ISSUE 23.19 • 2026-05-11 MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan Outlook email rules are undergoing a major — and mostly unheralded — change. They’re going online. If the mailbox is stored online in a Microsoft-hosted service such as Outlook.com or Microsoft 365, then Outlook rules will run only in the cloud, not locally on your PC. […]

LEGAL BRIEF By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. To err is no longer the exclusive province of humans. Apologies to Alexander Pope. Artificial intelligence has progressed from hallucinating to enticing humans to join in the hallucination. We need a new term for hybrid human-AI errors caused by reliance on AI hallucinations. I propose “mistaiks.” Read the […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen I just finished cleaning the carpets. Tomorrow, I have a load of soil and manure being delivered for the raised garden beds. Before I get into that, I’m going to help you spring-clean your computer. I’m not talking about blowing the fans out — you already know how to do […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley We might be a bit busy in the next few months. Not with updates, but dealing with headlines. Why? Because AI tools are now turning to the task of reviewing a lot of code that hasn’t been looked at in a long time. First up? No, not Windows. Not Apple. […]

I was reading the post of Mikael Nystrom, who regularly consults and assists with businesses and deployment. One of his comments caught my eye — the boring but important stuff. He offers up a PowerShell script to review UEFI & Secure Boot TPM & BitLocker VBS, Credential Guard, HVCI LSA protection / LSASS PPL Defender […]

ISSUE 23.18.1 • 2026-05-07 By Susan Bradley It’s time to prepare for the May updates, which includes pausing and deferring them. That’s why the MS-DEFCON level is going to 2. There may be some confusion about the recent changes to the level. You’ll recall that I changed the level to 4 on April 28 and […]

Many days ago, Microsoft posted an IT pro-focused post on patching and a Windows Autopatch report. What caught my eye was the recommendation to install the latest security updates as follows: Within 3 days to be considered current (and reported as current) Within 7 days to help ensure devices aren’t subject to vulnerabilities (and reported […]

I saw headlines yesterday, such as “Apple Removes $599 Mac mini, Raises Starting Price to $799.” The knee-jerk reaction to a headline like that is that Apple raised prices. It’s not true. There is a readjustment. True, a Mac mini priced at $599 is no longer available. The lowest-priced mini is now $200 more, at […]

ISSUE 23.18 • 2026-05-04 HARDWARE By Will Fastie Somewhere in the AskWoody archives, you’ll find an article stating my ultimate goal — to reduce the number of PCs on my desk from four to one. Hah. That didn’t happen. I did manage to cut it down to two, though. Then I bought a Mac mini. […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie Physically putting the NAS together is easy. Setup takes some time. You’d think somewhere along the line I’d have deployed network-attached storage for someone, client or friend. This is the first time. It’s different from putting together a RAID solution for a business’s server or creating a mirror for my own […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie With the NAS now up and running with an accessible storage volume, it’s time to make it useful. What’s useful? As stated in the previous articles, I want the contents of my D: drive out of my daily driver, Obsidian. But I still want all that data to be easily accessible. […]

The issue with Windows 11 KB5083769 causing problems with various backup software is exposing something else that is concerning to me. Something in the monthly patching processes is performing an aggressive disk clean-up process of Windows update files. As a result, many of you – too many, frankly – are reporting that you don’t see […]

Erland Sommarskog reached out to me regarding a new project: ErrorCodeReference (ECR). If you’ve ever been stumped by the useless and unhelpful Microsoft error codes, check out the site. For example, let’s check out a recent post — which points to error 0x80070643. My two cents regarding reading the suggestions: overall, very good advice. But […]

ISSUE 23.17.2 • 2026-04-29 By Susan Bradley This is a trending story. On the same day I sent out an MS-DEFCON Alert recommending installing the April updates, Ira Shapiro alerts us to issues with backup software. I’m not seeing this with all backup software, but some vendors have mentioned the matter in various forums. The […]

ISSUE 23.17.1 • 2026-04-28 By Susan Bradley The April updates continue to dribble out more fixes for Secure Boot certificates for some systems. But once you receive the April updates, you still may be waiting for the new certs to be installed. That happened to me on some systems. Nonetheless, the patching world is relatively […]

ISSUE 23.17 • 2026-04-27 Look for our BONUS issue on May 4, 2026!! WINDOWS 11 By Lance Whitney A virtual machine provides the freedom and flexibility to work with different versions of Windows and play with new or untested apps and features. As a technology writer and journalist, I often have to test and review […]

PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston The maker of the popular Claude large language model (LLM) — which became the number-one download from US app stores in February 2026 — recently announced a powerful service called Claude Mythos. The new LLM has reportedly discovered thousands of security holes in every major operating system and Web browser. […]

WINDOWS 11 By Martin Brinkmann Here’s a surprising speed boost for everyday, heavy-duty tasks. It works on many Windows setups and costs nothing. When Microsoft rolled out Dev Drive for Windows 11 back in 2023, it slapped a massive “For Developers Only” sign on the feature. The pitch was that enterprise programmers compiling millions of […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley One thing the World Wide Web has done in recent years is introduce new ways to scam, trick, entice, and generally be a drag on our time — and potentially a hit to our pocketbooks. Here are some threats I’ve seen in recent months. Read the full story in our […]

I’m not yet ready to give my final word on operating system updates, but for sure it’s time to check your browsers. Firefox 150 is out with new features and fixes to 271 vulnerabilities found with AI techniques and the Claude Mythos preview. I expect to see similar bug counts in all of the browsers. […]