1 844.742.7448

Email Us

Remote Support

Contact

Posts tagged "again"

  1. Home
  2. Posts tagged again

Microsoft wants people to love Windows 11’s Outlook app again – even if they have an iPhone
  • No Comments

Microsoft has given Windows 11’s desktop email app, Outlook, a major revamp with the addition of Apple iCloud functionality for people who use iPhones or other Apple devices, plus other features. This upgrade is available to all Windows 11 users and you can add your iCloud account to your Outlook app by doing the following: 

1. Click the cog icon in your Outlook menu, which should open your Email accounts setting. This is where you can see all of the accounts that are connected to your Outlook and manage them. 

2. Select Add account and sign into your Apple iCloud account. This should connect your iCloud account. 

The Outlook app had supported Apple’s email service in the past before Windows 11’s launch, but according to Windows Latest, Microsoft is in the process of deploying a new Outlook app in place of the old one. Apparently reception has been lukewarm from users, but Microsoft is adding lots of new features with every new version.

One of the biggest complaints users have with the renewed Outlook app has been that it launches in a web wrapper. The old app was a fully functional UWP app, with both online and offline support. However, the new app only got offline support very recently. User complaints about the new app persist, and Microsoft is continuing to develop the app to hopefully improve users’ experiences and improve their opinion of the new app.

The latest in a string of new developments

This development follows shortly after Microsoft also added compatibility with Gmail, Google Calendar, and contacts to Outlook. iCloud support is also now available to all Windows 11 users, and Microsoft is reportedly working on extending offline support for more parts of the Outlook app, including events and Calendar. 

One feature that users have to look forward to as part of Microsoft’s new Outlook is being able to RSVP to meetings. Windows Latest spotted this as an upcoming update in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, which details what Microsoft has in store for various Microsoft 365 apps. This will help users receive information about the nature of any specific meeting and better decide if they would like to attend. This development is expected to debut in March 2024.

Another feature that has been added will help users understand their meetings and schedules. Microsoft explained on its Tech Community blog that users will be able to track declined meetings better in the Outlook calendar. This will be useful  for many users, especially those who have overlapping or densely-packed meetings, and want to better understand what they are and aren’t attending.

meeting

(Image credit: Bild von Free Photos auf Pixabay)

How to turn on visibility for declined meetings

The above is now available within the most up to date version of Outlook, but is disabled by default. You can enable it through the following steps: 

1. Open the Outlook app. 

2. Go to: Settings > Calendar > Events & Invitations > Save declined events

3. Tick (Click) the Show declined events in your calendar box. 

This should turn on the feature and declined meetings should begin to be displayed in your Calendar. 

In order for a meeting to be classified as declined, you will have to have declined the meeting in all Outlook clients and Teams, with the exception of the original Windows Outlook client. 

It’s going to take a little more to win over Windows users it seems, but these seem like some solid steps. These are available to all Windows 11 users with a valid copy of Outlook as far as we know and if you don’t have these features yet, you may need to update your Outlook app. It is to be confirmed if this extends to free users who use Outlook online.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Windows 11 update install failures are reportedly happening again – and it’s breaking the built-in antivirus
  • No Comments

Windows 11 has reportedly run into problems with its latest cumulative update, with the upgrade failing to install for some folks, and breaking Microsoft Defender in other cases.

Windows Latest has rounded up the latest batch of complaints regarding a cumulative update for Windows 11, in this case KB5029263, which is the mandatory upgrade for August.

As mentioned, some users are reporting installation failures with KB5029263, and the other annoyance here is that the failed update keeps offering itself over and over, constantly lurking as a red dot (update pending warning) on the taskbar (system tray).

Readers of Windows Latest have complained directly to the tech site about this, and there are affected Windows 11 users venting on Microsoft’s Feedback Hub.

On the Feedback Hub there are also scattered complaints of some more serious gremlins in the works with this August update. That includes the update getting stuck before it completes (and getting stuck again on subsequent installation attempts), and also File Explorer failing to work (meaning you can’t explore folders on the desktop).

KB5029263 is apparently also messing with Microsoft Defender, Windows 11’s built-in security app – which now ranks pretty highly among the best free antivirus – in some cases. Some users are seeing the following error when opening the app: ‘Unable to log into Microsoft Defender.’

Analysis: Defender fix is inbound, apparently

On the last point, Windows Latest reckons that this error could be the result of a clash between the security fixes in the August update, and a separate new update for Microsoft Defender.

While Microsoft hasn’t officially acknowledged any of the above problems, including the apparent cases of Defender coming off the rails, Windows Latest claims it talked to a support engineer at the company. That Microsoft employee confirmed the issue and said it will be fixed by an update soon. (An update to either Defender, or one applied to the OS via Windows Update, but one way or another, a cure is seemingly in the pipeline).

The mentioned installation failures are nothing new, and it seems to be depressingly commonplace these days that some Windows 11 PCs will fail to successfully run the update process. This may be a small minority affected, but it’s a frustrating situation to be caught in – as you are, of course, left without all the latest security fixes. Those are important to say the least.

The other vital element provided by KB5029263, at least for those who have been affected by the issue, is the fix for a bug causing huge slowdowns with some SSDs (or at least this cures the majority of cases, it seems). You might own one of the fastest, best SSDs out there, but with its performance levels cut in half (potentially), it won’t look so clever. And if you can’t install the August patch to (hopefully) smooth over the issue, that’s going to be pretty irritating.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Twitter down: social media website and app aren’t working – again
  • No Comments

It feels like every other week that the internet breaks – you've guessed it (from the headline), Twitter is down.

The social media giant is unavailable to loads of users – trying to access the web page brings up the message “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”, and the app won't refresh with newer tweets.

Reports on downdetector.co.uk jumped up into the thousands within minutes of the outage – it's worth pointing out that, while the reports also rose on downdetector.com (in the US), they didn't rise by nearly as much.

It sounds like a limited issue, as lots of TechRadar team members haven't had an issue. Saying that the sheer number of Downdetector reports shows that something is up.

Not only is the main Twitter feed down, but other Twitter sites are down too, like its Help site.

We just wanted to post a funny joke, and now we've discovered that Twitter isn't working. We're investigating.

Judging by reports from Downdetector and TechRadar's US team, the outage is affecting far fewer people in the US than in the UK – it seems mainly a British problem. Well, we can add that to the list after Freddos costing more, Magnums getting smaller and the whole cost of living thing.

In the UK, DownDetector reports more than 4,000 reports in the last few minutes. That's a huge number given how many we normally see – even for the major outages that affect multiple websites, we usually see one or two thousand reports.

This outage has come less than six weeks after the last Twitter outage.

That was a smaller one, as the main Twitter feed would load, but Tweets wouldn't – so you could see them, but not click on them or interact with them. 

Now, you can't see anything – it's radio silence.

Usually when there's an internet outage, people turn to Twitter to look for answers. That's… a little harder now.

We looked at Facebook, but Twitter itself hasn't posted there for several months. Last time it did, it was a screenshot of a Tweet about cats. What is this, 2007?

Facebook is a bit more community-focused though, so it's harder to see what people in the wider world are saying.

Reddit to the rescue though:

is_twitter_down_for_anyone_else_in_uk from r/Twitter

There's no official comment, but there are people from around the world commenting to say that Reddit isn't working for them.

Unfortunately, because Reddit's support and news room sites are all hosted by the media giant itself, they're not working either.

We're seeing a growing number of reports of outages from the US, but TechRadar's team based there hasn't seen anything.

It's likely that a server in Europe is at fault, which is why it's so much more of an issue for our UK readers than our US ones.

But we're waiting to find out from Twitter to see what's going on.

Oppo Find X5 Pro

(Image credit: Future)

Reports are well over 4,000 at the moment.

For context, the baseline is 3. That's a big difference.

Oh wait – Twitter is back! (for me at least)

This suggests the end of the outage could be here – just in time for you to return to work after your lunch break. What bad luck.

DownDetector reports for Twitter problems are finally going down – it looks like the outage could really be over.

It's not a steep plummet of reports, which suggests some people are still finding problems with their desktop site or phone app, but this at least tells us that the initial problem is being solved.

We've been looking to see if Twitter itself has commented on the outage – so far we can't see anything from any of its official accounts.

Saying that, it's got about a billion of its own accounts for different regions, aspects of the site and more, so it's very possible that one of them has posted, and we just haven't found it yet.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Microsoft delays Office 365 price rise once again
  • No Comments

Microsoft has once again delayed its planned price increase of both its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 office software suites.

The price increase was first announced by corporate VP for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro last August in a blog post and was set to come into effect at the beginning of this month. Now though, the software giant has pushed back the change until March 15.

Right when the price increase was set to go into effect, Microsoft announced a set of temporary discounts for cloud service providers (CSPs) that sell Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. CSPs currently have until 5pm PDT on March 14 or 12am UTC on March 15 to submit transactions and have them invoiced at the company's February 2022 pricing. 

These temporary discounts are designed to allow CSPs “to clear the backlog of orders for these SKUs due to high demand in advance of the March 1 price increases” according to a Microsoft support document.

First substantive price increase

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft's pricing changes for both Office 365 and Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Business Basic will increase from $ 5 to $ 6 per user per year, Microsoft 365 Business Premium will go from $ 20 to $ 22, Office 365 E1 will go from $ 8 to $ 10, Office 365 E3 will go from $ 20 to $ 23, Office 365 E5 will go from $ 35 to $ 38 and Microsoft 365 E3 will go from $ 32 to $ 36.  

Thankfully though, these pricing changes do not apply to the company's consumer or education products.

Read More

> Microsoft Office 365 is getting a handy upgrade that will streamline your workflow

> Microsoft 365 update will make sure no one is at a disadvantage

> Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is taking no chances with dodgy attachments

Back in August of last year, Spataro pointed to the fact that these pricing changes were the “first substantive pricing update” to Office 365 since its launch just over a decade ago. He also highlighted how the company has added 24 apps including Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer, and Whiteboard to the software suite and released 1,400 new features and capabilities across three key areas: communication and collaboration, security and compliance and AI and automation.

According to The Register, Microsoft's revenues grew by a fifth to $ 51.7bn during the second fiscal quarter of this year while operating income increased by 24 percent from $ 17.89bn to $ 22.2bn. However, the company's Microsoft Azure cloud services and its server products have been the main drivers of its higher revenue recently. As such, Microsoft's Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes Office 365, will need to bring in additional revenue to keep up with the company's other divisions.

Via The Register

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

Millions of people will celebrate Christmas over Zoom again this year
  • No Comments

With or without Omicron, a significant portion of Brits were already planning celebrate the holidays over video conference, new research suggests.

Surveying 2,023 UK adults for the report, networking firm Global Wireless Solutions (GWS) found that 11% expect to use live-streaming apps to connect with their friends and family during Christmas and the New Year, as compared with 12% last year.

While keeping in touch with friends and family over digital platforms is a necessary evil for more than a third (37%), almost the same proportion (34%) say the technology helped them feel included when they were unable to participate in-person last time round. A further 28% said it helped them feel connected, which is particularly important during the holiday season.

A digital Christmas

As a result of the pandemic, the use of live-streaming and video conferencing services is on the rise, with Facebook Messenger, FaceTime and Zoom all attracting more users than before.

However, connectivity issues are hampering their experience, the report suggests, with a quarter of people encountering fuzzy or low-quality pictures, or video freezes.

Part of the problem, GWS hints, lies with the telecoms sector. Of all the users that have suitable devices (e.g. a decent mobile device, webcam and headset), a third (33%) do not have adequate speeds to watch or broadcast an HD live-stream effectively. According to the report, a mobile device would need at least 5 Mbps download speeds and 4.5 Mbps upload. 

The report singles out O2 as attracting the fewest complaints from customers in this context. Roughly half of O2 customers (51%) did not report any issues when live-streaming, and 02 customers also had fewer issues with audio and picture quality.

For those suffering from connectivity issues, 5G could roll out just in time to save the day. More than a quarter (28%) of Brits are excited about the launch of 5G, with a fifth (22%) seeing it as important for keeping in touch with their loved ones.  

  • Check out our list of the best VoIP services around

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More

We try gaming in Parallels Desktop again with an M1 Pro MacBook
  • No Comments

Gaming through virtualization on an Apple Silicon Mac is getting better with every M1 Mac release from the company.

Back in August, we tested games in Parallels Desktop, a popular virtualization software, on an M1 Mac mini, to see how certain games would run. We were surprised by the results. Many would run at almost a full speed in framerate, while others would run at an unplayable speed.

With the announcement of the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, we were curious to see how the same games we tried back in August, would perform on the new MacBook Pro models.

As I upgraded to an M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14-inch in November, I decided to try the same games from August, to see if there’s been a significant improvement already.

Metal Gear M1 Pro

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes running on M1 Pro, Parallels Desktop 17

(Image credit: TechRadar)

As Apple Silicon chips run on a different architecture to Intel and AMD, apps need to be rewritten on macOS in order to take full advantage of the M1 chip. While Apple offers an app called Rosetta 2 to emulate apps that haven’t yet been rewritten, this doesn’t reap the speed and power benefits that a native app can bring.

With Parallels Desktop 17 fully compatible with M1, this means that we can run certain apps on Windows, within the app to see how games can run.

Since our testing in August, Windows 11 has been released, alongside an ARM version, so we installed Steam, Epic Games, Rockstar Launcher, and the Xbox app to see how these would run on the MacBook Pro.

We tested the same games as before:

  • Sonic Adventure
  • Sonic Generations
  • Streets of Rage
  • Sekiro
  • DOOM
  • Grand Theft Auto IV
  • Quake
  • Half Life: Source
  • Half Life 2: Deathmatch
  • Tomb Raider II (1997)
  • Golf it!
  • Dragon Ball FighterZ
  • Tekken 7
  • Resident Evil 3 Remake
  • Crash Bandicoot: N.Sane Trilogy

Again, DOOM and Dragon Ball FighterZ refused to work, mainly due to the DirectX framework they’re built on. This is a graphics engine, originally created by Microsoft, that allows developers to run their games on certain machines.

Trying to load up Halo Infinite through the Xbox app also refused because of the same reason. Resident Evil 3 is running worse this time, with more graphical issues, making it unplayable, regardless of everything in graphic settings on ‘low’ or ‘off’.

I tried the same settings with each game as before, in a resolution of 1440×900 at medium settings, and it resulted in full speed across the board. While Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes would run at 40 FPS on medium settings with the m1 Mac mini, it was full speed on high settings here.

Crash Bandicoot: N.Sane Trilogy was another surprise. While it would struggle with the Mac mini with graphical glitches everywhere, here there was no issue. This was also the only time where I could hear the fans, while more graphically intensive games wouldn't summon them, so it could be a glitch with Parallels for the fans.

With the games running this well, I decided to go further in my testing with the M1 Pro.

Going the M1 Pro distance

Resident Evil 3 Remake on an M1 Mac mini through Steam

(Image credit: TechRadar)

With every game on medium settings at a 1440×900 resolution running at full speed, I decided to go for a high setting preset, with a higher resolution at 2560×1440 running the same games listed above.

The results surprised me yet again, with almost every game at full speed. However, Sekiro struggled 

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes ran at the high settings preset at a constant 60FPS, all within the window of Parallels Desktop.

Tomb Raider Legend on Parallels Desktop 17 on an M1 MacBook Pro

(Image credit: TechRadar)

The only attribute stopping me from playing more games was storage. But while this was impressive, we reached out to Dmitry Geynisman, Product Manager at Parallels to see what the plans were for the future in gaming for Parallels Desktop on Apple Silicon.

While we had noticed that DirectX 12 wasn’t possible, the team has confirmed that this is in the works. “The priority, for now, is DirectX 12. More games are solely running on this API, so we don’t want our users to be cut off from this, so this is the priority.” Geynisman clarifies. “Eventually down the line, we want to support Vulkan, but that partly depends on Apple as well.”

Some of the big games, such as Halo Infinite and Fortnite, will want to be played on these Macs, and we asked whether support for this will arrive.

“With Halo, that’s up to Microsoft due to the API again, but Fortnite is a different one.” Geynisman explains. “It crashes due to the anti-cheat system that’s built-in, but we’re investigating whether that can be enabled within Parallels.”

With the impressive results, we asked if another tier of Parallels, focused on gaming, would be in the company’s future.

“It’s not something we’re considering for now, but in the meantime, we want to make sure that we can offer the games that people own on their Windows PC, on the Mac. Geynisman continues. “We’re as shocked as you in how well some of these games are performing, and we just want to keep this going.”

As more games improve and Parallels works on more compatibility with M1 Pro and M1 Max, time will tell how the future Macs will run these games.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

Read More