Microsoft reneges on Unlimited OneDrive Storage

Ed Bott from ZDNet reported that Microsoft has annouced that they are rolling back on their annoucement of unlimited storage for users of Office 365. Microsoft blames a few bad eggs who have taken advantage of storing very large digital collections to the cloud after Microsoft announced on October 27, 2014 that everyone would be upgraded to unlimited OnDrive storage plans.

Here's the key part of tonight's announcement:

• We're no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
• 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
• Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.

Ed Bott's article does a good job detailing out what has occurred and if you are interested you will want to give it a quick read.

Vertical Summit Phone System

Sophos Encryption Video (Encryption doesn't have to be difficult)

Sophos SafeGuard – encryption that won’t slow you down

Looking for the answerto your encryption needs? Sophos SafeGuard provides the most complete data protection solution on the market today.

It keeps your data secure as it moves from laptop, to mobile, to cloud, to Mac; as well as making it easy to manage native encryption such as BitLocker and FileVault 2.

But don't just take our word for it.

Here's what the experts are saying: 

• 'The Breakout Star' in Forrester Encryption Wave 2015
• Winner of TechTarget's Readers' Choice Award for Best Encryption
• Recognized as a Leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection

Learn More and get a no-obligation quote.

This email scam targeting businesses is a billion-dollar problem, FBI warns

By John Zorabedian, nakedsecurity.sophos.com

The FBI is warning businesses to be on the lookout for emails sent by scammers to trick them into transferring money to fraudulent accounts.

Email scams have been around for decades, but old-school Advance Fee Fraud scams these are not.

The FBI calls this family of scams "Business Email Compromise" (BEC) scams, because they use phony emails that appear to come from a colleague or from a trusted supplier.

Since October 2013, BEC scams have cost businesses around the world over $1.2 billion, the FBI said last week.

Although the BEC scam has victimized businesses in 80 countries, those in the United States have suffered the most.

7000 US businesses have reported $747 million in losses, with an average loss of $130,000, the FBI said.

The scammers, who appear to be members of organized crime groups operating out of Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, are targeting businesses that work with overseas suppliers or regularly make wire transfer payments.

But instead of sending funds to legitimate suppliers, the money transfers end up in bank accounts controlled by the fraudsters, mostly with banks based in China.

The scammers succeed by compromising legitimate email accounts through social engineering or malware that steals account credentials.

The fraudsters then use access to email accounts to gather intelligence such as information about billing and invoices that won't raise the suspicion of employees who send transfer payments.

FBI Special Agent Maxwell Marker said the scammers have become adept at imitating invoices and accounts, giving them a sophistication beyond any similar scam previously seen by the FBI.

According to Marker:

They know how to perpetuate the scam without raising suspicions. They have excellent tradecraft, and they do their homework. They use language specific to the company they are targeting, along with dollar amounts that lend legitimacy to the fraud. The days of these emails having horrible grammar and being easily identified are largely behind us.

In one example of the scam, an accountant from a US business reported receiving what appeared to be an email from the company CEO requesting a wire transfer by the end of the day for an important acquisition.

The email said a lawyer would be sending a letter of authorization, but the authorization letter turned out to have a forged signature from the CEO and an "official seal" that was copied from the company's public website.

The email from the "CEO" actually came from a phony email account that was off by one letter - it used a .co domain instead of the company's real .com domain.

According to the public service announcement released by the FBI'sInternet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), BEC email scams are proliferating rapidly - up 270% since the beginning of 2015.

What to do?

When the FBI previously issued a warning about BEC scams, we offered some security tips for avoiding this kind of email threat.

I asked Naked Security writer and Sophos expert Paul Ducklin to offer a few more tips - here's what he recommends:

• Revisit your outbound email filtering rules to prevent sensitive information from going out to inappropriate destinations.
• Require multiple approvals for overseas wire transfers.
• Have strict controls over changes in payment details or the creation of new accounts.
• Use strong passwords and consider two-factor authentication (2FA) to make it harder for crooks to gather intelligence from your network in the first place.
• Consider a "back to base" VPN for remote users so their online security is kept up, even on the road.
• Have your own "central reporting" system, in the manner of IC3, where staff can call in suspicious messages to prevent crooks trying different employees with the same scam until a weak spot is found.
• Think twice about publicly posting personnel information that could be abused in phishing attacks.

Technical Alert: Outgoing emails sent via Sophos UTM being recognized as confirmed SPAM

Sophos issued the following announcement to us:

We are seeing an increasing number of incidents where outgoing emails sent via Sophos UTM with anti-SPAM activated are classified as ‘confirmed SPAM’.

At the moment we have no confirmation that this affects all emails or that it affects incoming emails but we currently cannot exclude this possibility.

Our development team is working with urgency to solve this issue which appears to be caused by the SPAM patterns used. This means that a fix will be provided via live cloud lookup once available, rather than requiring a product or pattern update.

Further information about how you or your customers can report this problem and updates on this issue until it is solved can be found in the following KBA: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/122687.aspx

Thank you for your understanding.

Sophos

What is Miracast ?

Intel has been promoting their Wireless Display (WiDi) technology for quite a while now and we are starting to see some traction in the industry to include it in display devices and other types of components. 

So what is Miracast? Wikipedia describes it as such:

Miracast is a certification program of the Wi-Fi Alliance based on their Wifi-Display specification. It defines a protocol to connect an external monitor or TV to a device, and therefore can roughly be described as "HDMI over Wifi", replacing the cable from the computer to the display

So what do you do if your notebook has this capability but your wall mounted TV does not? Actiontec has a product called ScreenBeam Pro that turns any HDMI connection into a WiDi receiver. Priced under $100, you can easily connect a laptop or android device to that screen or projector with an HDMI connector and wirelessly transmit your video/audio signal to that device. 

Actiontec also has kits that will provide your with a USB transmitter that will connect your laptop that doesn't have the WiDi capability built in so that it will work with the receiver. This is a great solution for providing this capability.

Actiontec Brochure

Daffodil TC03 - Universal Mobile Phone Charger - USB Cell Phone Charging Cable - Multicharger for: HTC / Samsung / iPhone / iPod / Nokia / ZTE / LG / Blackberry

We were considering creating a series of charging stations that patrons could use at site to recharge their phones and other devices. One of the issues that we thought might come up is that even though recently most phones are now using mini-USB connectors for their recharging port, it used to be an issue that many phone manufacturers used to use proprietary connectors.

Here is a cable that takes that into account! This cable has 10 different cable ends attached to give you compatibility with the following devices:

E01-Sony Ericsson

C702,C902,C905,G502,G700,G900,K330,K530,K550,K660,K770,K800,K810,R306,S500,T303,T250,T270,T280,T650,T700,W350,W380,W580,W595,W610,W660,W760,W880,W890,W902,W910,W980,Z555,Z750,Z770,Z780,F305,G705,R300

LG01-LG

KF700,KM380T,KM501,KM710,KS20,KT520,KU250,KU380,KU970Shine,KU990Viewty,KE850Prada,KE970Shine

SA02-Samsung SGH-

F258,F488,G608,G808,i458,i908Omnia,L768

MT02(Micro-USB)-Nokia

8600Luna,8800Arte, Carbon Arte,Sapphire Arte,8800 Sirocco,Sirocco Gold,Prism-series,6500 Classic Motorola Vorager 855 stereo bluetooth headset

SA01-Samsung

SCH-F609,SCH-F639,SCH-S209,SCH-S299,SCH-S399,SGH-B289,SGH-S268,SGH-C408,i608,i620,i718,U608,U708,U808,D838,D848,D908,D988,E218,E258,E768,E848,E908,E958,Z368,Z728,X838

PSP-Sony PSP Kodak camara

NK02 cable-Nokia

2100,2112,2115i,2116,21161,2125,2125i,21261,2128i,2260,2270,2275,2280,2285,2300,2310,2600,2610,2626,2630,2650,2651,3100,3105,3108,3110,3120,3200,6235i,6236i,6250,6255i,6256m,6260,6310,6310i,6340, 6340i,6360,6370,6385,6400,6500,6510,6560,6585,6590,6590i,6600,6610,6610i,6620,6630,6650,6651,6670,6680,6681,6682,6800,6810,6820,6822

MT01(Min-USB)-HTC

Touch Diamond,Touch Pro,Touch Cruise,Touch Dual,Touch Viva Asus M530w,P320,P527,P526,P535,P550,P750 MotorolaW181,W210,W213,W220,W230,W231,W270,W355,W362,W375,W396,W510,Z6,ZS,ZN200,E6,E8,EM30,K1,L7,L72,maxx K3,maxx V3,U6,Ug,V3,Blackberry 8300,8310,Pearl 8120,Bold 9000 glofish M500,M700,M800,XS00,X600,X800 Gsmart i-series,MW998,T600 MS-Series Sony Ericsson X1Xperia HPTMIpaq512,612,912,rw682802 Atom,Atom Pure,Xda Atom Life,Xda Flame,Xda Stealth,Xda Zinc

NK01-Nokia

2610,2626,2630,2680slide,2760,3110,3120,3150,3155,3155i,3250,5220,5300,5310,5320,5500,E61,E65,E71,6060,6070,6080,6085,6290-3G,6300,6500,6500VI,3155i,N70,N71,N72,N73,N76,N77,N80,N81,N82,N85,N90,N91,N92,N93,N93i,N95,N96

IPSG-ipod/iphone series

Are you looking for a better solution to charge your mobile devices.

Our world is becoming more and more craze with all the mobile devices that we seem to be accumulating. My household is probably like yours with both my wife and I having cell phones, Kindles and tablets that we are needing to keep charged. One are of our kitchen is set aside for that main purpose charging (3) Kindles, (2) cell phones, a Nexus 7, Samsung Note8, and an iPad. Quite a bit of craziness in one small area.

So I am constantly looking for a better way to consolidate and accommodate the charging of so many devices. I found a 7-Port USB Charger made by Satechi that allows you to charge 7 devices simultaneously. Four of the ports provides 5 volts/1 amp and the other 3 ports provides 5 volts/2.4 amps of power.

Powerful Charge Three 2.4A ports can charge high-powered devices such as tablets, while four 1A ports can charge smartphones, music players, and other devices. Charge a total of 7 devices simultaneously.

Compact, Space-Saving Design This charging station is only 7.4 x 5.5-inches, providing a powerful charge to all your devices without taking up desk space.

This unit is compatible with the following devices:

• Apple: iPhone 6 Plus, 6, 5S, 5C, 5, 4S, 4, 3, iPad Mini, iPad, iPod
• Samsung: Galaxy S5, S4, S3, S2, Note 2, Note
• Blackberry: Playbook, Torch
• HTC: One, SV, Flyer, Inspire 4G, Sensation, First, Desire
• Motorola: Droid, Razr
• Nokia: Lumia
• LG: Optimus, Ludic
• Google: Nexus
• and many more

Priced around $54.95 this could be a great solution for messy kitchen countertop.

LG has an interesting new keyboard design for your tablet

LG has announced that it is planning to release a new bluetooth keyboard rolls up into a nice tight package when traveling and rolls out to a full size keyboard that automatically switches on and connects to your nearest bluetooth capable device when it is rolled open.

The keys are made of solid plastic (not the flat, squishy kind), which LG hopes will offer a typing experience close to what you're used to on your PC. The keyboard is just the start: the company says it plans to offer even more "input devices" in the next few months. The Rolly will launch this September in the US first, rolling out to the rest of the world soon after. 

Windows 10 Speech Recognition

If you put past articles that have written, you’ll see that I have many different postings talking about speech recognition and used on either a computer or mobile device.  When I write about the speech recognition program I like to use the program itself to write the article which helps to test how well the program works.

In this case are done the same thing and I am writing the article using Microsoft Windows 10’s Speech Recognition application.  I will only run through the initial training session to give the system of brief analysis of my voice characteristics.  While with some programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking, this is sometimes sufficient to give an accurate response, I think Microsoft’s product will need multiple sessions to get to the same level of recognition capabilities that some of these better programs offer.

The basic control commands all seemed to work well and it may be that some of my issues are that I’m also using a new blue tooth headset that might not be transmitting as clear as I would hope.  I probably should listen to my voice in conjunction with what the system was typing out.  However, I do not see that as an option.

All in all, I find that the program is working sufficiently to use it but it does seem to get lost every so often and I have to bring the system back to the program started up again.  This is a frustrating issue but quick on the screen bring everything back to life.  My suggestion is to run multiple training sessions to increase the accuracy of the system so that you have a lower threshold of frustration when you begin using it.

Sophos has announce the EOS date for their Red 10

This is not a big worry but realize that after November 1, 2015 you will need to be considering the soon to be released Sophos Red 15 as a replacement. While supplies in the distribution chain may have some Red 10''s available after that date you will need to be aware that this might not happen though.

One of the benefits of the new Red series is that there will be a wireless version available. In the smaller environments that you normally place this unit this will provide an integrated solution at a very reasonable price.

Successor: RED 15 and prerequisite for deployment The next generation of our entry-level RED product is the RED 15. It will offer all the same features and connectivity options as the current product but have significantly improved performance.

The RED 15 will be available in two versions:

• RED 15 (non-wireless) – available from early September The RED 15 requires you to upgrade to UTM v9.35 but until 9.35 is generally available (plan is end of September), you will need to manually download and install it here. This should be possible starting with the soft release which is planned for early September. • RED 15w (wireless) – availability TBC, plan Q1 CY2016 The support for the new RED 15w that has an integrated wireless N access point is scheduled for the UTM v9.4 release, currently estimated at an early 2016 launch.

Further information about the RED 15 will be provided as soon as possible.

How to prevent Skype from launching when you start your machine...

A question came in today about how to prevent Skype from launching automatically when you turn on your computer. It is a simple thing to do in both the consumer version of Skype as well as Skype for Business. View the how to video listed below.

Surprise! People choose predictable Android lockscreen patterns

by John Zorabedian on August 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Filed Under: Android, Featured, Google, Mobile, Privacy

It's been well established that people are really bad at creating and remembering secure passwords and PINs.

We're also bad at choosing (and answering) password recovery questions.

New research shows that the patterns people create to lock and unlock Androids, much like the passwords people choose, aren't very complex - and might be a little too easy to guess.

A lockscreen pattern allows you to lock/unlock your device by swiping your finger on the screen - you draw a pattern that touches at least four and up to nine "nodes."

With four-to-nine nodes, there are 389,112 possible patterns you could draw - the more nodes you touch in your pattern, the more secure your lock, because a higher number of combinations means your pattern would be much harder for a snoop or thief to guess.

Marte Løge, a recent graduate from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, spent a year studying how people create lockscreen patterns, and her findings suggest that they aren't a secure alternative to passcodes at all.

Løge presented her findings earlier this month at the Defcon and Passwords conferences, during a talk she titled "Tell Me Who You Are, and I Will Tell You Your Lock Pattern."

She studied 3400 user-selected patterns and discovered that the most commonly selected patterns used only four nodes.

As Ars Technica reports, not only did most people choose the least number of nodes, the patterns they created had some predictable consistencies:

• the average number of nodes was five, with fewer than 9000 possible combinations
• people tend to start at the upper left corner - and 77% of patterns start in one of the four corners
• patterns usually move left-to-right and top-to-bottom (even among left-handed people)
• people often created patterns in the shape of a letter from the alphabet (choosing letters such as their initials)
• rarely do the patterns backtrack (e.g., going from node 2 to 3 and back to 1)

Løge told Ars that the way we create and remember patterns is similar to how we create and remember passwords - and more complex patterns are hard to remember, just like complex passwords:

It was a really fun thing to see that people use the same type of strategy for remembering a pattern as a password. You see the same type of behavior.

It's also worth pointing out that the oils in your fingers leave visible streaks on your device screen - if you don't use a complex pattern with backtracks, a thief wouldn't need to guess your pattern - it's right there for anyone to see!

Does this mean we should abandon lockscreen patterns?

Well, using a pattern to lock your Android is more advisable than using no screen lock at all.

After all, you need to turn on screen locking using PIN, password or pattern in order to encrypt your Android - and it's a very good idea to do so.

If you decide to use a PIN or password, remember that longer is stronger.

For PINs, every extra number in your PIN makes cracking your code 10 times harder!

Google says passwords are the most secure option (if your password isn't easy to guess).

For passwords or PINs, use as many characters as you can - Android allows you up to 16 characters, so why not use them all?

How to secure your smartphones

Keep your devices safe by following our 10 tips for securing your smartphone.

And check out our step-by-step guide to improve your privacy and security on your iPhone, Android or Windows Phone.

There are many different ways to attack Piracy of Movies and Popcorn Time is becoming another source that is being gone after...

Lisa Vaas of naked security at Sophos wrote and interesting post about the law going after people discussing how to access Popcorn Time and even accessing it to view illegally accessed movies.

According to Lisa in the US movie makers have filed a lawsuit against 11 Popcorn users, alleging they used the software to watch the 2014 Adam Sandler comedy The Cobbler.

This is enough to cause me not to use this kind of service, not just because of the moral issues of stealing, but also, one just doesn't need the hassle.

Be careful of even describing how to access or use the service because people doing this our now being prosecuted as well.

How one school district is monitoring social media of students and teachers

by Lisa Vaas on July 31, 2015 | 6 Comments

FILED UNDER: Facebook, Featured, Law & order, Privacy, Social networks, Twitter

Does your child ever tweet that she "hates" her math teacher?

Does he write that he's so embarrassed he could jump off a bridge?

Do her posts ever mention being bullied, or does she use them to make fun of other kids?

Are you, as a parent, even aware of everything your kids post?

Even if you aren't on top of everything your child posts, your kid's school well might be, given all the social media monitoring software on the market.

If you live in Florida's Orange County, those kind of posts could mean school officials come looking into whatever's going on.

That's because Orange County is one of the latest school districts to start monitoring all of the thousands of social media posts made by both students and teachers.

It's doing so with a new monitoring software called Snaptrends that monitors social media posts from all accounts in its location.

The school district reportedly paid $14,000 for a one-year Snaptrends license.

That buys the district's schools the ability to search thousands of posts on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, hunting for keywords that might indicate trouble.

School officials say that the goal is to flag potential dangers including cyberbullying, suicide and crime.

Joie Cadle of the Orange County School Board told WESH TV that the monitoring will alert school administrators to kids sending potentially serious threats via social media:

If they are sitting in a classroom and they are tweeting because they are mad at their teacher or their girlfriend for whatever reason, and there are some threatening words there, we need to be able to know if it is credible.

It's not like the posts are private. As Snaptrends' privacy policy notes, the technology only sifts through public posts.

But opponents of the school's new snooping effort, which was announced in April, say it's not the fact that their kids are being surveilled that's disturbing them.

Rather, it's the unanswered question of just what, exactly the school district plans to do with the information it collects.

WESH TV quotes Cindy Hamilton, co-founder of Opt Out Orlando:

My privacy issues aren't with the fact that they're just out there looking at it, because frankly, with social media it's not private. But what are they going to do with the information they look at? That's what we're concerned about.

When it announced the monitoring, the school district said it will:

[U]se the software to conduct routine monitoring for purposes of prevention or early intervention of potential issues where students or staff could be at risk to themselves or to others.

The company will assist district law enforcement and security personnel in monitoring publicly available social media communications that are relevant to school operations and personnel.

Florida isn't the only state to turn to monitoring in the face of school shootings, violence and bullying.

As CNN reported last year, the school system in Huntsville, Alabama, hired a retired FBI agent for security work, which included reviewing social media "when a high priority tip is received about an emerging threat to a school, student or staff member," as a school district spokesman said.

As well, the Glendale school district in Los Angeles in 2012 made the controversial decision to pay the firm Geo Listening $40,500 to monitor its students' social media activity on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The impetus to look into the technology was the suicides of two students. The final decision to pay for the monitoring was made after a pilot program helped administrators step in when yet another student used social media to talk about "ending his life."

The Orange County School District hasn't detailed how officials will decide what, precisely, to review.

Some technologies might just search social media posts, but others are more akin to tools you might expect to see in the arsenals of government surveillance agencies.

Safe Outlook Corporation's monitoring software CompuGuardian, for example, gives school administrators not only the ability to search keywords connected to cyberbullying and drug use, but also to delve into students' search histories to see if they're researching topics about dangers such as school violence.

CNN quotes Safe Outlook President David Jones:

You can identify a student, and you can jump into their activity logs and see exactly what they've typed, exactly where they've gone, exactly what they've done, and it gives you some history that you can go back to that child and use some disciplinary action.

You can bring in the parent and say, 'Hey, look, this is what your child's doing. You need to talk to them about it.'

Interestingly enough, and hardly surprising, is the fact that Snaptrends is reportedly also in use by the Central Florida Intelligence Exchange, which is the local law enforcement Fusion Center.

A Fusion Center is a center set up to "analyze information and identify trends to share timely intelligence with federal, state, and local law enforcement including [Department of Homeland Security], which then further shares this information with other members of the Intelligence Community."

As such, it's not surprising that, just like with the Feds' propensity to amass vast troves of surveillance data about citizens, so too are opponents pointing to monitoring software's collection of anything and everything, including both potentially threatening or perfectly innocent content.

From a post against the surveillance, written by Florida attorney Scott Martin:

Snaptrends is a type of social media scraper/aggregator that collects social media information in mass. The data are scooped up by an automated process without regard to the nature of the content - good, bad, or indifferent.

But what guarantees are there that the social media information collected by the District will be limited to ... benevolent purposes? What policies are in place? Who can access the data? What conclusions are being drawn from the data? Who is drawing those conclusions? What standards are they using in making decisions based on captured data?

All these questions should be answered before any such tool is put in place, Martin says.

I agree. What's your view?

Press Release: Sophos Wins All Three Security Categories in 2015 CRN® Annual Report Card

OXFORD, U.K. August 10, 2015 – Sophos has won all three security focused categories in The Channel Company's esteemed 2015 CRN® Annual Report Card. Sophos swept the board for the second year running as the winners of "Overall Category: Client Security Software" and "Overall Category: Network Security Appliances," and extended its recognition this year adding "Overall winner: Network Security Software" to its accolades. Sophos is the only vendor to have received top ratings in all client and network security categories, demonstrating the consistency of the channel experience across its portfolio.

The Annual Report Card summarizes results from a comprehensive study that details solution provider satisfaction with hardware, services and software vendors. The vendors with the highest marks are named to the prestigious Annual Report Card list and celebrated as best in class by their partners. The results also provide the IT vendor community with valuable feedback—directly from their solution providers—that can be used to hone product offerings and improve communication with partners.

"Our partner community is absolutely critical to our success in helping businesses and government agencies of all sizes protect their systems and information from cyber-attack," said Mike Valentine, senior vice president of worldwide sales for Sophos. "The unprecedented high marks awarded by our partners for the 2015 Annual Report Card reflects our companywide commitment to the channel. This year, CRN and its readers have recognized many of our key marketing and sales people for their accomplishments and impact within the channel, and now to receive such credit in all client and network security categories, is an honor for our entire company."

This year's elite group of honorees was selected based on the results of an in-depth invitation-only survey by The Channel Company's research team. More than 2,400 solution providers were asked to evaluate their satisfaction with 72 vendor partners in approximately 22 major product categories. The winners will be honored throughout The Channel Company's XChange 2015 event Aug. 9-11 in Washington, D.C., and highlighted in the leading media outlet for the IT channel, CRN. To view the results of the study as well as the list of this year's honorees, visit www.crn.com.

"Today's solution providers are juggling multiple vendors, product lines and customer demands. They are looking for true partnerships with their vendors in order to tailor solutions that will meet and exceed their customers' expectations," said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company. "CRN's Annual Report Card continues to give solution providers an outlet to deliver feedback to vendors and recognizes those vendors at the top of their game. We join these solution providers in applauding 2015 honoree Sophos and recognize them for their stellar performance."

Microsoft Makes DVD Player for Windows 10 Free for Some

While many mobile devices today don't have DVD Drives built in anymore, most desktop units still do and if you want to be able to play DVD's on you computer it may cost you to do so on your newly purchased or upgraded Windows 10 machine.

You can download Microsoft's DVD Player for Windows 10 from the Windows Store for free unless...

• Your using Windows Enterprise
• If you do a clean install of Windows 10 instead of an upgrade, again you don't get it free

The player app is free only for Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 users that had Media Center on their machines prior to an upgrade to Windows 10. You also need to upgrade during the free period that Microsoft has outlined. Otherwise you will will have to open your wallet and shell out $14.99 in the Windows Store.

If you don't want to pay, try downloading the free VLC media player for Windows. This is an open source product that you can donate to and they currently have a player that supports Windows 10.

Microsoft Releases Sway to Office 365 and Windows 10 Users

Sway lets you compose text and graphics on the fly that can be used free if you have a Microsoft account. This product is viewed  as a presentation tool to be used primarily by businesses and education users. Subscribers to Microsoft's Office 365 plans that that include "Office Online, Office 365 Business or Office 365 ProPlus" have access to this new Sway commercial release.

Sway users create presentations, called "Sways," from various text and graphics sources. The Sway application sets up the layout based on integrated design principles. Typically, a viewer would scroll vertically or horizontally through a Sway presentation, but a new added feature with this release is the ability to show Sways in an individual slide-by-slide manner.

Also with this release, Microsoft now permits a single device to handle multiple Sway accounts for home and work purposes. Microsoft has also enhanced the Share button in Sway so that presentations can be shared via Docs.com, which is a free Office documents sharing portal.

I would love to hear from anyone that is actually using this product and how you are using it.

Windows 10

As more resources become available to us I will be posting them up to this site for you to access.

Below is a link for accessing the Windows 10 free location for you to get your very own free update.

windows.com/windows10upgrade

Or download a brochure from Microsoft with all of this information here.