Category: Windows

#66: A computer on every desk?

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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“A computer on every desk, and in every home, running Microsoft software” – was an early and, at the time, unbelievably ambitious goal for a small company from Albuquerque which later moved up to Bellevue, WA.

Things have moved on radically since Microsoft was founded nearly 50 years ago; now, everyone who needs a computer on a desk has one, and billions more have one on their lap or in their hand. SteveB talked recently, in a retrospective “Alumni Voices” interview, about the early days.

Thinking about PC usage (for Windows and Macs); laptops overtook desktops some years ago (notebooks outselling desktops 4:1). Laptop manufacturers evolve them more quickly, with better screens, longer battery life and now, ramming in AI features, often refreshing their ranges regularly.

But if you sit at a desk most of the time, and all your data is in the cloud anyway, shouldn’t your primary computer be a desktop? Maybe you could have a medium-spec laptop for when you need to be mobile, and a comparatively high-end desktop for the rest of the time?

If you’re using a laptop for work and spend much of your work/life in one place, at least make sure you get a proper monitor.

I found this image at the top when searching, “is it OK to sit on the ottoman of an Eames chair?” – the answer was captioned, “it is, if you’re Bill Gates”

Moore’s law

The oft-mis-quoted effect (that stuff gets faster/cheaper/bigger all the time) of Moore’s law could be applied to the growth in laptop usage;  there’s more to be gained from miniaturization when you’re carrying a machine around, as well as advances in battery and display technology.

Desktops have tended to be left behind; there’s no built-in screen (unless they’re an all-in-1), they don’t run on batteries and they often sit out of sight, with the user interacting through a separate mouse, keyboard and looking at a desktop monitor. Old PCs were boring to look at, sometimes quite noisy and clearly fixed in position.

Now, many new home desktops are sold as gaming PCs with high end graphics and are often adorned with elaborate cooling, colourful lights and the like.

Acer Predator Orion 5000 (2024) review

The rise of the Mini

Around 20 years ago, capable desktop PCs started to shrink in size – it wasn’t uncommon to see demos being run from a “Shuttle Box”, which had way more storage and CPU horsepower than could be gotten from a laptop of the time, so it was possible to run servers in VMs on Virtual PC or similar.

Mac Mini and other small-form devices followed, but were often relegated to secondary use.

Julian Datta and Brett Johnson, posing in 2007 with a Shuttle which worked so hard it was literally smokin’

Desktops for today

If you’re running a laptop from a home office and sit at a desk 90% of your day, it’s worth looking at getting a modern, small form desktop. They’re quiet, can be much neater than a laptop with loads of cables or a docking station, and can be surprisingly cheap.

An Dell Inspiron with Intel i5 10-core CPU, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD can cost £650 (eg Dell Inspiron Desktop with the Latest Intel Processors). If you’re using an existing screen setup from an older laptop, you might need to buy a webcam too. A broadly comparable laptop might cost £100 or more extra, though it might last a good bit less time than a well-spec’ed desktop.

Desktops are generally more self-upgradeable and repairable than laptops, though that tends to change when you get into highly miniaturized machines. Framework, who build laptops that are sold as being fixable rather than disposable, recently unveiled their first desktop too…

Framework | Configure Framework Desktop DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ AI Max

Further reading

If you’re already (or still) using a desktop for everyday computing, feel free to comment for others to hear your thoughts. If you’re just desktop-curious, check out some recent reviews…

The ASUS NUC 15 Pro Is Built for Upgrades

I moved my workflow to a Windows 11 PC no bigger than a bagel | Windows Central

Chuwi UBox mini PC review | TechRadar

#64: Tick, Tock, Time is up (nearly) for Windows 10

Posted on (Updated by ewand

Designer (16)

Microsoft developed a reputation for having a couple of shaky versions of anything before the one that you’d be actually happy to use came along. Just as many people do with phone releases, it often seems to make sense skipping a few and just get the latest whenever it’s time to upgrade the computer.

There’s that old joke: “How does Bill Gates count to 10?” The latest answer is “1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, NT3.1/3.5, 95, NT4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11”. Windows 3.1 was the first to be what you might call mainstream, and XP, 7 and 10 were the versions which got the most users.

Returning to the compelling Statcounter site (as mentioned in ToW #62); it bases its research on which machines/browsers are seen being used to access a host of websites. There are still a lot of people using older Windows versions. Surprisingly, 0.27% of all browsing being done by Windows users was by brave souls still on Windows XP. Vista is barely above 0.

Data from Desktop Windows Version Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

Windows 8/8.1 (the dark green line which peaked in mid-2015) never really took off – maybe because of corporates who had rolled out Windows 7 as an upgrade to XP (having steered well clear of Vista) and user resistance to the touch-centricity of the whole thing, especially useless if you’re on a desktop PC.

When Windows 10 came out in mid-2015, it took 2½ years for it to overtake Windows 7 in usage, at least according to this data. Windows 11 was released in October 2021 but in well  over 3 years since, it still has less than 2/3rd the usage of Windows 10.

Support Lifecycle

Microsoft took a view some years back, that in order to be credible in the Enterprise, you need to support your stuff for a long time. As a result, the standard lifecycle is for every product to have 10 years of life, usually split 50/50 into Mainstream and Extended support. Extended means you might get security fixes but there will be no more updates to add features, make it better, jam adverts into places you don’t want them etc.

On 14th October 2025, Windows 10 hits that decade milestone – at which point it will go out of support, there will be no more security updates and if you get hit by a cyber attack then that’s too bad. In future, you’d be ridiculed for it when anything goes wrong.

Performing an operating system upgrade can be a big deal – especially if you’re doing it on behalf of a company or large organisation – as some of the existing hardware and software might not work under the new OS. Windows 11 complicates things further by having some fairly specific hardware requirements in the worthy name of security; but even some expensive PCs from a year or two before COVID are now excluded. Many of Microsoft’s own Surface range are upgradeable, but the flagship $4K Surface Studio sold from 2016-2018 is not one of them.

If you have a Windows 10 PC then it’s very likely it will have been offered Windows 11 as an upgrade; if in any doubt, then try the PC Health Check app and see what it says.

How to run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

tl;dr – don’t.

It’s worth noting that the majority of PCs which can happily run Windows 10 would also be able to run Win11 if they were allowed to. The hardware requirements dictated, though, that you need a certain level of processor and a TPM 2.0 security module, or you get denied.

There have been various tricks and tweaks to fool Windows 11 into running through the upgrade process and letting it continue; some of them even offered up by Microsoft itself. Lately, however, the signal has been that even if the unsupported machine made it to Windows 11 now, it could be blocked in future from getting subsequent updates and therefore would be in limbo. Microsoft’s own advice if you have followed one of these unofficial workarounds, is to revert now to Windows 10.

The previously-toted registry key to bypass the hardware validation has now been removed, in order to prevent any more unsuspecting souls from going down that path.

Some complainers have doggedly stayed on Windows 10 because they don’t like the look of 11, but if you are still using Windows 10 because your hardware can’t make the leap, then you’re in something of a quandary. Microsoft will let you pay $61 to extend support for Windows 10 until October 2026, with that sum doubling every year. So to keep Win10 until the absolute drop-dead deadline of October 2029, it would cost you over $400.

Or time to fork out the readies and buy a new machine before the October bell rings.

If you fancy a Surface, then Intel variants of last year’s ARM-powered Copilot+ machines are now available (at least for business customers), though it might make sense to wait until the summer and see what arrives, given that the current gen Surface Copilot+ machines were unveiled in May 2024.

#63B: It’s Your ISP

Posted on by ewand

A miniature city with many people working on a cable line AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Following on from last week’s missive on finding problems in your home network, this one turns its attention to network of the internet service provider (ISP) itself. Just like any other utility provider, there is a lot going on behind the scenes before the pipe or cable that shows up at your property delivers its stuff. As UK Gov CTO David Knott says, the simpler something looks, the more complex it probably is.

If you think there are problems with your internet connection’s speed or reliability, and it’s not your fault, there are a few things you can do to try and pinpoint where the cause lies. Being quite specific can also help short-circuit the early stages of the supplier’s support desk, where they’ll be getting you to clear your cookies and restart your browser.

Let’s assume that any WiFi devices are working and the home router itself is connecting OK – the lights on your device are behaving like they should be connected.

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I bet none of you losers has their own named port on their broadband router

Sometimes the connection to the ISP might be ropey – even if the lights are on, it could be worth logging into the admin page on your router to see if there are any tell-tales or warnings. There’s probably a log of events that might show repeated disconnect/reconnect loops, or other tell-tale errors. If you have a fancy-pants NAS device or similar, you might even be able to collect the logs and give better reporting.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

It’s worth checking a public speed test site, like www.speedtest.net, to see if it thinks you should be getting decent performance. Pay attention to that Ping ms number – as mentioned previously, latency is the enemy of anything that needs real-time communications like a Teams/Zoom meeting or online gaming. Streaming video can often deal with poor latency since it will buffer at least a few seconds in advance, though if it gets really bad then it might still be unworkable.

HOW NETWORKS WORK

Without grossly oversimplifying things, when you try to connect to a remote resource (say, www.google.com), your computer will use the magic of DNS (short for the Domain Name System) to figure out what is its actual address on the internet, then will attempt to reach it.

Imagine going on a journey with tens or hundreds of junctions along the way; at each turn you don’t need to know all of the directions to the destination, only that it’s further along this road rather than the other way. When connecting to a remote internet site, there will be many “hops” that your data will take – and the connections between each of those points could be a cause of problems.

Given that the internet was conceived to survive a nuclear war, traffic should find a way but sometimes there’s a single link that can throw everything off. If a single website is slow but everything else works, it’s probably that site. But if everything seems slow or unreliable, it’s more likely there’s a problem with your ISP’s network, or possibly the network it connects to.

To test a single connection, there’s a built-in command (again, on Windows, press Win+R an enter cmd) called tracert, which will basically ping everything between you and that remote site:

In this case, it sends 3 requests and measures the round-trip time of each; sometimes you’ll see an isolated spike or a drop out but that’s not unusual. In many cases, for popular sites like Google or Bing, you’ll only really be connecting to a nearby node anyway. Look up the IP Address on whatismyipaddress.com and you’d see, in this instance, that Google.com lives in a Datacenter in London, but if the same experiment was repeated from a PC in LA, the IP address and therefore final destination that corresponds to www.google.com would be different.

If you think your network problem is a bit more transient, you could try an old bit of Windows software called WinMTR (or a lightly refreshed version called WinMTR Redux). This will repeatedly run TraceRT probes and show you the results over time; if you see one particular hop which spikes a lot and it looks like it’s part of your own ISP’s network, then it could be worth sharing this info with them in the hope they go and switch that router off and back on again…

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

In this instance, the first hop into the ISP network – 217.47.72.122 – appeared to be the problem as it and everything later had terrible latency (almost a whole second where you’d normally expect a few milliseconds). This above example was presented to a well-known UK national telecoms provider some time ago, as proof that the problem was with them, and to stop ordering the end user to faff about with ADSL microfilters or get engineers out to test the phone line.

Another example shows that while there’s no cataclysmic issue, there appears to be a delay in some of the connections further up the line – probably not worth escalating but it might explain why some sites feel slow while others don’t:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The nice thing about WinMTR is that you could save it to OneDrive / Google Drive and run it directly without needing to install anything. If you’re happy to add some troubleshooting software in advance of having a problem, another alternative could be PingPlotter:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

WHAT IF IT’S DNS?

Ask anyone who has worked in IT support and at some point, the DNS infrastructure or your connection into it will be the thing that breaks everything else. Moving everything off-premises to a cloud-based environment merely means that DNS is someone else’s problem, but if you can’t figure out how to connect to the cloud, it’s yours.

Stack of blocks below text 'All modern digital infrastructure' made precarious by single small block near the bottom labelled 'DNS'

Normally, when your ISP gives you a connection, they also provide the address that your computers will use to make DNS queries. Your broadband router might act as a proxy, so the devices on the home network just ask it to resolve DNS queries, then it will connect to your ISP’s DNS service and relay the response back.

If everything else appears to be working but your connection is still flaky and slow, it may be that your ISP’s DNS service is stuffed. To the end user, you’d try to connect to www.google.com and it would spin for a while and eventually get an error saying it had timed our or could not be found; this could just be that your PC asked the router, which passed through the request to the ISP’s own DNS server(s), but if there’s a problem connecting or they’re not working properly, then a reply might not come.

Fortunately, there is an option to sidestep this – temporarily, maybe – and use somebody else’s DNS service instead.

Google operates a free, public DNS service, on addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. If your ISP’s DNS is not responding well, try substituting the default automatic provisioning of DNS server addresses that your machine will likely have, with hard-coding Google’s DNS – see Get Started  |  Public DNS.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

If all else fails, you might just have to endure the ISP’s support desk to get someone to check the connection back to you, or just give up and go outside instead.

#63: Trouble with your network?

Posted on by ewand

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We’ve all been there. Just when you need it to work, your home internet connection goes down or huffs off in go-slow mode. You’ll have seen others who, even 5 years after enforced home working, haven’t quite figured out how to make their networks, er, work. Or the colleague who always appears to be having trouble with their internet, so they can’t switch on the camera…?

What to do if your network appears to be up the swannee?

STEP ONE – THE THREE-FINGERED-SALUTE

If you’re lazy and uninterested in the root cause of a problem, then a quick way to resolution might be the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on-again trick. Most broadband routers have a button to reboot them, or even just pull the power for 10 seconds and then put it back in.

Sometimes, service providers will tell you to reboot your router if you are getting an error – streaming apps on smart TVs appear to be adept at this. Technology gurus will scoff that there’s no way that could be the problem, it must be something with the app provider (until they reboot the router as a last resort, and the app starts working).

The original “Three Fingered Salute” was a moniker applied to CTRL+ALT+DEL, the unmaskable hardware combination on early PCs which forced a reboot. Nowadays, Windows handles it with more grace.

STEP TWO – CAN YOU SEE OUTSIDE?

Once you’ve waited 5 minutes for your broadband router to restart (and assuming that hasn’t fixed the problem), the next thing to check is if your computer can talk to the outside world. If not, that means the problem is somewhere between your keyboard and the internet service provider that the modem connects to. Trying to log a fault with your provider’s support desk will generally mean they’ll make you try unplugging and restarting everything in your house first, so be prepared.

Make sure you’re actually connected to the network and have a valid address; in Windows 11, go to Settings / Network & Internet and look at Properties of whatever the connection is. You should see the local network address of your machine, and the gateway through which everything is sent and received. The format of the numbers might vary but should look something like:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

[If you’re getting a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address then something is going wrong with your computer and getting an IP address; if it’s in your house, try removing and replacing the network cable, or rebooting the PC and/or router. If it’s in a hotel or public wifi area, give up and set your phone up to do Tethering].

PING!

Now, fire up a command prompt (press WindowsKey+R then enter cmd) and enter ping 192.168.1.1 (or whatever address your default gateway is).

A screen shot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The ping command literally bounces a short piece of data at the address you’re looking for; if that location is available (and not being blocked by some firewall or other) then it replies, and the fact that you got a response and the speed it took are displayed.

If you’re going to be playing with cables and stuff, you could enter ping -t 192.168.1.1 – the -t flag makes it continue pinging until you close the window or press CTRL+C. If you’re getting a reply at all, and the latency (time<1ms) is stable and low, then your connection to the router is just fine.

Latency is the enemy of a stable and reliable connection – when you see people having problems with Zoom/Teams meetings and their audio or video is garbled and choppy, that’s almost always a latency problem, either within their home network or somewhere further up the chain. Some networks suffer from it inherently – satellite connected, like in-flight WFi, are a good example – and anything that needs a stable, real-time connection (video calls, multiplayer gaming etc) is best avoided.

STEP TWOa – ARE YOU WIRELESS?

If you’re using a wireless network, it’s worth checking that something isn’t getting in the way unexpectedly. IT bods troubleshooting a problematic early business WiFi network found that it kept dropping out randomly, but more often around lunchtime – until they realised their neighbour in the office block had a kitchen on the other side of the wall, with a microwave oven that nuked their WiFi whenever it was used. Some home electronics could do the same, or even things like wood burning stoves.

Maybe your household is near other users who could be getting in the way? Try scaring them for a laugh but it’s also worth making sure your WiFi network isn’t clashing with theirs. It could be worth trying the ping -t trick above and move the machine around the place to see if there are some spots where you’re getting really high latency numbers, or to see if the ping reply doesn’t come back at all.

Try the WiFi Analyzer app from the Windows Store (if you’re on a PC; there are many others for iOS/Android and Mac):

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

This app will show you all the neighbouring networks and which channel they’re operating on; if you’re sharing the spectrum with too many others then it might be worth reconfiguring your WiFi network to lock to a different channel; time to RTFM for the router.

An alternative to WiFi Analyzer is the long-established inSSider. The latest version needs you to register for an account, but the old one – which still gives a lot of useful info – is still available, if you’re careful to dodge the many links to other unwanted stuff:

A screen shot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU

If the internet connection is still not playing ball, but initial signs are that the local network is OK and you’re fairly confident you don’t have sporadic hardware problems or similar, then it’s pretty likely the fault lies elsewhere. Get ready to face the inertia of service provider helpdesks who will assume that the problem is at your end… to prevail, we must arm ourselves with evidence and above all, keep calm.

To avoid over-doing things, we’ll pick that one up next week.

#62: Will the web become exclusively mobile?

Posted on by ewand

A group of people with chains around their faces AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Looking back over the last 50 years of technology progress, the internet must surely be the most significant change enabler. When the developing ARPANet adopted TCP/IP in January 1983, the ‘net as we know it started to really take shape. TimBL wrote up an idea of how to connect pages of info together, and within a few years the Worldwide Web started on one of Mr Jobs’ NeXT machines.

As the web evolved to become more consumer-centric and people got PCs in their home which could connect, life started to shift online, especially when broadband replaced dial-up in the early 2000s. Laptops and WiFi helped to unshackle people from their desks and enabled working and playing from nearly anywhere. Coffee shop owners of the world rejoiced; up to a point.

But the most significant trend has surely been mobile connectivity – initially providing access to the same stuff just on a smaller screen. Now, we’re beginning to see the web and info on it become desktop-free zones. The decline in relevance of the desktop or laptop computer has been coming a long time, as smartphone usage around the world exploded. In the future, we’ll potentially be forced to use phones where a better user experience could well be delivered on a big screen, as service providers try to reduce costs while trying to provide a secure, easy to use experience.

Desktop falling behind

Even in 2014, Windows accounted for nearly 2/3 of web traffic at the start and a bit more than half by the end of the year. Android was taking an early lead over iOS and the Mac had a steady-ish 5%.

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Data from statcounter.com

Contrast to the end of 2024 and two-thirds of all traffic is from Android and iOS, with Windows & Mac together just over 30%.

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Looking beyond which mobile or desktop OS you use, Chrome is the default browser cross-platform with two-thirds of all traffic, while on the desktop, Microsoft Edge has about 13%. Looking at mobile only, Edge has less half of one percent of usage (beaten slightly by Firefox, and Opera has 4 times the usage) though it’s available for both Android and iOS. You have to wonder when Microsoft will pull the plug, even if the mobile Edge browser is a decent effort (especially so if you use Edge on Windows PC too).

Apps taking over, not always for the better

It’s not just that content is moving to be more mobile-oriented; increasingly, stuff that used to be available on the web can only be done via using an app. To a degree, this could be part of an ongoing enshittification process – a topic we’ll delve into in a future ToW.

As an example, Google has removed the “Timeline” feature from Google Maps online. Discussed briefly in ToW #638, this was a great way of checking where and when you were – handy for doing stuff like mileage claims or remembering how long it’s been since you’ve visited someone.

A screenshot of a phone AI-generated content may be incorrect.

This particular change has some solid reasoning behind it; rather than The Chocolate Factory storing data about where you’ve been on its servers, they announced that the data would be held securely on the device instead. Is this Google being altruistic and privacy-sensitive, or just trying to avoid being held to account for something down the line? … You decide.

From an end-user perspective, losing access to Timeline in the browser is a bit annoying and too bad if you want to share your history across multiple devices – the data is local to one device only and that’s that. Just in case your phone gets lost, you might want to back it up now…

Un Appy with Online Banking

There are many other examples of websites trying to push you to use their apps (click a link on a mobile browser and it often will try to redirect you), but the biscuit is surely taken by at least one UK credit card provider.

Early digital banking services might have required special hardware or bespoke PC applications, but gradually all went into the browser, with some requiring a hardware token or other device to be used when signing in. Now, it’s very common to need some form of Multi-factor authentication like receiving a one-time SMS message to be able to login; even making a one-off purchase generally requires Strong Customer Authentication.

Users of Virgin Money credit cards have no web-based view of their account, with the options being to use the app or do everything another way. Viewing and download statements can only be done on the phone; the only alternative is to request a paper version be posted.

The in-app help used to advise that if you wanted your statements on a proper computer, then download the PDFs to your phone and email them to yourself. Fortunately, that advice has since been removed…

Happily, if you’re an Android & PC user at least, you could use the Phone Link app to browse the file system on the device when it’s connected. The phone will appear in the left pane on Windows Explorer…

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

… and if you navigate to Phone Name > storage > Download, you’ll be able to view, copy elsewhere on your PC, and even delete the file from the phone storage.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

If you’re using OneDrive (the consumer version) for your personal files, you might want to enable the Personal Vault and put potentially sensitive stuff in there.

#56: Hey kids, look who’s back!

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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When does old become retro, and how does fashion decide when something uncool becomes drip? Brand equity rises and falls all the time; some just go out of date and are left behind, while some try to reassert themselves to speed up the cycle – see Jaguar / jaGuar’s recent hoo-hah and “Copy Nothing” brand rehab…

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[Richard Ayoade in IT Crowd c 2006, Jaguar deleting ordinary in 2024, Reeves & Mortimer c1993]

(Eddie Izzard has some mildly sweary thoughts about the whole “Looking cool…” cycle).

Retro tech

It’s amusing when old tech becomes cool again – from hipsters rocking LCD digital watches, to GenZers toting feature phones like it was the 1990s. Some brands were never fashionable, like AOL: using an aol.com email address even 20 years ago was a marker of technological unsophistication. Amazingly, you can still sign up for an aol.com address today if you feel like sending email from the past.

Many other products and services were all the rage, then just weren’t – and one good example is Microsoft’s MSN, which now seems to be coming back from life support. Well, certain elements (which are not yet part of the revamp) were very pervasive and cool back in the day … remember MSN Messenger, before Microsoft bungled it into Skype? It was so down with the kids, even a youthful Stormzy was using it (and that’s how he got his name).

The Microsoft Network

MSN first arrived 30 years ago as part of the Windows 95 (“Chicago”) beta program; it was a “walled garden” network service providing proprietary content through a dial up network. Market leaders AOL and CompuServe had similarly restricted services – using them wasn’t really “being on the internet” other than you could browse pages written for those services, use email and later, instant messaging. Win95 initially didn’t even have a TCP/IP stack built-in, so without 3rd party software, you couldn’t be directly connected to the ’net.

MSN’s late 90s paid-for dial-up service became a regular ISP and there was a Premium subscription available to netizens who wanted additional security and the likes.

From that closed offering, the MSN brand morphed into something applied to lots of Microsoft’s consumer-oriented web experiences – from the Yahoo!-like attempt to establish a homepage, to in 2001 rebranding the first mass free email service which Microsoft acquired 5 years earlier, as MSN Hotmail.

Legacy users of the Win95 MSN service were ported over to Hotmail and given short @msn.com mail accounts. Other users could at one point choose a variety of domain names when signing up for a Live ID / Hotmail account, including @msn.com and @msn.co.uk. These have long since gone away and the only options now are outlook.com and Hotmail.com.

At one point, there were numerous “MSN …” apps for Windows and mobile devices, from MSN Travel to MSN Money. Most of these were subsequently killed off or renamed to something else, like Microsoft News.

Amazingly, you can still buy MSN Premium today – for £7 a month you get, er, lots of stuff that’s available, better and/or for free from other places, including other bits of Microsoft itself.

clip_image006Today, many of the buttons on the MSN Explorer app either don’t work, or redirect to a page about how Internet Explorer isn’t supported anymore. One of the purported benefits of MSN Premium is that it’s possible to sign up an additional 9 users for an @msn.com email address; given the number of users complaining that it no longer works (and getting radio silence from support), it seems that loophole has now closed.

Microsoft Stop Start

At one point, Microsoft appeared to want “Start” to become the new MSN brand; the homepage for Edge browser (unless you do yourself a favour and set it to something else) was “Start” and the single mobile app which merged MSN News, MSN Money and more was just “Microsoft Start”.

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Now the Start apps have been renamed to just “MSN” on mobiles, alongside MSN Weather and MSN Money which avoided the previous cull; PC users don’t have an “MSN” app but might expect to see the same content on Edge homescreen or on the Widgets on their taskbar.

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Sadly, renaming the app and service doesn’t appear to have done much for the quality of advertising or the myriad click-bait “news” providers, though it does appear to have gotten less insidious and you can at least hide sources you don’t want to hear from again.

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The daily email newsletters are not bad – see https://www.msn.com/en-gb/personalize/newslettersignup to manage your subscriptions. Let’s see if Microsoft starts to re-launch other MSN services in due course…

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#52: The Power of the Cloud

Posted on by ewand

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Being shown around a modern datacenter is a pretty awesome experience. The huge rooms full of servers, networking gear and storage can be reminiscent of that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dig a little deeper, though, and it’s the power systems that are truly jaw-dropping; how much power the DC uses when it’s running and what to do if the power supply goes away is a big part of building these operations.

At one point, Microsoft used huge Caterpillar diesel generators, each of which could generate several megawatts and was kept ready and waiting by continually pumping hot oil inside, so the machine could be started and running at full tilt in a fraction of a second in the event of power failure. Moves are afoot to use hydrogen fuel cells or other means of storing and generating backup power.

AI and Datacenter boom

As much traditional computing has moved into the cloud over the last decade or two, and faster and more mobile internet access drives end-user demand, datacenters have been getting bigger and more numerous. They almost can’t build them fast enough. About 1/3 of all worldwide DCs are in the US, and together they soak up about 6% of all electricity.

Datacentres worldwide used about 460 TWh of electricity in 2022; that’s 460 billion KWh, or enough to run 35 trillion lightbulbs continuously – about 4,300, 24×7, for each person on the planet. That’s quite a lot of power. Expect that amount to double by 2026. Google and Microsoft reportedly consumed 24TWh each in 2023.

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[source – Electricity 2024 – Analysis and forecast to 2026]
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf

Generative AI is VERY power hungry: estimates vary but research showed that generating one image used as much power as over 500 smartphone charges, averaging around 3KWh per image. Better make sure your ChatGPT / Copilot / Microsoft Designer usage is worthwhile and not just creating stupid images of cats and dogs.

To put the commensurate CO2 output into context, however, 1,000 of such images would be the equivalent emissions of driving a car for 4.1 miles. It’s thought that Generative AI on its own could well consume 100TWh or more by 2027.

DC providers are also looking for ways to ensure they can get enough power into the datacenter – Microsoft has even committed to restarting one of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors and buying all of its power for 20 years. A nod to the old commitment of being carbon negative by 2030, perhaps, but the massive DC expansion to fuel demand for AI makes achieving that target seem increasingly unlikely.

Maybe new governmental administrations will incentivize clean power and reward efficiency?

Local PC power usage

There is something of a dichotomy in power usage on a local computer, especially if it’s powered from the wall rather than using a battery. You want to buy the highest performing, most feature-laden machine you can afford, so (apart from preserving battery life) why would you deliberately knobble its performance to save power? Like buying a Ferrari and driving everywhere at 20mph.

Some quick wins, especially on laptops, could be to reduce the brightness of the screen and use Dark Mode. Check the Power settings on your PC for recommendations on how to lower its energy use. Reduce the number of background apps and trim the ones which start automatically.

If you have an Intel-powered computer (PC, Mac or Linux), they have a free power usage gadget which might give you some idea about the total power consumption of your system, though doesn’t really shed much light as to what’s making it do what it’s doing…

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You could try firing up Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and adding a couple of columns to its default view (right-click on the column headings); useful to know which apps or processes are causing the power usage to shoot up, but devoid of actual numbers for the more data-obsessed.

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Edge browser has an Efficiency mode – click the … settings menu in the top right and look under Browser essentials.

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If you need more data on overall system performance, try GPU-Z – it gives detailed stats on the Graphics Processing Unit and other main components of your system, including current, maximum / minimum / average power consumption …

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In the screenshot above, the Power Consumption (%) shows how much of the graphics board’s maximum power consumption is currently being used. A similar utility, CPU-Z, can give data about the TDP of the main CPU and how it’s doing too.

#51: Windowing Arrangements

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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The idea of running applications in overlapping, resizable windows has been around since the early 1970s. Pioneered at Xerox PARC, along with pretty much everything else, the idea of having windows arranged side-by-side or in a variety of other ways was revolutionary. Everybody copied it.

Smartphones have mostly avoided trying to put stuff into windows, but computer users will be familiar with the motifs involved, even if you often run windows at full screen size and switch between them when necessary.

Add multiple screens or great big monitors, and how you lay your windows out might become a bit more relevant, especially when you’re referencing different documents or websites at the same time.

ToW has talked in the past about using OneNote on the side (even last week)…

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… or putting windows into different sections of the screen using Windows’ own Snap Layouts feature, making it easier to show them next to each other. The biggest and higher resolution the screen, the more layout options you are given.

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There are other utilities, too – Fancy Zones in PowerToys, or Dell’s Display Manager.

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Split Screen viewing

Of course, sometimes you don’t want to arrange multiple apps, but to see things side by side from within the same application. Windows has done a pretty good job of managing apps where there are several documents open at the same time, even if there’s only one “instance” of the application and it happens to have several files open. In Excel and Word, for example, though there’s only one app on the taskbar, multiple open files show as separate windows which can be snapped to different areas of the screen for easy cross-reference. You can tweak the “combined icon” behaviour if so desired.

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Sometimes you might want to have several windows open from the same document; maybe you’re copying and pasting content from one part of a Word doc to another, or working on different tabs in the same Excel workbook.

In such cases, look under the View menu and create a new window, which can be snapped and arranged as desired.

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The same menu lets you arrange multiple open documents in a variety of ways too; try Split or Arrange All to see the output.

Edge by Edge

If you followed the advice from the recent ToW #38 and bought yourself a gigantic, curved monitor, you might want to check out another feature in Edge that is there to make thing a bit more usable – Split Screen mode (whose icon looks a bit like the Immersive Reader, so it’s easy to overlook).

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Since most people have lots of browser tabs open at the same time, Edge (and Chrome) tend to lump all the open tabs under one browser window, so you don’t clutter things up too much. You can move tabs between browser windows or even create a new window with just a specific tab (right click the tab and you’ll see the Move tab to > option), so could arrange separate browser windows using the normal snapping etc.

The Split screen view lets you quickly show 2 tabs side-by-side, and can prove very useful. While in split mode, you’ll see two URLs in the address bar…

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Exit split screen or tweak some of the behaviours using the X and the “…” options buttons on the top right…

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Finally, in Windows 11 and using Edge, you can make it show separate tabs in the ALT+TAB view of open applications, so they appear like they were separate windows even if they aren’t.

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The wording of this setting makes it sounds like many apps would be able to support this (since “tabs” are appearing in other places like Notepad or Explorer), but for now, it’s only Edge.

#48: When I’m Updatin’ Windows

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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Long-time users of Windows will doubtless be familiar with the occasional need to restart because some update or other has been sent to your machine. These days, the “your computer needs to restart” prompt normally gives you a chance to do it later, but there have been times when you literally get a few minutes’ notice to save all that important stuff you’re doing before the update/reboot cycle begins.

Particularly important updates might warn you of an impending restart and give you the chance to take the hit right away, or to wait until the middle of the night. You can set the Active Hours in Settings | Windows Update | Advanced Options and it’s possible to pause updates for up to a week if you need to do some important stuff and avoid a reboot, but the advice is generally to take them as soon as you can.

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Social media users love to share examples of prominent PCs displaying errors, or notices about needing to restart, even if they’re not all that they seem.

It’s That Tuesday

21 years ago, Microsoft started using the 2nd Tuesday of every month to push out updates, informally known as Patch Tuesday. They have flip-flopped to some degree over whether these updates will be security/reliability only, or if unsuspecting users will get new features and changes. Big periodic rollups – the modern-day equivalent of the Service Pack – tend to contain loads of fixes along with some changes in the way Windows (and some of the standard apps) works.

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If you’re looking at someone’s desktop in person or on a Teams/Zoom call in the coming weeks, and see that little double-arrow update icon on their system tray (though maybe they’ve hidden it), it could be that their poor PC has been waiting to restart for ages. That might tell you something about their standards of hygiene and organisation.

If you’re seeing the update symbol on your own taskbar, going into Settings | Windows Update will tell you what needs your machine to restart, and you could determine if it really needs to happen right now or if it could wait until a bit later.

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Search online for the KB number to find out more about what a particular update does. The Knowledge Base has been around for decades; delve into the archives and there are some crackers, like the one-time warning that Barney (remember him?) might self-engage.

In October 2024’s Patch Tuesday, the latest big package of updates to Windows 11 was pushed out – taking the platform to version 24H2 – ushering in a bunch of changes and improvements. To find out more about what’s new, see https://aka.ms/windows/insidethisupdate.

To see what specific version of Windows you’re running, press WindowsKey+R and enter winver. Some earlier versions of Windows 11 – 22H2 – have reached “end of service” so won’t be updated anymore; you’d need to upgrade to 24H2 to continue getting any updates and fixes.

If you’re still on Windows 10, the clock is ticking – it’s due to go out of support in a year’s time, meaning it’s worth either upgrading to Windows 11 (or getting a new PC which already has Windows 11 installed). Some of the hardware requirements of Windows 11 – especially around security hardware – left plenty of users grumbling as some recently bought (even high end) PCs didn’t cut the mustard. Even Microsoft’s own Surface line had some notably glaring exceptions on the compatibility list – the previous flagship $4,000+ Surface Studio is not Win11 compatible, having been launched 5 years before Windows 11.

If you have an otherwise perfectly usable Windows 10 computer which is being blocked from upgrading to Win11 on hardware compatibility grounds, there are unsanctioned workarounds that might allow you to install and happily run the latest version.

Just be careful…

#44: What’s on your (system) tray?

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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The System Tray is that little collection of icons typically found next to the clock, in the lower corner of a Windows desktop. It’s been part of the UI since Windows 95, and serves to highlight what is happening with the system and the apps that are running on it. At times, Microsoft has tried to call this the “Notification Area”, not be confused with the thing that appears when you press WindowsKey+N (that’s the Notification Center or Action Center).

In common with other bits of Windows (the right-click menu in Explorer being another), it was easy for 3rd party software and hardware drivers to add their own icons into the “systray”, which might make things convenient for the user until they have 30 or 40 such things cluttering the whole place up. Why wouldn’t you want to quickly control your video modes or tweak Bluetooth settings, after all?

So in sweep-under-the-carpet style, Microsoft added a way of hiding less useful system tray icons so you don’t see them all the time, but they can be exposed by clicking the little arrow to the side.

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As you’d expect, Microsoft has defaulted only the more obviously-useful icons to be visible, like battery or Wi-Fi (for laptops), sound/volume etc. OneDrive is jammed in there too, if you have it set up to sync.

To tweak which icons show by default, look in Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar (try right-clicking on a blank bit of the main taskbar and choose Taskbar settings)

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Many of the icons you’ll see don’t necessarily do much when you click (left or right) on them, other than jump to the app itself, but some afford the ability to right-click and do something in that app directly. One useful tweak not there by default might be to include Teams, so you can quickly set your status.

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To hide or change the clock and date in the System Tray, dive a little further into the Date & time settings…

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… and you could have the clock show seconds as well, if you really wanted.

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This week’s Copilot-drawn banner image is – clearly – inspired by Eddie/Suzy Izzard’s iconic and lightly sweary “Death Star Canteen” sketch, and the minifig animation of it. Happy Friday – but you’ll still need a tray.