Microsoft Edge is also available on iOS and Android, providing a true cross-platform experience.

The new Microsoft Edge provides world class performance with more privacy, more productivity and more value while you browse.

The new browser also comes with Microsoft’s Privacy Promise and they can’t wait for you to try new features like tracking prevention, which is on by default, and provides three levels of control while you browse.

Another innovative new feature in Microsoft Edge allows you to customize your online experience. Choose a new tab page layout or design, and select the types of news you want.

tabbed layout

Millions of people have downloaded the preview channels of the new Microsoft Edge to their devices, and Microsoft has seen many organizations begin to pilot these channels for their users. Enterprises and schools who have mission critical legacy applications and websites – but also want modern web and security – have turned to their new Internet Explorer mode as a “best of both worlds” solution.

And for Microsoft 365 customers, using Microsoft Search to find files, people, office floor plans and more on your organization’s intranet is as easy as typing in the Microsoft Edge address bar. Their early customers are calling it “a win.”

Here’s what some corporate users think.

Download Links

• Download new version of Edge – Link
• IT Admin offline Package – Link
• Insider downloads – Link

This is, obviously, the new flavor of the Microsoft Edge browser, built using the Chromium engine.

And it can be installed on PC running either Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 as part of its testing program. Previously, Microsoft had only released previews for Windows 10 and macOS, but now the company is ready for the older platforms.

Straight from the Microsoft Edge team:

“Delivering the next version of Microsoft Edge to all supported versions of Windows is part of our goal to improve the web browsing experience for our customers on every device, and to empower developers to build great experiences with less fragmentation.”

Noble goal.

As you would expect from a new browser on an old operating system, Microsoft Edge does offer the same look and feel as its Windows 10 sibling, but these versions are missing several of the new features and additions, including the dark theme.

Luckily, Redmond has promises to add a few of these options soon, as the priority right now is to allow users to take the new browser for a test drive on these old operating systems.

Right now, only the Canary build of Microsoft Edge is available for these three OS, but Microsoft has confirmed that the Dev channel would be released on older Windows very soon as well. That said, there is no indication when the final, stable version of Edge will be available for these users.

Should not be too far off.

In the meantime, be sure to download your Microsoft Edge preview builds from here for your specific version of Windows.

Microsoft clearly wants everyone to move to the latest version of Windows, and shutting down access to the apps repository for these old platforms is part of the plan. The software titan announced the dates in a blog post recently.

The first date that you will want to keep an eye on is October 31, which is when Redmond will stop accepting new apps for these old platforms.

Updates to the apps and games will still be accepted, of course.

But beginning July 1, 2019, users still on these old versions of the OS will stop getting updates to their installed applications. And since you actually need to download an app from the Store on your device to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile, this is also your last chance to make the move up.

Getting back to Windows 8 PCs, they will no longer receive app updates after July 1, 2023.

No surprises here, as this is the date right after the end of support for Windows 8.1, the extended support for which ends on January 10 of that year. All the action will then shift to Windows 10 beyond this date, and apps will continue to receive updates on the latest OS.

None of this is surprising or exciting news for users still running variants of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. But this is how things are, and meant to be.

Obviously, there are various reasons why users are stick with these old operating systems, including lack of hardware support in some cases, software compatibility in others. Some folks probably can’t find time to upgrade their systems.

All said and done, the time for these two platforms is nearing its end.

And so is their access to the Store.

To go with a range of fixes released for all four versions of Windows 10.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 users are in line for KB4034664, which contains the following fixes:

• Security updates to Microsoft JET Database Engine, Common Log File System Driver, Microsoft Windows Search Component, Volume Manager Driver, Internet Explorer, Windows Server, and Windows kernel-mode drivers.

It can be downloaded and installed here.

Along with a security only update that goes by KB4034679, which is up for grabs at this link. It has a changelog similar to the monthly rollup above, which only contains security fixes. Installing these will ensure your Windows 7 installation stays in tip top shape.

Both updates are also applicable to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

That’s that for the users of the world’s most popular operating system, which still has more or less half the desktop userbase to its name.

Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 users got KB4034681 to play with, which you can check out by pointing your browser to this here link. It also addresses a number of known issues.

Namely:

• Addressed issue where a LUN connection that was received after the buffer allocation during iSCSI statistic collection overflowed the buffer and caused error 0x19. A UI issue that hides the iSCSI targets will be addressed in an upcoming release.
• Security updates to Windows Server, Microsoft Windows Search Component, Internet Explorer, Volume Manager Driver, Common Log File System Driver, Microsoft Windows PDF Library, Microsoft JET Database Engine, Windows kernel-mode drivers, and Windows Hyper-V.

Again, the security only update KB4034672 comes with the same release notes, and available here.

All these updates and monthly rollups can be deployed by either by firing up Windows Update in the Control Panel, or via manual installation via the links above.

And why.

Statistics reveal that Windows 8 users are steadily jumping ship.

Microsoft launched this modern version of Windows to much fanfare (almost comparable to the launch party of Windows 95 back in the days) in October 2012, but only a few users upgraded from Windows XP and Windows 7 to Windows 8.

Things picked up pace until the debut of Windows 8.1 in October 2013, after which the market share of the core Windows 8 fell down — to Windows Vista levels.

And market share data provided by StatCounter reveals that the platform has lost almost half its users in the past 12 months, while Windows 8.1 has pretty much tripled its user base in this timeframe:

Windows 8 had a market share of 7.81% in April 2014, but the operating system gradually started losing users and ended up with 5.42% in November 2014.

Of course, many upgraded to Windows 8.1.

As a result the platform is now powering only 3.99% of PCs across the globe, resulting in a decline of around 3.82% in the past year.

This decline is set to continue in the coming months, judging by the trend, as Microsoft continues work on Windows 10, which is set to be offered free of charge to Windows 7 and Windows 8 users once the new operating system debuts later this summer.

Will be interesting how many users keep running Windows 8 after that.

And why.

The company, of course, released this month’s Patch Tuesday updates last week.

As revealed, most of these updates are designed to resolve certain issues with the operating systems in question, as well as improve performance and reliability — including fixes for problems with WiFi connectivity and more.

Speaking of which, the operating systems in question are Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1.

Microsoft has not exactly provided complete details, but some of these updates are old updates that have been reissued, most likely with a few improvements here and there in order to address issues or problems with deployment and all that good stuff.

As usual, if you’re an IT administrator, you should start preparing for this new batch of updates and as usual still, many of these require reboots.

Meaning, saving your work in order to install these should be on your agenda.

The popular OS now easily powers one in two PCs worldwide.

And this remains a fact that will not change anytime soon — at least this is not something Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 can do something about. Statistics provided by Net Applications show that the market share of the fan favorite Windows 7 skyrocketed in the past year.

This, despite the launch of Windows 8.1 and the release of the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

There were some that were hoping for a change in charts when Microsoft pulled the plug off of Windows XP back in April 2014.

At the time of the retirement of this vintage operating system, Windows 7 was found to be powering no less than 49.27% of the PCs the world over. This figure crossed the mark of 50.06% the very next month, and has not looked back since.

It peaked at 56.26% in December 2014.

Windows 8.1 right now is installed on 10.49% of computers worldwide, and as most users are moving to that version of the OS, Windows 8 share of the pie has dipped to only 3.55% right now.

Long story short, this much seems certain that Windows 8 and 8.1 combined will not catch up to the worldwide market share Windows 7 now enjoys.

Windows 10 remains the only hope for this, and seeing how the platform is shaping up, Windows 7 might finally have a real competitor for the top spot later this year.

In the first phase, Office users were provided with access to another cloud service to save their documents to, and now Windows Phone users have access to the official Dropbox app.

And since it’s universal, it also works on Windows.

Dropbox announced the release of an official modern app to Microsoft’s platform last night, and now the application is available for download.

This new release comes with options to automatically backup photos to the cloud service and mark files as favorites in order to get them even without an Internet connection. In addition to this, support for multiple accounts means that personal and work accounts can be used at once.

Overall, the app looks a little barebones, but for a debut release, it ticks most of the right options when it comes to the feature set.

Fingers crossed the company keeps it updated with new features on a regular basis.

Just in case you were wondering, Dropbox currently offers 2GB of storage space for free users. Microsoft, on the other hand, gives away 15GB free via OneDrive, with the possibility of increasing it to a very healthy 30GB for users that agree to have their camera roll store photos in the cloud.

Anyway, this is one more official app in the bag.

You can download the Dropbox application from the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store.

One Critical update is up for grabs this month.

But on the whole Windows desktop and server versions are the only solutions that have been patched in this round, along with the usual new version of the Flash Player for Internet Explorer — this last bit is important, though as it fixes a total of nine issues with the Adobe plugin.

IE 10 and IE 11 are automatically getting the new version, so make sure you install this if you use Flash Player regularly on your systems.

Of the eight security bulletins released by Microsoft, seven come rated as Important, with MS15-002 being the only Critical update, meaning this is the first fix system administrators should deploy.

Nothing severe, though, as this patch only fixes vulnerabilities with the Microsoft Telnet server, which is not actually used widely.

Speaking of things that are not used widely, Microsoft changed the way how it informed users about Update Tuesday rollouts. Users are no longer provided with free advance security notifications, as the software titan has said that they are not exactly popular with end users.

Organizations and customers with paid Premier support contracts do get access to them, though.

Anyway, the updates are now flying off servers, and although there are no firmware refreshes for the Surface tablets or fixes for other Microsoft software, the Windows platform is in line for plenty of action.

This was, of course, the number of applications in the Windows Store that were available to users at the time Windows 8 launched. But that was October 2012, and this is January 2015 — and what a difference a couple of years make.

Sure, things have evolved at a slow pace.

And many of these are games that are ported over, along with a bunch of universal apps that are compiled to run on both tablets and smartphones. But they certain have their uses, and users seem to enjoy many of these new additions to Microsoft’s apps repository.

It’s not all milk and honey, but with 190,000 unique applications now within reach, the modern platform is well on its way. And besides, we have seen several high profile releases here too.

Android and iOS may still have the numbers, but Redmond continues to convince developers to bring their solutions to the Windows Store.

With Windows 10 on the horizon, and the amount of hardware devices that keep on hitting the store shelves, the future is nothing if not bright. It may take another couple of years.

But Windows Store will get there.

It will get there alright.

For now we celebrate, with sheer anticipation of the glittering 200,000 apps milestone.