Microsoft is shutting down Microsoft Publisher on October 1, 2026, and it's now reminding everyone that it's finally time to move.

Windows 11's Weather app is actually MSN Weather, a WebView2 web wrapper that uses over 1.2GB of RAM sitting idle, nearly 5x what Apple's native Weather app uses on macOS. It also shows ads styled to blend in with real forecast data, on an OS you already paid good money for.

Microsoft told Windows Latest that it accidentally shipped the AI-powered OneDrive Photos app on Windows 11 more broadly than it should have.

Asked if Microsoft could make Windows run faster, Scott Hanselman replied, "Yep. On it." Windows 11 is getting speed gains from RAM optimization, the Low Latency Profile CPU boost, and a shift to WinUI, alongside ad removal from Search, Widgets, and the Photos app.

Microsoft is done with Windows 10 LTSC holdouts, tells them to just upgrade to Windows 11 already, ahead of end of life.