Newsletter Archives

• Born to fail?

  Posted on February 19, 2024 at 02:45 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.08 • 2024-02-19

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  A beguiling and captivating laptop showed up here with a bad combination of RAM and SSD.

  One of my clients recently traded in a Dell Inspiron 15-7568, a laptop with a brilliant 15-inch, 4K (3840×2160) resolution touch screen; eight gigabytes of memory; and a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD).

  Nice, but troubled.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.08.0, 2024-02-19).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Ben's Workshop Newsletters, Paging, RAM, SSD

• WinPE — many useful tools in a single package

  Posted on January 29, 2024 at 02:43 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  For years, I have been using Windows PE in a variety of forms to carry out many tasks necessary to service Windows computers.

  Microsoft Learn describes Windows PE (WinPE) as “a small operating system used to install, deploy, and repair Windows desktop editions, Windows Server, and other Windows operating systems.” WinPE stands for “Windows Preinstallation Environment,” but a WinPE can provide much more than that.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.05.0, 2024-01-29).

  Ben's Workshop DaRT, Gandalf PE, Hiren's PE, Newsletters, NirSoft, Rufus, Speccy, Utilities, Windows PE

• Software updater or no software updater? That is the question.

  Posted on January 8, 2024 at 02:44 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  Let’s see how to get the most out of a software updater, and whether it is worthwhile to use one.

  My New Year’s article Let your PC start the new year right! created activity in the AskWoody forum because the original article cited SUMo Software Updater, which had been withdrawn from the market in October 2023.

  Today, we updated the New Year’s article to reflect the market withdrawal and remove my praise. We are grateful for the many Plus members who caught this oversight and swiftly let us know.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.02.0, 2024-01-08).

  Ben's Workshop Newsletters, Software Updater, UpdateHub

• Let your PC start the new year right!

  Posted on January 1, 2024 at 02:44 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.01 • 2024-01-01

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  Taking the time now to service your Windows PC thoroughly can pay off big time in the coming year.

  Happy New Year! Whether you’re planning to move to Windows 11 or continue with Windows 10, here is what you can do to make sure that your PC starts the year right.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.01.0, 2024-01-01).

  Ben's Workshop Backups, Drive maintenance, Hardware, Networking, Newsletters, PC maintenance, Security

• Continuing trends in computing — and your choices

  Posted on December 18, 2023 at 02:43 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  Let Windows 11 and other major trends be your guide to greater productivity, reliability, and security.

  Computer hardware and software continue their relentless advances — mostly progress, sometimes a hiccup. Paying attention to the various changes in our world of computing can save you time and money — and, after all, time is money. These trends may influence your near-term buying decisions, as our annual two-month Black Friday buying spree morphs into the January White Sale of unsold gear.

  These trends are the distillation of my experience based upon hundreds of computers making a stop in Ben’s Workshop along their way — whether from a factory or an auction house, as a trade-in, or simply for repair — and then into the hands of people using them or off to my convenient e-cycler.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.51.0, 2023-12-18).

  Ben's Workshop BitLocker, Enterprise computing, Gaming, HDDs, Home computing, Minimum Hardware Requirements, Newsletters, NVMe, Small Business computing, SSDs, Windows 11, Workstations

• BitLocker, Windows 11 security, and you

  Posted on July 31, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  BitLocker, a major part of a more secure Windows 11, is treated differently by the Windows Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) setup than by an install and setup using the standard Windows 11 installation image downloaded directly from the Microsoft website.

  This is a significant difference, so let’s explore these two ways to install Windows 11, adding useful background and facts plus analysis of what Microsoft keeps close to the vest. (OOBE is an abbreviation coined by Microsoft.)

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.31.0, 2023-07-31).

  Ben's Workshop BitLocker, ISOs, Microsoft, Newsletters, OEM, Security, Windows, Windows 11
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