Windows Weekly 845: My NAS is Out of Date

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss Windows 11, the end of WordPad, another Notepad update, hardware events, antitrust, Xbox, and much more.

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Windows

New Windows Insider builds:

• Canary: some changes to the Dynamic refresh rate feature, no more Power & Battery page in Settings, etc.
• Dev: Bug fixes
• Beta: File Explorer fixes (INTERESTING given last week’s rant) – note a recent full-screen revelation: File Explorer is hot garbage

A moment of silence, please: WordPad will be retired.

• Also, the secret life of WordPad via its source code release and it being an example for developers (over time) of MFC, open Word document format support, the ribbon, and more.
• Also, it’s time to move past RTF and even pretending that this matters. The future is open plain text: embrace Markdown.

Notepad and Snipping Tool are getting new features

Microsoft is changing how it counts your OneDrive storage usage – “Double-dipping”

More events

• We forgot the Amazon devices event, which is September 20
• And Microsoft will host a OneDrive/AI event on October 3
• Ignite registration just opened up – November 14-17 in Seattle

Antitrust

Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, others are all gatekeepers, EU says

• Bing: Hold my beer

Zoom would like the FTC to unbundle Teams/M365 in the US

Google is heading into an antitrust trial against the DOJ next week. Remind you of anything?

• Speaking of which, Microsoft’s approach to antitrust has changed … just a bit

Margrethe Vestager is stepping aside to bid on a new job

• Google has tentatively settled a US Play Store class action antitrust lawsuit brought by over 30 states; the settlement is subject to the court’s approval, according to a legal filing
• And … FTC to file antitrust lawsuit against Amazon after firm made no concessions, may seek to break up the company

Xbox

FINALLY: Microsoft to add auto OneDrive upload to Xbox game clips

Xbox September Update is here with Discord game streaming

Here are the new Game Pass titles for early September – Starfield among them

Your Xbox Series S has arrived, Mr. Vader

Lenovo has a Steam Deck competitor

Tips and picks

Tip/app pick of the week: Digital decluttering

I’ve spent the past five weeks digital decluttering my documents archives and digital photos, replicating them across a NAS and OneDrive/Google Photos, and will be pushing them to GDrive and M365 commercial soon. I never thought I’d finish this, let alone do it so quickly. I learned a few things. For starters, don’t let this happen.

Series here – most recent article

• A few strategies around working locally (sync/copy from cloud/NAS) data replication, file compare/de-duping, dealing with the largest files first (and ignoring the tiny files/dupes that don’t matter), etc.
• A few tools: WinDirStat, Directory Opus, Duplicate Cleaner Pro – Xcopy/robocopy might have helped
• And a hunt for a new NAS (and why)
• Next: finish up the paper scanning/digital archiving

RunAs Radio this week: Breach Reporting with Troy Hunt

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/896

Brown liquor pick of the week: Old Perth 23

https://www.oldperthwhisky.co.uk/