Tag Archives: Windows

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Really Wants People To Use Their Edge Browser

It’s no real secret that Microsoft has never been a big fan of Chrome, FireFox, or any other web browser that it didn’t build.  The company clearly hasn’t gotten over the fact that it lost the browser wars and lost them handily. That’s why it keeps trying periodically to reinvent the wheel offering up new and improved versions first of its “Internet Explorer” browser and more recently of Microsoft Edge.

The latest incarnation of Edge is interesting in that it was built around Chromium. That means under the hood the new Edge and Google’s Chrome browser sport the same basic technology.

Unfortunately, even that hasn’t been enough to keep users from downloading Chrome. Naturally Microsoft wants to do anything that it can in a bid to keep users browsing via the browser that ships with Windows. The company has begun bombarding users with messages when they try to download Google Chrome.

There are a few different prompts a user may see including:

  • “‘I hate saving money,’ said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the best browser for online shopping.”
  • “That browser is so 2008! Do you know what’s new?  Microsoft Edge.”
  • “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft.”

The new prompts are appearing mostly for Windows 11 users though some Windows 10 users have reported them as well. They aren’t part of any website but rather are generated from inside Microsoft Edge as a kind of “defense mechanism” to guard against being replaced.

This kind of thing verges on being dirty pool and although Google hasn’t issued any kind of formal response you can bet that one will be coming. Google isn’t the kind of company that will take a direct threat to its browser dominance lying down so the months ahead should be interesting indeed.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Update Microsoft Exchange Server For Important Security Patch

If you use Exchange Server to handle your company’s email then you’re probably already aware that a critical security flaw has been discovered that puts the server at risk.

The issue is being tracked as CVE-2021-42321 and impacts both Exchange Server 2016 and 2019.

Even worse is that Microsoft reports that this issue has been found being exploited in the wild. It is important to note that the security flaw only impacts “on-premises” Exchange Servers including those in Exchange Hybrid mode. So if you use Exchange Online you are not at risk.

It has been a tough year for Microsoft Exchange Server.

Beginning in March of this year (2021) the company faced a massive wave of attacks that were apparently launched by a number of state-backed threat actors. This first wave relied on ProxyLogon exploits and where they were successful they deployed cryptominers, ransomware, web shells, and other malware strains. They infected as many targets as they could reach.

A bit later in July a new wave of attacks began targeting the US EU and the UK. Ultimately the blame for these attacks was laid at the feet of China. These attacks relied heavily on Windows PetitPotam exploits and sought to deploy LockFile ransomware on infected systems.

Exchange Server Admins have been feeling the heat this year. The good news is that the wave attacks mentioned above seem to have abated and there’s a fix available for the most recently discovered issue.

If you run an Exchange Server either on-site or in Hybrid Mode save yourself some time and headaches by downloading and installing the latest patch as soon as possible. There’s no need to make more work for yourself than is necessary and you certainly want to do all you can to minimize your risk.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Firefox Is Now A Download Option In Windows Store

If you spend a lot of time browsing the Windows Store you may have noticed something unexpected. You can now download Mozilla’s Firefox browser from that source.

Previously Mozilla was unable to upload its browser to the Windows Store because Microsoft’s policies required that all browsers on their platform had to use the engine provided by Windows.

Recently the company changed that policy and stripped out that requirement. That makes sense given that Microsoft rebuilt their own Edge browser using Chromium as a base. The Redmond Giant accepted Opera on the Windows Store back in September of this year (2021) and more recently added Firefox.

A Mozilla spokesman had this to say about the addition:

“Previously, if you were on Windows and wanted to use Firefox you had to download it from the internet and go through a clunky process from Microsoft. Now that Microsoft has changed its Store policies, choosing Firefox as your desktop browser is even more seamless – and it comes with all the latest Firefox features.”

More choice for users is always a good thing. The inclusion of Firefox on the Windows Store gives Windows users easy and convenient access to a non-Chromium-based browser. Firefox is a good alternative well worth experimenting with because Mozilla has built a number of intriguing features into their browser that its larger competitors haven’t emulated yet.

Kudos to Microsoft for expanding the selection of browsers in the Microsoft Store and to both Opera and Firefox for their additions there. With any luck we may see a few additional niche browsers included as well.

If you haven’t considered Opera or Firefox take a few minutes to download both and give them a test drive. It’s not a terribly time intensive process and you may be pleasantly surprised.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Excel Adding Useful Features For Developers

There’s great news in your immediate future if you’re one of the legions of Excel users. Recently Microsoft made some behind the scenes changes to the venerable spreadsheet application that allows developers to code their own custom data types for use inside the program. The upgrade isn’t aimed at business executives but rather at developers who need to incorporate metadata into Excel cells.

Excel is very good at organizing text and numeric values and since the earliest days of the application that has always been enough. As time has passed and technology has advanced needs began changing. These days users need to be able to do more than just sort, parse, and organize text and numbers.

During the 2020 Ignite Conference the company showed off how the expanded capabilities could be used. It can be used by introducing dynamic arrays and array formulae along with support for Geography and Stock data types via the search engine Bing.

Not long after the company expanded their number by incorporating Wolfram data types. If you’re unfamiliar with them, Wolfram data types are a science-focused search engine.

The company had this to say about Excel’s expanded capabilities:

“Countless solutions have been built with Excel. Many of these solutions are powered by cells that most often contain (or evaluate to) just text or numbers.

With the addition of data types, Excel has evolved to a world where cells can contain something much richer. Linked data types (Stocks, Geography, Wolfram and Power BI) entity values, dynamic arrays, improved errors, images in cells, lambdas, and formatted number values are all new types that have delivered on this promise and back many of the experiences you have seen introduced in the product today.”

That humble spreadsheet application you’ve come to rely on is capable of doing a lot more than you may have realized. It has additional capabilities well worth exploring that could add tremendous value to your company whatever business you’re in.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Windows 7 And 8 OneDrive Support Is Ending

Are you a OneDrive user running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1? If so be aware that on January 1st, 2022 your OneDrive desktop application will reach end of support.

The company offered the following by way of explanation:

“In order to focus resources on new technologies and operating systems and to provide users with the most up-to-date and secure experience beginning January 1, 2022, updates will no longer be provided for the OneDrive desktop application on your personal Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 devices.

Personal OneDrive desktop applications running on these operating systems will stop syncing to the cloud on March 1, 2022. After March 1st, 2022 your personal files will no longer sync and should be uploaded/accessed directly on OneDrive for web.”

The good news is that your OneDrive files aren’t going anywhere. So you don’t have to worry about finding a new cloud-based file storage system. This is definitely more than a minor inconvenience and yet another reason to strongly consider upgrading your PC and your OS to something more modern.

As things stand the clock is ticking for extended support for the OSes mentioned above. It won’t be long before you lose the protection offered by periodic security updates. Before that happens you need to be thinking in terms of steps to protect yourself and all your data regardless of where it lives.

Although it is highly inconvenient for people running those older Operating Systems it’s completely understandable that Microsoft is taking this stance. Though the company has deep pockets it also has a sprawling catalog of products to maintain. At a certain point they simply have to say goodbye to older applications. Upgrade before the clock runs out.

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