Using Edge instead of Chrome will add hours of extra battery life According to company tests, Microsoft's browser even beats Opera's battery saver mode.

It's no big secret that Google's Chrome browser is a bit of a battery hog. The native browsers on both Windows and macOS (Edge and Safari) are widely reported to outlast Google's offering. In its latest campaign, Microsoft is quantifying this difference: in a test that cycles through some common sites including Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Amazon, Microsoft's latest browser lasted 7 hours and 22 minutes on a Surface Book system. Chrome lasted just 4 hours and 19 minutes.

With the planned release date for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update drawing ever nearer, Microsoft is hard at work squashing as many bugs as it can. Naturally, this means new builds released to Windows Insiders won’t offer any significant new features, but they will contain important fixes, general improvements and welcome performance boosts.

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase. Microsoft announced on Friday that it’s taking $50 off Xbox One console bundles as part of an “Xbox Spring Sale” promotion, which went into effect yesterday, March 20, at various retailers. The promotion brings the base 500GB console bundle down to $299, and a handful of 1TB bundles down to $349, among other discounts.

icrosoft is reportedly investigating the possibility of removing one of the few yet major disadvantages of digitally distributed media: the killing of the second-hand market. Prior to the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft had envisioned a world where all software was locked to a single console. In exchange for not having to place a physical disc in the optical drive of the Xbox One and the ability to download a temporary copy of the game to play when visiting friends, the company explained at the time, all discs would be a one-time consumable purchase - something its rival Sony mocked by pointing out that the ability to sell on a game you no longer want is a major advantage of physical media. Backlash to the concept of an always-on internet-connected digital rights management (DRM) system that would render games unplayable if your Xbox One couldn't communicate with Microsoft's servers saw the plans scrapped prior to launch, and now the company is reportedly looking to go the other way and allow gamers to trade in their digital copies for store credit.

Twitter lit up with criticism and condemnation at Microsoft's decision to hire female dancers in schoolgirl outfits for an Xbox party it hosted at the Game Developers Conference last week. It also drew stern remarks from Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who said the party did "not reflect the core values and beliefs of Xbox, where we believe in respect."

At the Free Software Foundation’s LibrePlanet 2016 conference, Edward Snowden credited free software with enabling him to blow the whistle about government surveillance. Speaking via video link from Russia, the former NSA contractor said that “what happened in 2013 couldn’t have happened without free software”. But as well as indicating his preference for free, open source software, Snowden revealed that he refused to use Microsoft software because he “couldn’t be sure” that there weren’t backdoors built in.

To help Windows Phone users reset and recover their phone software, Microsoft released the Windows Device Recover Tool. The tool is essential for Windows Phone users and can be used to reset and/or recover a Windows phone by reinstalling a factory image of Windows 7, 8.1, and even Windows 10.

The Windows 10 Mobile rollout is a major screwup. Microsoft had promised to kick it off by the end of last year, but existing smartphones only started to receive a software update last week. Microsoft had also promised to support all Lumias that arrived since Windows Phone 8's debut, but, when the rollout finally started, only a limited number of smartphones were targeted. What's more, Microsoft now says that it has no plans to support the remaining Lumia handsets in "a second wave", leaving many of its fans and customers, who have been eagerly waiting for Windows 10 Mobile to finally arrive, officially stuck on Windows Phone 8.1.

Microsoft is readying a tool designed to make it easier for organisations to upload a diverse range of data types to Azure Data Factory as part of a big data analytics project. The goal is to enable organisations to move data to and from Azure in a friction-free and reliable way using a simple code-free wizard, the firm said.