I installed Windows 11 24H2

WINDOWS 11

By Will Fastie

24H2 has been running on my laptop for some time so I can check things as required by my editorial duties. Last week, I decided that 24H2 needed to be under my fingers all the time, so I updated my daily driver, Obsidian.

It went pretty well. I did break one of Susan’s rules; the result was at least a doubling of the time the update should have taken because I had to manually fix an unexpected problem.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.14.0, 2025-04-07).

NotifyIcons — Put that System tray to work!

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

The Windows System tray (or status notification area) tells us when our Internet is down, when our printer is out of ink, and provides countless other alerts.

Windows and other programs install NotifyIcons to our System trays to accomplish this.

During our morning coffee sipping/software hunt the other day, we came across two pretty neat utilities, Icon Meter and Temperature Icon Meter.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.14.0, 2025-04-07).

Decisions to be made before moving to Windows 11

TAME YOUR TECH

By Susan Bradley

I’ve been promising a step-by-step guide to help you migrate to Windows 11 as neatly and safely as possible. This isn’t it.

I’m planning that for May, assuming the stress from tax season has dissipated and I can return fully to the Zen of Windows.

This column is about the decisions you must make before you make the leap to Windows 11. After all, when you buy a new toaster you usually make sure it suits your needs.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.14.0, 2025-04-07).

50 years and counting

Where were you 50 years ago when Microsoft started? I was in junior high and it wasn’t until high school that we saw our first Basic computer. There was one computer in the math lab and that was it. Now we have the vastly greater computing power in our pockets and in our wristwatches.

50 years later, Microsoft is holding a Copilot event on the 50th anniversary date (what else do we expect, I guess?)

Where do you think we will be in the next 50 years in terms of computing?  I realize that many of us won’t be around to experience the full 50 years!  Will we get flying cars? Experience the lifestyle of the Jetson’s? Interestingly enough, we do have many of the technologies that were shown in that classic cartoon show.

What technology do you predict for the next 50 years?

MS-DEFCON 2: Seven months and counting

By Susan Bradley

It’s time to put a pause on updates as I sort out developments from this coming Patch Tuesday.

Therefore, I’m raising the MS-DEFCON level to 2.

The security updates coming next week include all supported Windows platforms, including Windows 10. Seven months may seem like a lot, but time flies. Given that time is needed to prepare for the end of Windows 10 updates, it’s better to think that a mere three months are left.

Anyone can read the full MS-DEFCON Alert (22.13.1, 2025-04-03).

Apple backports fixes

Apple released several updates on March 31, including several backports to older versions of iOS and iPadOS. These fixes retroactively addressed three actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities affecting legacy versions of its operating systems.

CVE-2025-24200: ” This issue is fixed in iPadOS 17.7.5, iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1. A physical attack may disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked device. Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.”

That means businesses, journalists, and other highly targeted individuals. It was originally patched on February 10 in iOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 18.3.1, and iPad 17.7.5, but the vulnerability remained unresolved in older operating systems until now.

Another bug, CVE-2025-24201, was patched in iOS 16.7.11, iPadOS 16.7.11, iOS 15.8.4, and iPadOS 15.8.4 and is targeting flaws in WebKit and browsers. It’s been backported to iOS and iPadOS 15 and 16.

For more information, see this post in our forums.

April 2025 Office non-Security updates

Microsoft released NO non-security updates for Office on April 1, 2025

Office 2016 reached  End of Mainstream Support on October 13, 2020. EOS for Office 2016 is October 14, 2025.

Updates are for the .msi version (perpetual). Office 365 and C2R are not included.

Security updates for all supported versions of Microsoft Office are released on the second Tuesday of the month (Patch Tuesday).

Microsoft wants to hear from you

I received this in an email from Microsoft this morning. It does not appear to be an April Fool’s joke. Take the company at its word — if you get this survey request, tell Redmond what you think.

I was struck by two things about the mostly multiple-choice survey. First, most of the available choices tended to favor Microsoft. For example, in a set of five choices, three could be construed as favorable to the company while only two were unfavorable. That’s not balanced.

The other was the following question: “How long have you used Copilot for?” I’m no English savant, but this would not have escaped my attention while editing an article for AskWoody. It would certainly have been rewritten by Roberta Scholz. I decided to ask Copilot to copy edit the sentence and it provided “How long have you been using Copilot?”

This suggests that the survey was written by a human, albeit one whose English-language skills are slightly below average.