Kutting Edge Computer and Network Solutions

07/25/2024

https://www.isc2.org/landing/1mcc

ISC2 pledges one million free entry-level certification courses and exams to individuals new to cybersecurity

11/08/2022

For my fellow veterans!

These Veterans Day free meals, discounts and other programs are for Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors are aware of all resources available to them.

06/14/2022

Windows 11: What’s New In Microsoft’s New OS

Kutting Edge Computer and Network Solutions is a full-service IT consulting agency based in San Antonio, TX. We apply unique technology solutions to your small or medium-sized business.

06/28/2021

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/28/22553666/microsoft-windows-11-october-20th-release-date-hint-rumor

Microsoft’s marketing materials hint at October 20th.

06/25/2021

https://www.kutting-edge-computer-and-network-solutions.com/it-news/

Kutting Edge Computer and Network Solutions is a full-service IT consulting agency based in San Antonio, TX. We apply unique technology solutions to your small or medium-sized business.

02/18/2021

Hot Off the Press
What’s New in Windows 10’s 21H1 Update, Coming Spring 2021

Microsoft has confirmed its latest update, Windows 10 version 21H1. Here's what we're expecting, and why it could set the stage for a major Windows 10 shift. This follows Microsoft's usual pattern of rolling out two major Windows 10 updates per year, with this one following the latest October 2020 update. (If you're running Windows 7, you can still download Windows 10 free to get the latest updates.)

What is Windows 10 version 21H1?

Windows 10 version 21H1 will be Microsoft's latest update to the OS, arriving sometime this spring. These updates often end up being called the April or May update.

Usually, Microsoft releases a larger feature update in the spring, and a smaller one in the fall. But version 21H1 appears to be a more minor update as well, rather than an overhaul.

What new features will the new update include?

According to Microsoft's blog post, new Windows 10 features will include:

Multicamera support for Windows Hello, allowing users to choose an external camera when using high-end displays with integrated cameras.
Improvements to Windows Defender Application Guard, including optimizing document opening scenario times.
Improvements to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Group Policy Service (GPSVC) updating, to support remote work.
"The features we are releasing in this update are focused on the core experiences that customers have told us they're relying on most right now," the post said. "So, we optimized this release to support our customers' most pressing needs."

According to Digital Trends, the update will also include new icons, updated settings pages and some tweaks to Cortana and the search box experience.

Secure DNS over HTTPS (DoH), System-Wide

Microsoft now lets you enable DNS over HTTPS (DoH) system-wide, for all Windows applications. DNS over HTTPS will boost online privacy and security by encrypting DNS lookups.

In current versions of Windows 10, only a few web browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox support this. Once system-wide support is finished, all Windows applications will get the benefits of DoH without any modifications.


DNS Configuration in the Settings App

Windows 10’s Settings app now lets you configure DNS servers—and DoH settings. Previously setting a custom DNS server required visiting the classic Control Panel.

To find DNS (and DNS over HTTPS) settings, head to either Settings > Network & Internet > Status (for wired Ethernet connections) or Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi (for wireless connections.) Click “Properties,” scroll down, and click “Edit” under DNS Settings.

With one of the DoH-enabled DNS servers Microsoft lists here configured, you can enable Encrypted DNS over HTTPS. In the current testing release, it works with Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9’s DNS servers.

Startup App Notifications

When a Windows application sets itself to automatically start with your PC, Windows will now show you a “Startup App Notification” that informs you of this.

You can go to Settings > Apps > Startup (or use the Task Manager) to disable the Startup app.

At the moment, this feature only shows apps that appear in the Settings > Apps > Startup screen. Other apps that automatically start in other ways—for example, applications that install a system service—won’t trigger one of these notifications.

A Redesigned Emoji Picker

Microsoft has redesigned Windows 10’s emoji picker, which you can open with Windows + . (period) or Windows + ; (semicolon.)

Beyond an updated design that matches Windows 10’s modern “Fluent Design” style, you’ll find a variety of new features including an emoji search box. There’s now animated GIF support for quickly searching for and inserting animated GIFs into Windows applications.

The emoji panel will incorporate clipboard history, too. You can still press Windows+V to go to your clipboard history, but now it’s also available in the emoji picker panel. Just click the Clipboard icon at the top of the panel to find it.

“Windows Voice Typing” Replaces Windows Dictation

Windows Voice Typing is the new, improved, and rebranded version of Windows Dictation. You can use it to type with your voice anywhere there’s a text box on your Windows 10 PC.

Voice Typing has a design that’s “optimized for use with touch keyboards,” automatic punctuation, and “an updated back end” that promises a more reliable voice typing experience.

To activate it, press Windows+H or tap the Microphone button built into Windows 10’s touch keyboard. Microsoft offers a list of voice commands you can try with Voice Typing.

Microsoft’s New Icon Theme

Various icons have been updated to match Microsoft’s new icon theme, including the Settings, Windows Security, Snip & Sketch, and Sticky Notes icons. The new icons look much better with the new light and dark themed start menu tiles added in Windows 10’s 20H1 update.



Storage Health Monitoring

Windows 10 now has a storage health monitoring feature that will warn you when one of your PC’s storage devices “may be at risk of failure.” It’s designed to work with NVMe SSDs. If you have one of these drives, it should hopefully warn you and give you enough time to back up your data before the drive fails.



Disk Management in Settings

Microsoft has now added Disk Management options to Windows 10’s Settings app. Rather than opening the classic Disk Management utility, you can now head to Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes.

This interface lets you view disk information, create volumes, format them, and assign drive letters. It’s also “better integrated” with modern Windows features like Storage Spaces, which lets you mirror and combine drives.

The older Disk Management interface isn’t going anywhere, and you can still access it if you need it. The new interface in Settings is just another option, and it should be easier to find and use for average Windows users—it’s now designed with accessibility in mind, unlike the old one.

04/29/2020

The latest upcoming Windows Update from Microsoft!

04/29/2020

Windows 10 2004 is Coming Soon, Here Are the New Features

The Windows 10 version 2004 Feature Update is expected to be released in the Spring of 2020 and it comes with a long list of improvements and new features.

Unlike the November 2019 Update, which was more like a service pack, Windows 10 2004 aims to bring new features and enhancements not seen in previous versions of Windows.

For those who wish to test Windows 10 2004, otherwise known as 20H1, and the various new features, you can join the Windows Insider program and install it now.

Changes in Windows 10 2004
Optional Update Experience
Starting with Windows 10 20H1, you no longer need to access the Device Manager to manage your drivers and new devices drivers will not be installed automatically.

Instead, new drivers will be detected as 'Optional updates' and will be listed under the 'View optional updates' screen where they can be installed.

This new page can be found under Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > View optional updates.

Optional Updates screen
Optional Updates screen
Task Manager gets an upgrade!
Windows 10's Task Manager is getting two new features - the first one allows you to see the disk type and the second one lets you monitor the temperature of the graphics card.

GPU temperatures in Task Manager
GPU temperatures in Task Manager
Reduced disk and processor utilization by Windows Search
In the past, many users would disable the Windows Indexer feature used by Windows Search because it used up too much CPU or caused high disk usage.

To prevent this from occurring, Windows 10 will use a new algorithm that detects high disk usage and activity, and if detected, will slow down the Windows Indexer.

"Based on this, we’re introducing an algorithm that detects high disk usage and activity, so it can better identify peak usage times and manage the indexer accordingly. We’re also making changes for developers to prevent searches of certain repositories and project folders to improve disk usage."

Download throttling options for Windows Update
Windows Update allows users to throttle bandwidth usage of Windows Update, but setting download throttling as a percent of available bandwidth isn't enough and some users are unable to reduce the impact on their internet connection.

Windows 10 20H1 introduces a new option that lets you set a specific speed that will be used to throttle Windows Update You can set this for both foreground and background downloads. This option also controls the bandwidth used by Windows 10 app store.

Users can access this option via Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options.

Passwordless Experience
Microsoft is introducing passwordless sign-in for Microsoft accounts to strengthen your device sign-in. This allows Microsoft accounts to use 'modern multifactor authentication' such as Windows Hello, Fingerprint, and a PIN instead of passwords.

New Cortana Experience
Windows 10 comes with a new Cortana experience that features a brand-new chat-based UI and it gives you the ability to type to interact with the digital assistant.

New Cortana experience
New Cortana experience
The updated Cortana supports both dark and light themes, Bing answers, Assistant conversations, allows you to open apps, set reminders, alarms, and timers as well. The firm has dropped jokes and other consumer-focused features.

Microsoft has created a less intrusive screen for “Hey Cortana” queries.
New speech and language models introduced.
Significantly improved performance.
Redesigned Network Status page
Microsoft has revamped the Network & Internet landing page in Settings. It offers more information about the network, so you can easily understand the connectivity of your device.

Redesigned network status page
Redesigned network status page
The new Network page displays all available connection interfaces on the Status page and you can now see the data usage on this page as well.

Windows Search Improvements
Windows 10 2004 brings improvements to Windows Search that include:

Improved spelling correction for Apps & Settings searches. Microsoft is making significant changes to how Windows Search's built-in spell checker works, so you can find the exact file you're looking for.
Windows search will intelligently understand and correct small typos like “powerpiont” and “exce”.
Windows Search now displays hints to improve Best match results under a 'Related:' line.
Account picture in Windows
You can now update the picture of your account that you use to sign in to Windows 10 quickly and the changes reflect across Windows, apps, and Microsoft sites that you use every day.

This can be done from Windows 10's Your info page with the ‘Create your picture’ option.

Optional Features
Windows 10's Settings > Apps & Features > Optional Features is getting the following new features:

Multi-select: The page finally allows you to select and install multiple optional features at the same time.
More useful information: It displays the installation date of each optional feature.
You can also view the status of your latest installs/uninstalls/cancels right on the main page.
Virtual Desktops
You can now rename your Virtual desktops to quickly organize your office and personal work or multiple projects.

Rename Virtual Desktops
Rename Virtual Desktops
New Reset this PC from Cloud Feature
Windows 10's Reset this PC from Cloud is a new cloud recovery feature that allows users to reset their PC using Windows files downloaded from Microsoft’s servers.

Reset this PC from the cloud
Reset this PC from the cloud
New Tablet Experience for 2-in-1 Convertibles
Windows 10 version 2004 offers a better tablet experience with increased spacing between Taskbar icons, the search box on taskbar collapsed into an icon and File Explorer with a touch-optimized layout.

Windows Sandbox
Windows Sandbox, which was introduced with the May 2019 Update, is getting accessibility improvements in this release. With Windows 10 20H1 Update, Windows Sandbox is getting support for Microphone, audio input devices, and the following two keyboard shortcuts:

Shift + Alt + PrintScreen activates the ease of access dialog for enabling high contrast mode.
Ctrl + alt + break allows entering/exiting fullscreen mode
SwiftKey’s Typing Intelligence
Microsoft recently introduced SwiftKey’s typing intelligence for Windows and Spring 2020 Update adds support for more languages:

Afrikaans (South Africa), Albanian (Albania), Arabic (Saudi Arabia), Armenian (Armenia), Azerbaijani (Azerbaijan), Basque (Spain), Bulgarian (Bulgaria), Catalan (Spain), Croatian (Croatia), Czech (Czech Republic), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Netherlands), Estonian (Estonia), Finnish (Finland), Galician (Spain), Georgian (Georgia), Greek (Greece), Hausa (Nigeria), Hebrew (Israel), Hindi (India), Hungarian (Hungary), Indonesian (Indonesia), Kazakh (Kazakhstan), Latvian (Latvia), Lithuanian (Lithuania), Macedonian (Macedonia), Malay (Malaysia), Norwegian (Bokmal, Norway), Persian (Iran), Polish (Poland), Romanian (Romania), Serbian (Serbia), Serbian (Serbia), Slovak (Slovakia), Slovenian (Slovenia), Swedish (Sweden), Turkish (Turkey), Ukrainian (Ukraine), Uzbek (Uzbek)

Dictation Support
Microsoft is expanding Windows 10's Dictation support to devices using English (Canada), English (UK), English (Australia), English (India), French (France), French (Canada), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil), and Chinese (Simplified, China) language.

Dictation

Users can access Windows 10's new and improved Dictation feature with Win + H keyboard shortcut when the focus is set to a text field

Language Settings
Microsoft is updating the Language Settings to make it easier for you to understand the language pack you've enabled for your Windows 10 installation.

This allows you to quickly find out the languages selected as default for Windows apps, display, websites, and as well as the Regional format and Windows Search.

04/05/2020

Conveniently give and track donations to New Light Baptist Church with the Givelify online and mobile donation app.

03/22/2020

An update I just posted for my church!