Month: May 2023

Officially presented a few weeks ago, Huawei’s new mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, aims to animate more than 100 terminals very soon. Huawei has already indicated that Android terminals that will migrate to HarmonyOS will not lose their precious data, but the Chinese group intends to make its OS a real competitor to that of Google.

For this, Huawei seems determined to put the package on the development of applications dedicated to HarmonyOS. According to the group, more than 4 million developers have confirmed their interest in the platform. There are already more than 134,000 applications based on HMS Core.

To inspire developers to join the cause of HarmonyOS, Huawei has launched its HMS Global Application Innovation Competition 2021 which invites all professionals to create applications through Huawei Mobile Services.

The competition is open to developers in China, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, with cash to be won (one million dollars), but also rewards such as marketing support, cloud resources…

The tens of thousands of apps already available can be enjoyed by more than 10 million users, and Huawei already claims that its HarmonyOS is the third largest mobile ecosystem in the world.

The Surface Go 2, announced on May 6, 2020, has a 10.5-inch screen (1920×1080 pixels) and integrates Intel Pentium Gold 4425Y and Core m3 8100Y processors, 4/8 GB of RAM and 64/128/256 GB of storage. According to information received from WinFuture, the Surface Go 3 will still have a 10.5-inch screen with full HD resolution, but Microsoft will use better processors, namely the Core i3-10100Y and Pentium Gold 6500Y, both based on the Amber Lake architecture -Y.

No changes are expected for the other specifications, as well as for the design. There will therefore be versions with LTE modems, in addition to WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC chips. Prices should also remain unchanged (those of the Surface Go 2 are between 469 and 839 euros in Italy).

Together with the Surface Go 3, the announcement of the Surface Duo 2 with Snapdragon 888 processor, 5G modem and three rear cameras is expected. Other possible models are Surface Laptop 8 and Surface Book 4. Further rumors will certainly be disclosed over the next few days.

What is the difference between an OEM, Retail and Volume license?

Simply put, OEM-stamped licenses are pre-activated licenses that come with new computers that already have Windows installed, and ready to go. This license is, in fact, attached to the machine on which it is located and can only be used with it. OEM licenses are usually saved directly in the PC’s BIOS or UEFI firmware. This is also the reason why you do not need to reactivate your copy of Windows when you reinstall Windows from a recovery partition present on the PC.

The so-called Retail Windows licenses are commercial licenses, which you have purchased in a dematerialized version or in a boxed version online or from an official reseller. In dematerialized (or digital) version, the license is associated with your computer and linked to your Microsoft account. Concretely, on a new machine, all you need to do is connect it to the Internet and identify yourself with your Microsoft account so that Windows activation is done automatically. If you bought a boxed version, you should have a physical installation version of Windows (like a DVD, or a USB key in the case of Windows 11). The license is usually listed somewhere in the box. Retail licenses can be transferred between machines, but can only be used on one PC at a time.

Windows Volume Licenses are, as their name suggests, licenses sold in bulk to companies, associations, governments, education, etc. and can be installed on a limited number of computers. Once this limit on the number of computers allowed to activate Windows is reached, this license key cannot be installed on another machine. This is typically the kind of license that you can find in attractive offers where the Windows 11 activation key is billed to you for less than ten euros. These license keys can potentially be reused, provided of course that their maximum number of uses has not been exceeded.

How do you know if your license key is reusable?

To determine if the Windows license key used on your old machine can be reused on your new PC, a simple command line is enough.

1. Open Command Prompt
   From a Windows Administrator session, use the keyboard shortcut Windows + R, then in the Run window that appears, type cmd and press the Enter key to validate.
2. Determine the type of your license key
   To find out the type of license key used to activate the copy of Windows on your PC, copy and paste the Slmgr -dli command in the Command Prompt and press the Enter key on the keyboard to validate.

According to the specialized blog Windows Latest, Microsoft has published a new commit within the development directory of the open source project Chromium. The publisher wants the Chrome browser, and therefore its Edge, based on Chromium, to be able to respect this limited connection mode.

Windows 10 has WinRT programming interfaces that publishers can add to their applications to detect the presence of a metered network. When the user identifies a network with this option Microsoft also explains: “To better control your data consumption with a limited data plan, define this network connection as summer limited. Some applications may operate differently and thus reduce data consumption while connected to this network. »

Microsoft proposes to change a connection parameter making it possible to identify mobile data networks and to differentiate them from home Internet networks. The device is based on the same principle as the operation within Windows.

Connection sharing: towards a higher but better controlled use

According to Microsoft, more than 1% of network connections configured within Windows 10 would be configured in limited mode. It should also be noted that connection sharing from a smartphone has become commonplace since 35% of PCs have at least one limited registered network.

While not so long ago, mobile operators refused to activate the tethering mode, things have therefore greatly evolved. We also imagine that with the deployment of 5G, many users will be satisfied with a mobile data plan even for use at home. Depending on the size of this package, switching to a limited connection within Windows could therefore become common, especially at the end of the month, before its renewal.

By respecting this configuration option, Chrome, as well as browsers based on Chromium, will therefore consume less data.

More attentive to people with disabilities

On the accessibility front, for example, comes real-time transcription via machine learning of everything that comes through the sound card. It is activated by pressing the Windows + Control + L key combination and initially prompts for a local vocabulary download: the system works even without a permanent Internet connection.

While most video content already has subtitles, even automatic ones, this does not apply in the case of meetings on Teams, for example, or on Zoom. Thanks to real-time transcription, a deaf person will be able to follow the conversation without any problem.

The “caption,” as it is called in Italian, occupies the top of the desktop but can be repositioned like a normal window. Among the special features of the system is the possibility of including one’s own microphone as well and, above all, of automatically filtering vulgar content. The only limitation, at the moment, is the presence of English vocabulary only: it cannot be used with other languages.

Drag & drop on the taskbar at last, but tabs in Windows Explorer only in a while

Windows 11, we had seen last year, was a bit of a work in progress: old applications hidden under a newer theme, “dark” mode not flawless in its management and many other small limitations that held back many users, who preferred to stay on Windows 10. With the update, many of these things have been revised, especially in the menu and toolbar areas. The latter, and here many can breathe a sigh of relief, finally supports drag & drop: if you drag a Jpeg file to the Photoshop icon the app will be brought to the foreground and you can then automatically open the file, or a group of files.

Microsoft has recognized and fixed a bug in Windows 10 that could have caused critical problems on systems running the chkdisk tool. This is a tool that can prove critical in the event of issues on a computer’s storage system: it can be run via command line and allows you to check volumes on a storage device and look for logical or physical errors on file system metadata. By running it on Windows 10 2004 and 20H2, users could have damaged the file system and prevented future access attempts.

The problem, and how to fix it
Microsoft has not yet specified which Windows versions the problems could occur on as a result of running chkdsk, a problem currently reported only on the KB4592438 and KB4586853 update pages released for Windows 10 2004 and 20H2 in December and November, respectively. The bug was reported by Günter Born, after Planet3DNow users had already reported it publicly.

Microsoft explains it this way, “It has been reported that on a small number of devices on which this update has been installed, the file system may become corrupted after running the chkdsk /f command, and the device will no longer boot correctly.” The problem has been fixed according to Microsoft for all unmanaged devices without the need for user intervention, although it may take up to 24 hours for the fix to be rolled out to all systems. To speed up the process, all potentially affected devices can be rebooted after downloading the package reported above.

What to do in case of an already damaged system
For those who have already run chkdsk /f on their system, damaging the file system, you can try to restore the boot by performing some basic steps provided by Microsoft. It is not certain, however, that the steps will lead to a complete restoration of systems functionality:

After a series of unsuccessful boot attempts, the system should be booted into the Recovery Console

From the Recovery Console, select Advanced Options

Select Command Prompt

Type chkdsk /f followed by the Enter key

Wait for the storage drive scan to complete. Once complete type exit followed by the Enter key

The device should boot as expected. If the reboot leads to the Recovery Console select Continue – Exit and continue with Windows 10

Once the steps are complete the system should reboot and scan the primary storage drive once again. Once completed the system operation should return to normal.

By activating the appropriate beta function for iOS and Android, up to four devices can be connected without the phone being connected to the internet.

This new function has finally arrived, which has been awaited for years and is based on what Telegram already does, but for the time being can only be used in beta version. This allows up to four devices to be connected with the same account without the phone being connected to the web. This new feature works on both iOS and Android and requires no special installation.

Compared to Telegram, the world’s most widely used messaging system has always required a direct connection to the network, as can often be verified by using Whatsapp Web on a computer, which crashes when the smartphone is not connected. Finally, this beta function overcomes this limitation.

For now, this possibility is only open for WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Desktop and Portal. This means that you will still need an active account on a mobile phone, but the latter will finally not have to be connected to the network. To take advantage of this possibility, the latest beta version on Android or iOS must be used, but in reality, it is sufficient to have the most up-to-date version.