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My big annoyance is in the clock radio next to my bed.  It’s almost impossible to set the alarm without resorting to watching a YouTube instructional video (assuming that one even exists).

Actually, the other annoyance is with products where the setup guide is little more than legal disclaimers and safety alerts in at least 6 or 8 languages. But precious little useful information in any language

 

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amiawitch, Geo

This particular one is quite interesting to me, as your setup is reasonably close to my own. I still live with Windows (a several-year old ThinkPad just upgraded to Windows 11) as my primary driver, but I also have a MiniPC that runs Linux and an earlier generation (2020) Mac Mini with an M1 in it. I don’t use the Mini heavily, so I can get away with the minimalist configuration of 8 GB of RAM and only 256 GB SSD.

For connectivity, I have a 4-port IOGear KVM switch (including bundled cables) that works well for me. Three afore-mentioned machines, and space for a guest computer. The switch is odd, because the ports are DVI, so I’m accustomed to using converter plugs.

With my Mac, there are three cables attached. One is power, the second is HDMI (that goes through a converter to DVI to connect to the KVM switch) and the other one is USB-A which grabs the cables for keyboard and mouse that connect to USB-A on the KVM. I don’t bother with the sound cables or headphone jack on the Mac. In a similar way, I have 2 USB-C and one additional USB-A port on the Mac, which I’m currently not using. If I needed external devices on the Mac, I probably would add a USB hub, partly just for access convenience — the Mac is on the back of my desk, and this particular model has all the ports on the back, where they’re hard to get to, anyway. As it is, if I need to get to an external device, it’s easy enough to share it on one of the other machines, and then access through my LAN.

Since I already have keyboard, monitor and mouse for my other computers, I think the only cost beyond the Mac itself may have been the DVI-to-HDMI converter, but I’m pretty sure I had that already, as well.

As far as MiniPCs, there’s a lot to like there, and by comparison, even my low-end Mac Mini was overpriced, although that’s nothing new with Apple. If you don’t need to travel, a comparably-configured Mini is way ahead of a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

However, with my MiniPC, I got it about 18 months ago. This one, an ASUS PN51 has decent capacity (better than my ThinkPad), where I got it configured with an AMD Ryzen5-5500 CPU and barebones. That particular model may have been a closeout, where I got it for at around $240. From there, I went out to Crucial and got 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB SSD, and the final cost of the package was about $520, even if I may have needed to put out for one converter for my DVI connections on the KVM.

I think I paid about $450 for my entry-level Mac Mini (including no capacity for upgrade of RAM or SSD). Will may have double the entry-level cost of his Mini to get preferred configs, but with the MiniPC, I got even more, and the spread between mine and a comparably-configured Mini M4 is probably closer to triple.

There are reasons why a Mac can be preferable to Windows or Linux, and that’s why I invested in my own Mac, but you have to know your use cases of why any particular platform is more compelling over another. Mac gives you all of Apple’s ecosystem (both pro and con), and you pay a premium for Apple’s logo on the case. Linux gives an incredible amount of flexibility of doing things the way you want, but isn’t always good for certain specific things that Mac or Windows may do better. Windows is often somewhere in the middle, with more flexibility and less cost than Mac, but less flexibility than Linux.

There really is no “one best” platform, but if all you need is the basics of a browser running on a machine that is essentially a web terminal (and that’s where Chromebook goes), then it doesn’t really matter that much, just that you’ll pay a lot more for Apple than the other options

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Cybertooth, Will Fastie

BIOS password and Pre-Boot Authorization defend against different threats.

BIOS defends against tampering local config settings managed by the BIOS.  Pre-Boot authorization ensures that the content of the disk remains encrypted until authorization is passed.

As noted, if the drive is extracted and mounted in another machine, then the only protection of the data is what’s protected by PBA.  A BIOS password won’t protect, because it’s not present, and anything that depends Windows being booted from that drive can’t protect, because Windows isn’t active.

Additionally, PBA protects the disk’s data if the machine has been booted from alternate media (such as a bootable Linux image).

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Cybertooth

It does not, because you don’t have to join a domain.

It’s just that by going through the process used for domains is what offers the ability to set up a local account.  Once you’ve done that, you can cancel out of further dialogs, and return to the main setup procedure.

There is definitely a place for hardware KVM, whether data center or personal.

My IOGear definitely supports sound (including that the cable bundles include pink and green sound cables), although I don’t use the sound through the KVM.  In my setup, if I’m working on one computer, I want the ability to hear the various beeps coming from the other computers.  If I don’t have some sort of way of monitoring the other computers (especially if I have only one screen), then without hearing the sound, I have no way of telling if there’s something that needs attention.  As far as I’m aware, this KVM doesn’t give me the capacity of switching sound separately from the other hardware.

As for keyboards, I agree that I mostly dislike Logitech stuff, especially the consumer-grade stuff that you can find in nearly any Big Box store, especially their MX- models.  However, I think their gaming-focused G series are different.  I have a G610 that I’m happy with, and it’s pretty solid.  As a fast touch-typist, I like a sturdy keyboard, and this one has Cherry MX Brown switches.  I wouldn’t mind if the keys were slightly stiffer and had more of a click, but I think that the thing that makes this adequate for me is the depth of key travel.

By contrast, several years ago, I had a low-profile Logitech that looked nice, but wasn’t especially comfortable.  But the fatal flaw on that one was that it had butterfly switches under the key caps, and somewhere along, I had a key that came off, and replacing just the key and switch wasn’t worth the cost or effort.  With this keyboard, I found that when I wore down several of the key caps, it wasn’t a big deal to replace the entire set of key caps.

For those of us that fondly remember the days of the old IBM Selectric-influenced keyboards or the Northgate Omnikey keyboards, it’s easy to get frustrated with the mass-market offerings that we currently have.  However, I think that some of the gaming keyboards can come pretty close.  I mentioned Cherry MX, and not only do they have a range of different switches that allow for a lot of personal preference, but there are other switch manufacturers out there.  Thus, if you aren’t happy with the keyboard you have or the mass-market ones, go take a look at some of the gaming keyboards that are designed for heavy use.

The gaming keyboards will definitely cost more than the mass-market stuff, but if you’re particular about your preferences, they’ll likely be worth the cost. Not only comfort, but also sturdy enough that they’ll last far longer.  And as I found, also repairable.

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Cybertooth

This is the way I always do upgrades of this sort.  I did a number of upgrades from Win 7 to Win 10 that way (even if Win 7 didn’t have native capacity of mounting a .ISO, and I had to use a third-party tool), as well as installing semi-annual updates, when Win 10 was doing that. Thus, I could install the oldest still-supported update when Microsoft was pushing newer versions.

With Win 11 24H2 still considered to be “Not Ready for Prime Time”, but Microsoft now delivering 24H2 via Windows Update to machines upgrading from Win 10, I’m doing the same methodology for computers in my office — I mount a 23H2 image and run that installer, and the result being that a Win 10 machine is upgraded to 23H2 and not 24H2.

One further reason to upgrade via mounted .ISO is that for computers that are connected to a LAN, then all of those machines can upgrade from the same .ISO image, and you only have to download once, rather than forcing download of of the same 5.5 GB for each machine separately.

Turning off cloud searching definitely helps.

Depending on what you’re doing, something else that can help with searching is in bypassing the Windows search index. If you’re searching for the contents of files, you need the index, but if you’re searching for just file names, then you can go a lot faster (especially extensive searches) by bypassing the index.

I haven’t spent enough time with Windows searching to know how to do that with built-in Windows searching, but I think a lot of third-party tools either allow for bypassing content searching, or limiting to filename searches exclusively.

One of the things that I’ve found that makes a third-party tool easy to get to (rather than having to create shortcuts, or navigate the Start window) is to open my preferred search tool (in my case, I like AgentRansack), then in the Task Bar select “pin To Task Bar”.  Then drag the icon to the left of the Task Bar.

A useful keyboard shortcut to know about is if you use the Windows logo key and press a numeric digit, then Windows will pop up an application that is shown in the tool bar, numbering incrementally from left to right.  Thus, with my search tool located at the far left of the Task Bar, pressing Logo-1 will pop up the interface for the search tool.  I’ve done this enough that it’s ingrained in my muscle memory, where I do that out of habit, without thinking about it.

As noted, I like the flexibility of AgentRansack, where I can do simple searches, or do more extensive searching, when needed.  AgentRansack also puts an icon in the Windows Explorer, so I can right-click on a folder, select the AgentRansack icon and begin searching in just that folder. And when I need, I can do content searching, even if it’s not something I need frequently.

There are other file search utilities.  Two that I know of are Everything and WizTree, both free and very fast.

During the pandemic, I found fax invaluable for getting stuff through to appropriate people quickly, especially when phone systems and even mail were saturated.

My printer happens to have fax capacity (not something I was looking for, but it came with the printer I wanted), and I found that there were several times when it was useful to be able to send faxes for other people who really needed it.

Even if the popular perception of fax is as an outdated technology, it’s still widely used in both the medical and legal fields (at least in the US), and there are times where fax is cheaper, faster and easier to use, especially if you’re sending copy that is already printed.

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jburk07, katiedid, Will Fastie, Cybertooth

Re: KVM switches…

There may not be as many out there as there used to be, but you can still find quality stuff.

I have an IOGear 4-port switch that I got about 4 years ago, and I’m very happy with it, after fighting multiple Belkin switches for years. This one is explicitly business-grade, and even if I use it on my desktop, I think it can be rack-mounted.

This particular one has DVI connectors (and yes, I use a lot of conversion plugs for necessary connections to HDMI, DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort), but it works very well.

I just checked IOGear’s web site, and there are 15 different options for 4-port available, where costs start at $229 for my DVI model, and go upward, depending on what plug interfaces you want, inclding HDMI, DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort, USB 3.0 or 3.1 (and including cables), and even wireless.  Although IOGear has some more-premium stuff, most of their 4-port stuff runs below $400.

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Will Fastie

Re: Patch supercedence….

One other thing that I can remember was the days of NT4 — I learned that when I installed an application there, it was always a good idea reinstall the most recent service pack, immediately after. .DLLs supplied by application vendors that overwrote .DLLs used by Windows were often disruptive to Windows.

Now that I think of it, something else that I don’t miss is the crashiness of Windows before Vista and the NT6 kernel were released, especially the disruption that crashes left in the Windows registry.  Since then, not only relative stability of Windows itself, but also no longer the need for registry maintenance tools — cleanups, defrags and compression.

The two extra years that Microsoft took to get Vista out after NT were really worth the wait, even if they never did deliver on NTFS.

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Cybertooth

This is the best description I’ve seen about current issues with 24H2:  https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-pesky-windows-11-24h2-bugs-still-haunting-pcs-despite-several-patches/

For a significant number of users, it’s probably OK to upgrade, and there won’t be issues.  However, this is definitely a YMMV situation, depending on your hardware setup (and drivers) and what you have actually running on the computer.  If there are issues, then these are the likely places you’ll see them. And if you do see them, they’ll turn up immediately after the upgrade.  It’s not like a network connection issue will lurk for a while.

As for Will’s situation, if there are no symptoms that have been seen yet, then I think it’s safe to assume that it’s a faultless upgrade.  For the rest of us, it’s now in the realm of “Move on, nothing to see here”, other than noting that that’s the condition.

There are differences between Home and Pro implementations of BitLocker.

I think it’s now standard for new installs of Win 11 Home (certainly on OEM installs) to have BitLocker active, but where its presence is invisible to the user.  In particular, the encryption key is integrated into the user ID, and I think that’s part of the reason that Microsoft is pushing so hard for Home users to have Microsoft accounts.  But in any case, if you’re logged into Windows, you’re inside the encryption layer.

With the Pro version, BitLocker is active at the very beginning of the boot process, using what’s called “Pre-Boot Authentication” (or PBA).  If a machine is encrypted this way, then at the beginning of the boot process, you’re presented with an authentication screen.  If you do not enter the correct passcode, the machine cannot be booted, and there is no capacity of access of data stored on the drive.

What this approach addresses is protecting the data without reliance on the installed operating system (or more precisely, the user management processes built into the operating system).  Without full-drive encryption, it is possible to bypass system-dependent authentication processes, either by booting the machine from alternate media, or by extracting the drive and mounting as a secondary drive in another computer.  In both of those cases, the authentication processes of the installed system are inactive, and therefore, can’t be used to protect data.

Whether you need the capacities of full-drive encryption that is protected by PBA depends on what you’re trying to do, and from whom you’re trying to protect your data.

No, you don’t have to join a domain.  Just follow the path to where doing so is presented as an available option that you can then bypass.

There is an even easier, albeit more expensive, way around this — buy a PC that comes with Windows 11 Pro. Because Pro allows you to configure a PC by joining a domain, you can set up a local account. Unfortunately, consumer PCs that come with Pro are rare, indeed. Even Microsoft does not offer a Windows Pro option on its “Pro” Surface models. Of course, the ability to upgrade to Windows Pro is available within Settings, but the cost is slightly higher than you would pay when buying it with the PC, and you must take the time to install the upgrade after you’ve initially set up the PC.

Getting a machine with Windows 11 Pro isn’t as hard as implied. The main thing is that to get that, you can’t just walk into a Big Box store and walk out with a computer with a Pro version on it. Everything available in floor stock is going to be with a Home version.

Instead, the way to a machine with a Pro version is buying online, and looking for the business-oriented channels (stay away from “home and home office”), where nearly all the stock comes configured with Pro versions, except possibly the lowest possible options offered on Build-to-Order setups.

 

One thing that I’ve found about Microsoft forcing updates is that once an update starts downloading, there is still one way to interrupt that — go into the Windows Update advanced settings, and enable Pause Updates.  I haven’t needed to do this with avoiding 24H2 upgrades, but there are occasions when I may decide that my machine isn’t quite ready for routine Patch Tuesday updates (typically, waiting for the “all clear” on the MS-DEFCON status).

It’s a minor thing, but it works, if needed.

As a general thing (not just upgrade to 24H2, but even non-Windows platforms), the things to be careful about with drivers tend to be video, sound, and networking, and I’m not sure which is most frequent.  In my own experiences, I tend to find issues with sound the most likely to be disruptive, but YMMV. Those are definitely the things you want to check first after an upgrade.

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Cybertooth