Will Microsoft’s Surface Duo be here three months earlier than expected? The latest leak suggests so, which means Redmond’s Android-powered duel screen hardware could be in a head to head with Samsung’s second iteration of the Galaxy Fold. Details on the accelerated release schedule have been reported by the team at Windows Latest: "Microsoft hasn’t told us much about the specs and release date of the Surface Duo, but according to internal sources, the tech giant is now planning to launch its first dual-screen Android phone before Samsung Galaxy Fold 2. This is the current target. "Microsoft is wrapping up development of the Surface Duo and is getting ready to launch its dual-screen Surface Duo before Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 2, which is expected to be announced in the first week of August.” There are two big and obvious caveats to this, but let’s assume Taniyama-Shimura and take the launch dates of the Galaxy Fold 2 and the Surface Duo as read. Samsung has been working its ‘Second Half’ launch event earlier and earlier over the years. Previously it was a week or so ahead of Apple’s iPhone launch, then there was clear space, and now there could be five weeks between the two events. That gives Samsung a clear run at the digital ink written in the smartphone space. The release of the device will likely be two to three weeks after the event, which which will keep all of Fold 2 sales (along with the premium Galaxy Note 20) in the reporting for the fourth calendar quarter. Into this comes Microsoft’s Surface Duo, its Android-powered folding device. While Microsoft is not pitching this as a smartphone, the media are going to see ‘folding’, ‘Android’, ‘phone’, and ‘big names competing with each other’, and the story angles are obvious. When the Surface Duo was introduced in October 2019, the release date was not locked in, instead, we had ‘The Holidays 2020’, heavily suggesting the fourth quarter of the year. That long gap between reveal and release has allowed Microsoft to do much of the development in public, and the occasional leaked images of the device - notably on the desk of Microsoft’s Senior Director Frank Shaw while he tweeted he was working from home - have helped build up the excitement in the public. Changes could also be made to the SDK to allow for a folding device, along with commits to open source projects to support devices like the Surface Duo. It’s worth noting that the Surface Duo is not yet a mainstream device in the way that the Galaxy Fold 2 is. Perhaps it should be treated in the same way - the Surface’s bread and butter come from the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop machines - with a bit of high end from the Surface Book family. But we all know that’s not going to be the case. The Surface Duo is going under the metaphorical microscope. And if Microsoft’s Surface team has the confidence to launch it earlier than expected, we have a classic case of under-promising and over-delivering. Assuming it delivers… Given the issues Samsung faced when it launched the first Galaxy Fold, that’s one comparison Microsoft will not want to be made. Check out OUR FORUM for more.

Over the past few months, Windows 10 updates have caused serious issues for some people, and it seems like the company has released yet another disastrous patch – KB4560960 and KB4557957. The June 2020 cumulative update was supposed to be an important patch for people running the two most recent versions of Windows 10, but it appears to have introduced new bugs on some configurations. Both Windows 10 November 2019 Update and Windows 10 May 2020 Update recently had a patch issued to fix critical and important security problems. At the time of its release, we noted that Microsoft is not aware of any issues and we were wondering what it might break – and now we have more details. KB4557957 for Windows 10 version 2004 and KB4560960 for Windows 10 version 1909 are breaking down printers. This is according to several posts on Reddit, Microsoft’s Answers website, and other forums. “Has anyone had issues today with printing and the latest Windows update? We’re seeing problems with Ricoh printers that were previously stable. Changing the print driver seems to help but that’s going to be a pain if I have to roll it out to too many clients,” one user noted. In the same thread, other users also confirmed that this appears to be an issue with both KB4557957 and KB4560960 for Windows 10. “After this update, documents in my printing queue appeared for a second then disappeared. Uninstalling this update immediately fixed the problem,” another user wrote in Microsoft’s forum. The issue is that Windows 10 KB4557957 / KB4560960 updates are seemingly causing major problems mainly for Ricoh printers, but with some other brands too including Brother and Canon. Particularly, users have noted issues when printing their documents and the stability of the connection is also affected. A network technician claimed that PCL5 driver does not work with Windows 10 after installing the update and driver age does not matter. Things might improve if you install the newest version of PCL6 “universal driver”, but as one user notes, this is not a realistic approach for businesses to service hundreds of devices. The updates appear to be a complete nightmare for those with printers, which could be costly one in terms of the company’s reputation as the bug is also hitting businesses and organizations using Windows 10. Fortunately, Microsoft is aware of the reports and the company is already working on a fix, which could be deployed soon, according to a post published by Microsoft’s independent community advisor. If you’re unable to uninstall the update via Windows Settings, you can always remove it using Command Prompt. First, open Command Prompt with admin rights and run the following command after replacing the [id] with the KB (update) number. Users are also reporting other problems after recent Windows 10 cumulative updates. One user noted that the update removed their documents, files, background image, and the settings. We have more along with the steps necessary to uninstall the cumulative update posted on Our Forum.