Category: OCD Techs

CES 2021 Recap

It’s a wrap: all-digital CES 2021 is in the books!  I have to say that for a virtual conference, it was very impressive.  If I had to choose which company really brought it, Samsung is at the top of my list.  Their keynote primarily focused on where we have always spent most of our time: HOME.  From gadgets that help cook, clean, stay fit, and feed your pets…much props to their adjusting to the times we live in!

Hopefully you were able to get a chance to drop in and see all the greatness CES has to offer!

 

Windows 10 breaking hard drives?

Looks like the weirdness of 2020 will continue into this new year.  Case in point: lets say in 2019 I were to come across an article such as the one I came across right here stating that by merely looking at a desktop icon on my Windows 10 PC can cause my hard drive to become corrupted, I would have lost whatever remains of the little bits of hair that remain on my head.

BUT…this is post 2020 so nothing is off the table, including the use of sight, hovering of the mouse cursor over an icon, etc that would cause your hard drive to fail.

Apparently this only affects those drives that are NTFS formatted but nevertheless, what a heck of a development!

CES 2021

Personally, this time of year is filled with much excitement and anticipation in making the early morning drive from SoCal to Las Vegas to arrive shortly before the opening of the convention floor waiting to view the latest offerings tech companies from all around the world for the next 3 or 4 days.  Unfortunately those plans will have to be on hiatus (hopefully for only this year) due to the pandemic however kudos to CTA (the organization that runs CES) in putting together the first ever virtual, all digital, distance conferencing (ok I made the last one up lol) …

Bottom line, even though I’ll miss exploring all that CES has to offer in person I’m glad that we have the technology available to ensure that the show will go on!

Here’s to CES 2021!  Enjoy!

SolarWinds Attack Summary of Events

A week after the massive SolarWinds breach, Lawrence Abrams of BleepingComputer.com summarizes the timeline of events best and gives an excellent breakdown of the chaos that has ensued since.

I have to say that I am in agreement with most Cyber security officials in that this is definitely going to take at least a year or even more in order to get this under control.

Check out the article here for more info and let me know what you think will come of all this madness!

Better late than never…macOS Big Sur is here!

 

It has arrived!  macOS Big Sur is ready for download and installation on your supported device.  Being the first macOS to natively run on Apple’s own Silicon, it will be interesting to see what type of performance discrepancies users will experience when compared to the vast majority of Macs still running Intel based CPUs.

For more on the latest macOS, check out the latest reads (good, bad, and ugly!)

Can’t delete Outlook.com email? Me neither!

And I thought I was going crazy!  Turns out that due to the increasing numbers of users unable to delete email from their account (i.e. MSN, Hotmail, etc.), Microsoft has finally decided to investigate why this is occurring throughout the world.

As BleepingComputer.com has reported here, perhaps this is due to the issue resulting in 503! errors when users attempted to access various Microsoft resources.

Hopefully Microsoft resolves this as soon as possible…let us know if you are one of those unfortunately affected by this!

Windows 10 version 200nineerrum…20H2 is here!

So…who can tell me which screenshot is real or fake?  Who know what the long term vision is for Microsoft when it comes to the naming conventions of their Windows 10 operating systems but what we do know is that the latest version of the flagship OS is ready for downloading and installation…that is of course, you’re feeling a bit daring at this moment.  Good luck and let us know how the install went… 🙂

Microsoft Releases Annual Security Report

As its now becoming an annual tradition, Microsoft has released their latest “Digital Defense Report” which compiles lots of data and statistics in order to make determinations on what the current landscape looks like along with the ever changing trends of what organizations both large and small should be aware of when it comes to best protecting themselves.

Kurt Mackie at Redmondmag.com has a great summary of the report here and if you want the entire 88 page summary, it can also be found here as well.

Windows 10 Version 2009* coming soon!

Ok so I know I’m not being 100% accurate with the title of this post; it’s definitely intended to poke fun at Microsoft’s newest naming scheme for their famed Windows operating system.  Being that this is the third change in five years, one can only hope that this will be the last one to happen for some time.

As with all of the latest Windows 10 version updates, we can only hope that the necessary testing done will result in a smooth rollout with minimal issues…hey, even if it hasn’t happened in any other previous release that’s besides the point! LOL!  Always do your best to view the glass as half full!

For more details about the latest and greatest version of Windows 10, check out Kurt Mackie’s article here…enjoy!

Let the best docking station win

As a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic being experienced worldwide, many of us around the world have been forced to step our game up when it comes to our WFH setup.  And as Ed Bott explains in his latest article here discussing the topic at hand, we initially thought working from home would be a short term thing but reality is (and for me personally its already been over 5 months and counting…) this is going to be a long term proposition that has no end in sight.

If you were (or worse yet, still!) using a laptop to conduct your WFH business daily, consider purchasing a docking station that will convert your device into one that will bring convenience, comfort, and higher productivity for now and in the foreseeable future amid this pandemic.