Daily Archives: May 23, 2022

• Want laptop graphics power specs? They might not be easy to find.

  Posted on May 23, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.21 • 2022-05-23

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Some well-known manufacturers of laptops make it a little hard to discover the power ratings that determine their machines’ LCD display performance, even though graphics-chip suppliers such as Nvidia and AMD order the laptop makers to do so.

  One of the suppliers — the graphics-processor giant Nvidia — says about this situation, “We’re requiring OEMs to update their product pages” to reveal a crucial laptop feature known variously as Total Graphics Power (TGP) by Nvidia and Typical Board Power (TBP) by AMD, as I explain.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.21.0, 2022-05-23).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Graphics Cards, Graphics Performance, Public Defender

• Discover the useful but hidden extras at Office.com

  Posted on May 23, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Peter Deegan • Comment in the Forums

  MICROSOFT 365

  

  By Peter Deegan

  Microsoft has done a lot of work on the Office.com home page, especially for business and enterprise users.

  There’s a lot more available on those pages than first appearances indicate. In fact, some of the most useful features are hiding behind faint, almost hidden, icons.

  Office.com is a useful portal to access recent documents saved on OneDrive or SharePoint/Teams across all your Office apps and document types. I’ll first look at the many changes for Business, Enterprise, and Education users, and then I’ll explore some hidden extras for Microsoft 365 Family/Personal.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.21.0, 2022-05-23).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Microsoft 365, Office 365, office.com

• Solid-state drives — from bespoke to commodity

  Posted on May 23, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Solid-state drives (SSDs) have a surprisingly long history, leading up to the types commonly in use today.

  It takes some planning and analysis to make best use of them, but significant improvements in speed and reliability over electromechanical hard drives make SSD investments worthwhile.

  For this article, let’s stick with name brands such as Crucial, SK hynix, Kioxia, Samsung, SanDisk, and Western Digital — all with comparable performance levels. Note that SK hynix acquired Intel’s SSD business, SanDisk is now a subsidiary of Western Digital, and Kioxia is a spinoff of Toshiba.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.21.0, 2022-05-23).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware Adapters, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, Solid-state drives, SSDs

• Debugging feature-update failures

  Posted on May 23, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  PATCH WATCH

  

  By Susan Bradley

  A long-time reader recently got in touch to mention his difficulty in getting a PC update past Windows 10 version 1909.

  Plus member Lee Gruenfeld indicated that he had worked with several Microsoft support agents to get a more contemporary version installed, a process that lasted several months and resulted in continued failure.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.21.0, 2022-05-23).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Watch AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Patch Lady Posts, Windows Update