WinDirStat — It was a very long wait

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

WinDirStat has been a staple for system administrators and users for a very long time. Nineteen years ago came its latest update — until now.

2005: Condoleezza Rice sworn in. Airbus A380 unveiled. Charles and Camilla engaged. YouTube launched. “Million Dollar Baby” wins. Hurricane Katrina blows. Ted Koppel retires. And WinDirStat gets its last update for 19 years.

At first we didn’t even notice that our favorite freeware hard-drive-space analyzer was going into hibernation like a very sleepy bear. But then, years later, something was amiss.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.45.0, 2024-11-04).

Three days of M4

APPLE

By Will Fastie

Or were they?

It turns out that the rumors I mentioned in my Apple article last week were not entirely accurate. With respect to the M4 chips, they were. With respect to the number of days, the count turned out to be three, not five.

Now I think I know why, which I’ll get to in a moment.

On the surface, the announcements last week had the M4 chips in common. It’s deeper than that.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.45.0, 2024-11-04).

What isn’t coming to your computer or phone

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley • Comment about this article

Just because features such as Microsoft Recall and Apple Intelligence are available does not mean you’ll be forced to use them.

If you remember, Microsoft Recall is a technology that allows users to go back to a point in time and review what they were doing and which webpages they were viewing. Originally planning to release it in June, Microsoft pulled the plug and went back to the drawing board because of strong customer pushback with respect to security.

Microsoft won’t be rolling out Recall to test on the insider versions of Windows until December. Originally it was supposed to roll out with Windows 11 24H2.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.45.0, 2024-11-04).

Always call the right phone number

One of the scams I’ve personally seen lately is a scam that purports to be from your Bank but really isn’t.  One of the recommendations I’ve seen is to always ensure you keep a copy of the back of the information on your credit card.

This ensures that you call only the proper numbers if you lose your credit card or there is fraud on your card in any way.

I’ve also had a client get hit with a “your package couldn’t be delivered, call here and provide a credit card” scam.

I’ve also had a co-worker been hit with a fake invoice from a vendor he was working with that was trying to get his credentials.

Bottom line this is the season for scams, so don’t fall for them!

What have you seen lately?

Are they attacking that?

ON SECURITY

By Susan Bradley

When you use technology, one challenge is determining whether a vulnerability is actually being exploited.

This is especially important if you are holding back, delaying patches and updates until you can determine whether a bug has been fixed. This is one of my strategies in determining which update recommendations I will make.

I use many sources of information to help me make those decisions.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.44.0, 2024-10-28).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Write 200 social-media posts in 10 minutes! Quality, right?

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

I’ve been thinking about the profession of journalism lately, given the emails bombarding me these days about how I could create 240, 300, or even 1,200 articles per hour if I would only use the latest in chatbot tech.

YouTube’s funny farm is overflowing with videos of such miracles. They tell me I could write a whole ebook in 24 hours — true writers never sleep, you know — and make $8,327 a week ($433,000 a year) merely by pressing a few buttons.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.44.0, 2024-10-28).

S0 sleep in Windows 11

WINDOWS 11

By Ed Tittel

Managing sleep and power states can be challenging on Windows PCs.

Things can go sideways when it comes to waking up various elements of Windows — most notably, network connections. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to disable, then re-enable, network adapters because they didn’t work after waking up from sleep.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.44.0, 2024-10-28).

The October surprise

APPLE

By Will Fastie

Most observers were expecting an Apple event in October. They were wrong.

Which is not to say there was no surprise.

On October 15, Apple announced its new iPad Mini. “Announced” may be overstating the case — the Mini didn’t even make it to Apple’s home page, and as I write this on the Friday just prior to our publication, it still isn’t there.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.44.0, 2024-10-28).