Recent Articles In Personal Computing
November 6, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
MS just released an updated PC Manager widget (PCM) which isn't too shabby and which integrates with other widgets as well. Btw,  Windows+W  makes your widgets appear. PCM also has a small task bar which can remain on your desktop if you wish ( 2 in my screenie) The task bar has various apps on it like screenshot internet speed, notepad and you can add to it via the three dots, or make it disappear.  You can get additional screenies here:  https://pcmanager.microsoft.co...
October 11, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
It's not causing damage, and Windows Updates always leaves a cache, but this time there's no way to delete the contents which is a good deal larger than normal. PCWorld hastens to reassure us that in and of itself, the large cache causes no problems, although with so many bugs, I don't know how they can make that claim, responsibly. Anyway, those who have updated will have to wait for MS to solve this problem. Until then, you're out 9 Gb (8.63 Gb for sticklers) of disk space.
September 28, 2024 by BigDogBigFeet on BDBF's Pound
So, on Friday morning 09/27/2024 everything was fine.  Then about 10:00am Windows 11 updated and all hell happened.  What it is doing is blocking things from running at all.  Most programs will not load or run at all. I get one session of Edge once I close it nothing will run again not Edge, Explorer, or Start Panel will display. I have to do a hard reboot with the power button to get one session of Edge again.  F. U. Microsoft. How they did this is in settings they cha...
September 24, 2024 by kona0197 on Kona
So I am using Start 11, latest version. Using the Windows 10 style. No matter what I do, the "New" tag is on some of my recently installed items and never goes away. Is there a fix for this?
September 13, 2024 by Draginol on Brad Wardell - Opinionated Techie
So today let's look at how far had drives have come.   Let's start with some traditional spinny hard drives with sequential reads: 2006: This is a ThinkPad T60.  100 MB/s.   This is my Dell Dimension from 2005.  125 MB/s. Let's fast forward to early SSDs: 2012! Here is 3 Intel X25-Ms in Raid 0 configuration to get max speed. 724MB/ s which was at the upper edge of speed for the time.   More typical was my OCZ SSD from ...
September 13, 2024 by Draginol on Brad Wardell - Opinionated Techie
I know I've done benchmarks on my various machines in the past but I had no idea how far the rabbit hole goes... Let's start with back in 2003: Benchmarking Dell XPS and Lenovo Thinkpads (littletinyfrogs.com) Device Description Score Frog 2003 Decent Dell Dimension for its time. 132 Turtle 2006 My ThinkPad T60 for business trips in 2006. 150 Turtle 2007 ThinkPad T61 replacing T60, good 2007 laptop. 286 Frog 2007 Dell XPS 710 work desktop, quad core, RA...
August 26, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
M$ is bringing ads to W10. With W11 barely scraping 30% of PC users, the reason they're doing this is all too clear: More fish in the W10 pond, and 0Patch will extend W10 another five years at least, maybe more. phantomofearth spotted this first and posted on X: "The Start menu account manager from recent Windows 11 updates is being backported to Windows 10. (present in Beta/RP build 19045.4842, disabled by default.)  pic.twitter.com/34Ub68flCt" — phantomofearth 🌳 (@phantomo...
August 19, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
"Perhaps looking at the upcoming change in 24H2 as well as the boot bug, Microsoft has now added a bunch of new guides to its official website regarding BitLocker device encryption. In particular, two of them are certainly the most useful ones which walk users through finding their BitLocker recovery key and backing up the said key. " - Sayan Sen,  Neowin The Neowin article describes two ways to access the Bitlocker key: via your MS account and via work/school account. I recommend ...
August 17, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
Why don't they leave well enough alone? Answer: They can't. So, thank heavens there's a Stardock and a Start11.  So, MS wants the turn the programs on the start menu into tiles in the "All Apps" view...o.k. MS also wants to categorize your apps to help you. Thanks but no thanks. It seems their definition of similar apps differs from what you might want. Again o.k.  as long as  you can modify that. Also, the program names are missing. This is being tested in the lates...
August 16, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
Not to be confused with Edge's Workspaces. "Here's how it works. To get started, you open up all the apps you want to use at the same time for a specific Workspace. Then, arrange them as you'd like - this includes putting them in halves or corners of monitor space. Once you're done, tell Workspace to take a snapshot of which apps are open and their arrangement." - Simon Batt, XDA The snapshot can be activated anytime you wish...and you'll also be able to make as many Workspaces as y...
August 14, 2024 by RedneckDude on redneckdude
It is, really really.      
August 13, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
Concept creator Abdi, a.k.a. AR4789 has given us amazing videos of W12 , W13 , XP , and W7  2024 editions now gives us W10 2024 Edition. Here's the video: I have to admit, I want it. Now Yesterday. Why hasn't MS hired him, yet?!  Just look at W10 2024 Ed.'s appearance and functionality!  Have mercy on us, Abdi. Head over to  https://betanews.com/2024/08/11/windows-10-2024-edition/  for the screenies. Here's a screen capture from the video showing Wind...
July 24, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
This is AI, as well as computing...so, I found this while cruising and figured you all (or at least a lot of you) would be interested in it. It isn't every day that scifi becomes reality, although it does seem that a good deal of scifi is doing just that. "In the quest to train robots for real-world tasks, researchers have created “Holodeck,” an AI system capable of generating detailed, customizable 3D environments on demand, inspired by Star Trek’s holodeck technology. Thi...
July 14, 2024 by kona0197 on Kona
Sorry about the picture, I can't figure out how to rotate it properly. I'm running Windows 10 Home. As you can see on my taskbar there is this "News And Weather" widget. I don't want it there. I have tried the right click menu on the taskbar and turned it off. After a few hours in sleep mode it turns itself back on. The widget always turns itself back on after a reboot. I've tried everything I know of to get the widget to stay turned off. Any ideas?
June 28, 2024 by DrJBHL on drjbhl
Some seriously good news for those whose computers won't support upgrade to W11. 0Patch which supports at present Windows7 will support W10 until 2030. That's 200 million W10 devices granted a pardon. Martin Brinkmann brings us this good news at gHacks: "Come October 2025, owners of Windows 10 devices will have these five options, if they want to keep on using their devices:   Upgrade to Windows 11  -- only available if the device is supported officially. Yes, there are...