TechByter Worldwide 2024-05-03: Be Your Own Tech Support Genius. Short Circuits.

When I noticed a disk drive problem early one Saturday, I decided it was time to replace an aging cabinet filled with aging disk drives. A significant performance boost was a welcome extra. In Short Circuits: Microsoft would like you not to use cleanup applications such as CCleaner because they might damage the Registry, but now they’re offering a CCleaner-like app called PC Manager. • Editing Environment variables is much easier today than it was 40 years ago with EDLIN on an early DOS computer, and an addition to Microsoft’s PowerToys makes it even better.

Despite having used CrashPlan for the past eight years and still feeling that it is a viable online backup service, I have switched to Backblaze. In Short Circuits: Starting in less that two weeks, Facebook will begin using your public posts, photos, and chatbot iterations to train its AI. • Libraries are among my favorite institutions because of their high-tech and low-tech solutions to today’s problems.

This week is all about artificial intelligence, starting with the many ways AI can be used to improve images and sometimes create scenes that do not exist in real life. There are also applications for old and new motion pictures. In Short Circuits: We’ll move on to how AI might soon be used to help applications like Waze and Google Maps evaluate more conditions that affect your route. • Is the last place we should ever expect to find AI on the Desktop? Probably not. But is Stardock the last firm we’d ever expect to put it there? Let’s ponder that.

Many Windows 11 users will be offered an update to Windows 11 version 24H2 between now and the end of the year. As is usual with Windows, the update brings both useful new features and a certain number of annoyances. In Short Circuits: Actions by three states probably kept internet service providers from doing their worst when the FCC eliminated net neutrality rules in 2017. Now the rules are back, but for how long? • Portable Apps is a handy program that stores utilities, browsers, and games on a thumb drive so they can be used on any computer, but there’s also a good reason to install Portable Apps on a desktop or notebook computer.

An update to Excire Search brings the ability to look for photos using a text description, as introduced in Exicre Foto, to the company’s plug-in for Adobe Lightroom Classic. In Short Circuits: Fake reviews, scam products, and questionable sellers can all be made to look like real bargains. Fakespot by Mozilla helps you sort the truth from the lies. • One of the most important new capabilities coming to Windows 11 version 24H2 will be all but meaningless to many users.

Ensuring that your computer is safe, private, and secure is easy enough, but doing so will make the computer virtually unusable. Let’s consider some options that help without hindering, at least not too much. In Short Circuits: Windows computers use the New Technology File System, which was new in 1993, but it’s not a good choice for devices that must also be used by MacOS computers or Android devices. • Thumbnail images shown on YouTube can help users decide whether they want to view the program, but all too often the thumbnails are little more than clickbait. There’s a browser extension that will help.

Some remarkable capabilities have been added to Audacity, but it’s still not a contender to take Audition’s place for audio productions. In Short Circuits: It’s not a good idea to skimp on the devices you use to interact with your computer. One or more properly placed monitors, a mouse that fits comfortably in your hand, and a keyboard that doesn’t result in wrecked wrists are all more important that we may think. • How close is your computer’s hard drive to failure? Some disk disasters can’t be predicted, but others can and a free utility program that watches the indicators provided by modern disk drives sounds early warnings.

When something goes wrong with your computer, it may be easier, faster, and less frustrating to fix it yourself instead of dealing with tech support. In Short Circuits: Every computer screen is different and your vision is unique to your eyes. That’s why it’s a good idea to use Microsoft’s ClearType Text Tuner. • You’ll start to see computers being marketed with heavy AI claims soon, probably before the end of the year, but waiting for the next generation in late 2025 is probably wise.

A surprising number of Facebook accounts are being stolen and recovering them is difficult, if not impossible. That’s why it’s better to avoid trouble in the first place. In Short Circuits: Although your internet service provider includes domain name services, there’s a good reason to use one of several alternate services. • Efforts by the federal government to eliminate junk fees have finally resulted in some changes that affect what service providers must tell you before you sign up.

You still have about a year and a half to decide what you’ll do when Microsoft ends support for Windows 10. There are several choices, but not all options will work for all users. Let’s take a look at some that will keep the computer out of the trash. In Short Circuits: Although Microsoft has added a file renamer function to PowerToys, it won’t be sufficient when you need to apply complex names to a lot of files. A manual process becomes cumbersome when more than a few files are involved, absurd for hundreds or thousands of files. This is a job for the Bulk Rename Utility. • Newer keyboards have a special key to open the emoticon finder, but there’s a faster and easier way to insert bullets, fractions, currency symbols, and accented characters. It’s yet another utility built in to PowerToys.