Newsletter Archives

• MS-DEFCON 3: A slightly bumpy November

  Posted on November 28, 2023 at 02:45 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 20.48.1 • 2023-11-28

  

  By Susan Bradley

  For most Windows 10 and 11 users, including me, there have been no side effects as a result of November’s updates.

  Nonetheless, there appear to be a few potholes in the road. That’s enough to make me cautious — I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level to only 3.

  One thing I did notice was updates taking more time to complete than usual — not a good sign. At the very least, it’s a good reason to take a look at the update history in Settings.

  Anyone can read the full MS-DEFCON Alert (20.48.1, 2023-11-28).

  AskWoody Plus Alert, MS-DEFCON Alerts, Dev Drive, Dev Home App, InControl, KB5032189, KB5032190, MS-DEFCON, MS-DEFCON 3, OpenAI, Patch Lady Posts, speed test, Uninstall updates, Windows Copilot

• First look at Redstone 3

  Posted on April 7, 2017 at 17:04 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  When you first run the first public build of Redstone 3 — which is to say, Windows 10 build 16170 — Edge pops up with a speed diagram.

  See anything weird about the speed dials?

  They aren’t zero-based. They aren’t logarithmic. They’re just, simply, deceptive. Unabashedly so.

  I don’t care if Chrome is 8.3% slower than Edge. I don’t care much that Firefox is 17.1% slower. Do you?

  And why the deception?

  C’mon Microsoft. We aren’t that stupid.

  UPDATE: So I ran the Octane 2 test using this new Edge on build 16170. The graph says 31,586. My machine says 22,381. Then I re-started Edge, using the default Start page, created a new tab and ran the test again. Score 17,227. So I re-started Edge, navigated from the default Start page to the Octane 2 page, ran the test again. Score 22,779.

  Clean run of freshly installed Chrome on the same machine: 23,383.

  Rebooted. Ran the test on Edge again. 19,446

  Rebooted. Ran the test on Chrome again. 21,522

  Windows News 16170, Edge, speed test