Daily Archives: August 21, 2023

• Your worst Windows 11 irritations — solved!

  Posted on August 21, 2023 at 02:45 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 20.34 • 2023-08-21

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that Windows 11 users have directed at Microsoft, the tech giant still hasn’t corrected the OS’s most common failings. Fortunately, we can fix the problems ourselves.

  Microsoft plans to end technical support and security patches for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. (Redmond might extend that date — if big corporate users howl loudly enough — but don’t count on it.) It’s likely that we’re little more than a year away from being forced to run Win11, like it or not. You might as well make it work the way you want it to. Why suffer the dumbed-down user interface that you get out of the box?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.34.0, 2023-08-21).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Public Defender File Explorer, Newsletters, Start menu, StartAllBack, Windows 11, WinSetView

• How to use Google Labs to experiment with AI

  Posted on August 21, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Lance Whitney • Comment in the Forums

  AI

  

  By Lance Whitney

  Want to see how AI can work with Google Search, Docs, Gmail, and other tools? Google Labs will give you a taste.

  Google has a lot of AI projects in the works, all designed to bring or expand AI to Search, Gmail, Google Docs, and other services. For now, several of these projects are experiments that you can try out only through the company’s Google Labs service. With Google Labs, you’re able to check out AI features in Google Search, Gmail, and Google Docs. You can also play with an AI-based notebook and a musical AI that will turn your words into music. Read on to see how to access and use these different projects.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.34.0, 2023-08-21).

  AI Generative AI, Google, Google Bard, Google Labs, Google Search, Musical AI, Newsletters

• Working with USB 3 and 4 in Windows

  Posted on August 21, 2023 at 02:43 CDT by Ed Tittel • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ed Tittel

  The Universal Serial Bus, most commonly known as USB, has been a basic staple of computing since it first arrived on the scene in 1996.

  It’s a widely used computing-industry bus standard that’s overseen by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an industry consortium that publishes and maintains standards for USB4, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, USB ports, cables, connectors, and more. I haven’t seen a PC that didn’t include multiple USB ports since the early 2000s.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.34.0, 2023-08-21).

  Hardware Newsletters, storage, USB, USB 2, USB 3, USB Flash Drives, USB-C, USB4, Windows

• Can I install that on that?

  Posted on August 21, 2023 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  SOFTWARE

  

  By Susan Bradley

  I’m going to see how well the applications and tools I regularly use work on vastly different platforms.

  Can we install a contemporary Linux distribution and still run our favorite Windows applications? What about Windows applications on a Mac? Do you think we can?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.34.0, 2023-08-21).

  Software ChromeOS, CrossOver, Linus, MacOS, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, virtual machines, Windows