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Upgrade to Windows 11? I’d Wait

Starting tomorrow, Microsoft will be making Windows 11 available for computers that meet the minimum requirements.

Should you upgrade? I wouldn’t, at least not right now. I (being the benevolent and always watchful Tek Chic) have been testing it for a couple of months now, and I can tell you there are many more reasons to NOT upgrade than there are to upgrade.

It feels like Microsoft is rushing it out, maybe to help PC sales this holiday season. I find it missing some features from Windows 10 that I think they’ll probably (and eventually) put back in. You can’t pin as many apps to the start menu, the icons on the taskbar are in the middle rather than the lower left. If you use Internet Explorer, it’s completely gone (you shouldn’t be using it anyway), and there seems to be some printing issues.

And frankly, I don’t see a single reason why it’s better. It doesn’t seem faster. You’ve got at least 4 more years of support with Windows 10, so I recommend y’all just stay with Windows 10 while they take the time to “finish” it. I’ll let you know when I think they’ve got their act together. 😀

LinkedIn Scraped

I was just informed that LinkedIn, where “Connect to Opportunity” also applies to criminals, was “scraped” back in April of this year. This is different than a hack. LinkedIn wasn’t hacked. What happens when you “scrape” a site is you are taking all the public information that is available (pretty much to anyone on the site).

So some bad guys scraped LinkedIn and got the following information: Education levels, Email addresses, Genders, Geographic locations, Job titles, Names, Social media profiles. Information that its users made public (by coincidence I closed my LinkedIn account just a month ago).

Bad guys may try to send email to people, adding personal information to make it seem legit or even masquerading as a LinkedIn message, so just be aware if you have a LinkedIn account and get an email claiming to be from them, it may NOT be.

The safest way to be sure when you get an email from ANY company, bank, etc. is to simply go to their site directly in your browser and log in there—DON’T click the link in the email. If it’s legit it won’t matter, but if it’s NOT legit, clicking the link could bring all kinds of trouble to you.

Stay safe folks!

The Rumors are True (Probably)

The rumors are that Microsoft is going to introduce a new version of Windows on June 24th. They certainly are announcing SOMETHING on June 24th.

It might be called just Windows, it might be called Windows 11, there’s even a chance they will continue with the current Windows 10 name—no one knows for sure. And the tech media makes is sound like they are coming out with it then, and that’s not likely. More likely is that whatever the announcement, it will be months (or maybe even next year) before it’s actually released for the public to use.

So just relax, worry about Covid or a vitamin D deficiency, but don’t get worked up about a new version of Windows. I’ll give you any pertinent details later in the month when we no longer are working with rumors.

Update Your iPhone/iPad and Watch

For all you Apple lovers with iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, there’s a critical update you need to install now. Apple isn’t giving all the details, so it must be bad. Just do the update and you’re good to go (we hope).

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-releases-emergency-update-for-iphones-ipads-and-apple-watch/

Don’t Spend Money on 5G (not yet)

Recently Google announced their Pixel 5G phones, Samsung is pitching their 5G Galaxy phones, and now Apple is announcing their iPhone 12 with 5G.

The problem is you will probably never get 5G speeds with this phone. Verizon’s version of 5G is by far the fastest, but unless you’re in a couple of buildings in Manhattan or in certain locations of sports facilities, you won’t see it where you live or at work for quite a while. AT&T’s version of 5G is just more of an enhanced 4G (they’re famous for doing this same trick in the past) and isn’t really 5G. T-Mobile’s speed is better than AT&T, but still they are in the process of building out their network for it.

You really won’t see wide-spread availability of 5G until 2022, and since the 5G radio in the phone is going to cost you around $100 extra—save your money and stick with the 4G version for now. If you’ve got a good 4G signal, that’s way more than enough to stream hi-def movies on your phone, what do you need more speed for anyway? 😃

Reboot First, Pick up the Phone Second

Why bother rebooting your computer when you can call me and pay me do it for you?

I know, it seems like a silly question, but it’s almost always the first thing I’ll have you do—and don’t be surprised if it fixes your “weird” problem you’re having. I had a client call with a problem, she showed me her problem. I though “oh, that’s weird”, so I asked her if she’s rebooted her computer lately. It had been a few days, so I had her shut down all the windows that were open and we rebooted her computer.

Guess what, that FIXED it! Now, she could have rebooted her computer first, fixed the problem and continued her day, but she called me first so that I could reboot her computer. It’s going to cost her a lunch and then some, so be sure before getting so desperate and mad at your computer that you finally resort to calling me, try rebooting your computer. If that doesn’t fix it, THEN call me and we’ll figure out what’s going on.