Martin Brinkmann

Are Windows gaming handheld devices the next big thing?

When you think about gaming on a handheld device that is running Windows, Steam Deck may be the first device that comes to your mind. It is developed by Valve, maker of Steam, and optimized for running Steam games.

It is available in three different versions and costs between $400 to $700, based on the selected version. The main difference is storage, with the two higher priced versions using NVMe SSDs and the entry level version eMMC.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft is working on integrating a few usability improvements into its Windows 11 operating system. There is a new End Task option when right-clicking on open apps in the Windows taskbar, and a remapped Print Screen key, which will open the Snipping Tool in the future.

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Grep is an interesting new search engine -- with one disadvantage

There has been no shortage of new search engines in the past couple of years. While search is still dominated by Google Search, there has been an increase in startups that try to change the game by ditching the advertisement-driven system of the old and establishing commercial search engines.

Users pay a monthly subscription fee to the makers of Neeva or Kagi, and get the promise of ad-free and tracking-free search experiences. These search engines may also have other useful features in addition.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft's official Store on Windows 11 has a new section for widgets. Follow this link to open the Widgets section. Listed widgets may be installed so that they may be displayed in the Widgets interface.

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How to use Windows Sandbox to open files in a secure environment

Windows-Sandbox

Windows Sandbox is a built-in feature of Windows 10 and Windows 11. Its main purpose is to provide a safe environment for running applications. Anything that is executed in the sandbox, e.g., a software that is installed, remains trapped inside. It can’t break out and affect the "real" operating system.

As a consequence, malware, spyware and other unwanted and undesirable code, can’t infect the system or pull data from it.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Windows 11 users may soon install free apps or games directly from Windows Search results. The change landed in the latest Windows 11 Canary Insider build.

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The Last of Us Part 1 bombs on PC

The long awaited first part of the previously PlayStation exclusive The Last of Us game has been released on March 28, 2023 on Steam. The remastered version of the game has received praising reviews for PlayStation, but when you check the Steam ratings one day after release, you notice that they are mostly negative on the site.

In numbers, more than 4,200 of the 5,740 reviews are mostly negative, and this leads to the question how this could have happened. From Game of the Year to one that sits at the bottom of Steam’s ranking charts.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft changed the schedule for Windows update previews. Preview updates are now always released in the fourth week of a month.

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How to install Windows on a USB Flash Drive

flash drive and laptop

Windows installations benefit from fast hard drives, and installing Windows on USB Flash Drives may sound counter-intuitive on first glance. While it is true that dedicated hard drives, especially Solid State Drives, are better suited for running Windows, USB Flash drive Windows installations offer some features that these dedicated installations don’t.

Installation on a USB drive makes the Windows installation portable. You can connect it to different PCs and use it on these, provided that booting from USB is supported. One downside is that this works best with PCs that have the same hardware. This solution has other benefits; it can be used to boot a copy of Windows on a PC it was created on, even if the main hard drive is no longer available.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot yesterday, which "combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with business data and Microsoft 365 apps".

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released the first build to the newly created Windows 11 Canary Insider channel. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the creation of the new channel, which takes over the Dev channel's far-in-the-future developments.

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It is time to move away from text-based two-factor authentication methods

Two-factor authentication is a solid security feature to protect accounts from unauthorized access. The security feature makes accounts by no means unbreakable, but it is a barrier against many common forms of attacks, including brute force attacks.

The main idea behind two-factor authentication is to require a second authentication code that is generated on the fly. Common options include generation in authentication apps that run on user devices and codes sent as text messages or in emails.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft released the second Moments update as a preview update for Windows 11 earlier this week. It brings tabs to Notepad, third-party widgets, new apps, and AI-powered Bing Chat to the operating system. Users who have interface modification tools installed should avoid the update for now, as it may result in startup issues.

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Windows 12: What we know and don't know about it, and what could happen

Is Microsoft working on the next version of Windows? Will it be Windows 12? If the answer is yes, how will it look like and differ from Windows 11?

There is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding Windows right now. Microsoft ended support for the popular Windows 7 and the not-so popular Windows 8 operating systems in January 2023, and in less than 3 years, Windows 10 is added to the list of operating systems that are no longer supported. This would leave Windows 11 as the sole version of Windows that is available and supported officially.

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Best Windows apps this week

Five-hundred-and-thirty-one in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

The next Moments update for Windows 11 is just around the corner. It is expected to be released in March 2023, and to include new features such as Energy Recommendations, a touch-optimized taskbar mode, and visual changes.

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