Digital

Tag: Windows

  • Windows – Updates and Booting Up

    Some notes, following the Zoom meeting last Thursday.

    Updates: Going to ‘Settings’ you will find a link to ‘Update & Security’ at the end of the list of links. That has a section, ‘Windows Update’, which will tell you if there are any updates waiting to be installed, and also give you some ‘Advanced options’ on how to handle them. One of those is the facility to pause updates being automatically installed for up to 35 days, for instance.

    Booting up: Another setting is ‘Apps’, which includes a link to ‘Startup’. This shows a list of your apps, and which of them are selected to start automatically when you log in. If you want your computer to boot up more quickly, it might help to turn off one or more of these apps. I will just mention Skype, which I found was selected to start, although I have never used it.

    There are probably similar settings for Apple users.

  • Microsoft re-enters the browser war!

    After Netscape Navigator was eclipsed by Microsoft’s  Internet Explorer as the browser of choice for many – mainly because it was hard-wired into Windows initially – the world of internet browsers has seen first the rise of Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation as an alternative open source option and then the succession to Google’s Chrome and it’s huge market presence.
    I’ve written about Google’s dominance and the alternatives to Chrome before in “Just Google it …”
    Now Microsoft has stirred from its inactivity in the browser market place. It has ditched its proprietary Edge browser and replaced it with … Microsoft Edge. No confusion there then!
    It is interesting because it will run on MacOS as well as Windows, something the old Edge didn’t do, and will use the same open source code base – Chromium – as Google’s Chrome and of course Brave (my browser of choice). This allows them to use Extensions written for that code base. I already use many extensions written for Chrome in my Brave browser.
    What will this mean for Google especially as Microsoft Edge will effectively have a built-in ad-blocker? Who knows. It’s certain that as more users decide to use the Microsoft version of Chromium, so Google’s business model and revenue stream will come under attack. Will they retaliate in some way? Probably not. Interesting times.
    Here’s an article that describes keyboard shortcuts that you can use with Microsoft Edge.