Ask Paul: October 2 ⭐

Happy Friday! Windows 11 version 26H2 is out, and we all have questions. So let's kick off the weekend a bit early ... and discover why there are so few answers.
"Some iPhone 18 Pro Max users experience cellular service issues"

Your holding it wrong. Again.
💻 Book 'em
Scott asks:

Any Googlebook reviews in the near future? Looking forward to learning more about those.

Yes. I don't have one on hand yet, though Google told me I'd be getting one through them and I suspect I'll have access to HP and Lenovo review units. The problem, as is often the case for me now, is timing: We're flying to Mexico City next Thursday and that will almost certainly screw things up.

So I've preordered the Lenovo Googlebook 15--because of the larger display and its facial recognition capabilities--just in case and will pick that up at a local Best Buy on Monday. I am very curious to see how or whether this changes things.
"Apple's Smart Home Camera Will Apparently Have 'No Video Recording'"

They should release a smart speaker that has no audio output next
🆕 There's nothing new under the sun
helix2301 asks:

Can you highlight some of the newest features of 26H2? I know that widgets on the lock screen and a customizable context menu are a few I have noticed.

One oddity of Windows these days is that are pretty much no unique features in any supported Windows version. (26H1 is an outlier for now, as it gets new features a month later than other versions for whatever reasons.) Meaning that, for now, Windows 11 versions 24H2, 25H2, and 26H2 all have the same features. The only things unique to 26H2 are a few presets, like Windows Backup enabled by default, that you'll only see on a new PC or after a Reset.

So the major new features in 26H2 are what we've seen elsewhere this past year:

New Start menu with small, large, and automatic sizes; Recommended section renamed to Recent; ability to toggle the Pinned, Recent, and All sections On/Off; and the ability to hide your profile name and picture in Start.
New Taskbar with screen alignment and Default/Small size choices.
Windows Search with a simplified Home screen (no Search highlights), the ability to turn off web and Store results, better filtering, and auto-indexing changes.
File Explorer updated with touch scrolling and new/configurable context menus.
Administrator Protection, disabled by default.
Minor changes to the Windows Update Out of Box Experience (OOBE), seen only during new installs.
Windows Update improvements with calendar-based pausing, new "Available updates" section, timed update installs that include apps in the Store.
Widgets improvements with fewer notifications, cleaner default configuration, separate Widgets and Discover feed views with the former off by default, and more.

I know that the new Nvidia RTX Spark-based PCs coming as soon as next week will run on 26H2, so I'm vaguely curious if there are any changes in there specific to that platform...