Sommaire pour November 2023 de Tech Advisor

For September’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft provided several updates to fix 59 vulnerabilities. Microsoft classifies five vulnerabilities as critical and the rest, with the exception of one, as high risk. The critical vulnerabilities affect Windows, Visual Studio and Azure. A vulnerability in Word is already being exploited. Microsoft offers sparse details on the vulnerabilities for self-searching in the security update guide (fave.co/4630kDO). BROWSER UPDATES The latest security update for Edge is version 116.0.1938.76. It is based on Chromium 116.0.5845.180 and fixes several holes in the Chromium base. However, Google has already released two new Chrome updates this week that fix more vulnerabilities, including a 0-day exploit. Since the switch to Chromium 110 in February, Edge no longer runs on systems with Windows 7 or 8.x – like all Chromium-based browsers. OFFICE…

Microsoft Paint is finally testing background removal, the killer feature of Microsoft’s Paint 3D that we hoped they’d save. And they finally have. In 2021, Microsoft pulled Paint 3D from Windows, ending its run of 3D VR applications. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows Mixed Reality bombed and they began quietly removing apps like Paint 3D and 3D Viewer. (Paint 3D lives on as a Microsoft Store app, however.) The idea behind Paint 3D and 3D Viewer was that you would create VR holograms that could be viewed by either the HoloLens or a third-party ecosystem of VR hardware. Paint 3D was fun, even though the idea of 3D dioramas never caught on. But Paint 3D’s best feature, Magic Select, had nothing to do with 3D. Magic Select was a 2D feature,…

Experience, knowledge, tests and research are extremely important to being able to use computers and all IT at home as smoothly and efficiently as possible. But developments do not stand still: we’ve reviewed 14 pieces of common tech knowledge to see if they are valid. 1. DO DEVICES INTERFERE WITH EACH OTHER ON POWER STRIPS? It is often said that you should not plug this or that device into a power strip together with others. Otherwise they would ‘interfere’ with each other. This is almost always nonsense; the electromagnetic interactions are usually negligible. If a fuse is responsible for several rooms, several appliances are connected to one circuit anyway. However, the total power of all devices on a power strip must be taken into account. Currently, this must not exceed…

Microsoft will no longer provide new drivers from printer manufacturers via Windows Update starting in 2025, the company has announced (fave.co/3Pq2fLY). It says doing so will make Windows 11 even more secure. Up to now, printer manufacturers can have their drivers certified by Microsoft, and the tech giant then distributes them via Windows Update. Starting in 2025, however, Microsoft will no longer accept new drivers from manufacturers. The proprietary drivers, installers, and tools of the printer manufacturers haven’t been necessary since Windows 10 21H2’s release in 2021, because since then the operating system has supported Mopria-compliant network and USB printers with the universal Microsoft IPP class driver (Mopria, fave.co/3ECzAhp, is an association of printer and scanner manufacturers to produce drivers for printers, multifunction, devices and scanners. Windows supports Mopria). There…

Adobe’s generative AI-powered Firefly tools are now commercially available to subscribers, but with a catch: Adobe will ‘charge’ you for using it with a credit plan that you may need to pay separately for. Adobe Firefly is a superb AI art generator, trained on Adobe’s own stock images. While Firefly is now available for free as a standalone tool, Firefly-powered generative AI art capabilities were added to Adobe Photoshop in May and to Adobe Express last month. Firefly not only generates its own AI art, but can be used as a source for editing: replacing the background on a beach scene with a fantasy castle, for example. Firefly, like other AI generators, is a text-to-image tool which generates an image based on your text description and filters. Adobe’s Creative Cloud…

For most people, a laptop remains the best portable device for productivity. The physical keyboard is something tablets can’t match, though the latter is a better option for gaming or watching videos. Wouldn’t it be great if there was one device that could do all of these and more? Depending on your needs, there might just be a solution among 2-in-1 laptops, which have become much more popular in recent years. There are two main form factors – a tablet with detachable keyboard and laptop with a 360-degree hinge. Both let you type and touch the screen, and there are devices running Windows, Android, iOS and ChromeOS these days. However, a word of warning: you’ll be hard-pressed to find a device that excels as both a tablet and laptop. Some…

It’s official: the next-generation Thunderbolt spec will be called Thunderbolt 5, debuting next year with enough charging power and bandwidth to support eGPUs and a new class of ‘external AI devices’. Intel teased the new Thunderbolt specification at the end of 2022, promising that the next-gen Thunderbolt would continue the trend of doubling bandwidth, all the way to 80Gb/s in one direction. That included a promise, now confirmed, that the four lanes of Thunderbolt could be reconfigured to allow three lanes from a laptop to a monitor, rather than two. That will allow the option of a 120Gb/s connection to a display, which Intel now refers to as Bandwidth Boost. Thunderbolt 5 will eventually be integrated within Intel’s Core platforms, primarily laptops. Although Intel has a prototype dock and laptop…

No matter how much experience you have with Microsoft’s Windows, it can still be improved by turning to software and tools that can make the operating system that much better. Take Windows 11, for example: When Microsoft introduced it with extremely strict system requirements in autumn 2021, it was only a matter of time before those barriers could be circumvented. In order to install the new operating system on older PCs, the registry first had to be changed manually. Later, this could be simplified with a batch file, and now even that is superfluous thanks to Rufus (fave.co/3sUxXcx), a small tool for creating bootable USB sticks. Now, with just a few additional mouse clicks, you can run Windows 11 on almost any computer. Let’s start this look at helpful, dead…

Operating systems need at least a minimum of maintenance to run properly over the long term. While some important tools are already included from Microsoft, many professionals want or need more powerful and useful tools to help them when using Windows systems. Thankfully, Microsoft provides numerous tools free of charge that help with analysis, maintenance, and troubleshooting. Some of these tools are useful for everyone in everyday use, while others are only needed in special situations. There are several reasons why the tools are not included as standard Windows equipment. Due to the sheer number of different functions, the need for these specific tools is often not obvious at first glance, and sometimes the prerequisites for using the tools have to be created first. In this article we’ll explain how…