If you’ve recently been confronted by the fearsome Blue Screen of Death (also known as BSOD… yes, it’s got its own acronym) when using Windows 11, Intel might have pinpointed the cause and is offering a fix. According to Intel, the recent BSOD is likely caused by a faulty Wi-Fi driver, for which it’s released an update that should resolve this. It’s also released an update for Bluetooth, version 23.30, that should bring additional stability.
Intel WLAN driver version 23.30 is Intel’s February 2024 Wi-Fi update that should stop Windows 11 from crashing and showing the BSOD. This update addresses more than just the crashing issue in Windows 11, as detailed in Intel’s full release notes for the update. Other improvements include an improved Quality of Service (QoS) which will help devices prioritize internet traffic better, and Windows Latest explains that this could improve the overall internet performance of a device connected to a router used by multiple devices. Intel has also made changes that should improve network latency, which is good news for those who like to play games online.
Since installing the initial driver update, users have been reporting issues like Windows System Event ID 5002 errors have been a common occurrence. Other issues included problems with finding Wi-Fi networks and connecting to monitors using the wireless Miracast function.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
How and when you can expect these updates
If you have a suitable Windows 11 device with Intel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth components, you can expect these updates to land in your device’s Windows Update app. If for whatever reason you do not see these or you want to speed up the process (given they’ve not been installed already), you can use the Intel Driver and Support Assistant (iDSA) to download and install them. You can do this by going to Intel’s website and downloading the installation file for the iDSA, and opening up the app once installed. Get the app to check for updates, and if they’re available for your device, they should show up. If you have issues with the updates once they’re installed, you should be able to revert to older versions using the Device Manager app.
If you’re having other issues with your Windows 11 device, Intel-based or not, you can download and install the Windows 11 February 2024 optional update. This version comes with a host of updates and fixes and should also deliver a boost in performance. These are set to be installed automatically with Microsoft’s Windows 11 Moment 5 updates but are available to try in this optional update. Fixes for connectivity and Wi-Fi issues are always good news, so this is a welcome development from Intel, and I would always recommend installing updates that are available both for improved functionality and the most up-to-date security improvements.
Google is gearing up to relaunch its image creation tool that’s part of the newly-rebranded generative artificial intelligence (AI) bot, Gemini, in the next few weeks. The generative AI image creation tool is in theory capable of generating almost anything you can dream up and put into words as a prompt, but “almost” is the key word here.
Google has pumped the brakes on Gemini’s image generation after Gemini was observed creating historical depictions and other questionable images that were considered inaccurate or offensive. However, it looks like Gemini could return to image generation soon, as Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis announced that Gemini will be rebooted in the coming week after taking time to address these issues.
Image generation came to Gemini earlier in February, and users were keen to test its abelites. Some people attempted to generate images depicting a certain historical period that appeared to greatly deviate from accepted historical fact. Some of these users took to social media to share their results and direct criticism at Google.
The images caught many people’s attention and sparked many conversations, and Google has recognized the images as a symptom of a problem within Gemini. The tech giant then chose to take the feature offline and fix whatever was causing the model to dream up such strange and controversial pictures.
Hassabis confirmed that Gemini was not working as intended, and that it would take some weeks to amend it, and bring it back online while speaking at a panel taking place at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
If at first, your generative AI bot doesn't succeed…
Google’s first attempt at a generative AI chatbot was Bard, which saw a lukewarm reception and didn’t win users over from the more popular ChatGPT in the way Google had hoped, after which it changed course and debuted its revamped and rebranded family of generative models, Gemini. Like ChatGPT, Google is now offering a premium-tier for Gemini, which offers advanced features for a subscription.
The examples of Gemini's misadventures have also reignited discussions about AI ethics generally, and Google’s AI ethics specifically, and around issues like the accuracy of generated AI output and AI hallucinations. Companies like Microsoft and Google are pushing ahead to win the AI assistant arms race, but while racing ahead, they’re in danger of releasing products with flaws that could undermine their hard work.
AI-generated content is becoming increasingly popular and, especially due to their size and resources, these companies can (and really, should) be held to a high standard of accuracy. High profile fails like the one Gemini experienced aren’t just embarrassing for Google – it could damage the product’s perception in the eyes of consumers. There’s a reason Google rebranded Bard after its much-mocked debut.
There’s no doubt that AI is incredibly exciting, but Google and its peers should be mindful that rushing out half-baked products just to get ahead of the competition could spectacularly backfire.
It was only a matter of time before someone added generative AI to an AR headset and taking the plunge is start-up company Brilliant Labs with their recently revealed Frame smart glasses.
Looking like a pair of Where’s Waldo glasses (or Where’s Wally to our UK readers), the Frame houses a multimodal digital assistant called Noa. It consists of multiple AI models from other brands working together in unison to help users learn about the world around them. These lessons can be done just by looking at something and then issuing a command. Let’s say you want to know more about the nutritional value of a raspberry. Thanks to OpenAI tech, you can command Noa to perform a “visual analysis” of the subject. The read-out appears on the outer AR lens. Additionally, it can offer real-time language translation via Whisper AI.
The Frame can also search the internet via its Perplexity AI model. Search results will even provide price tags for potential purchases. In a recent VentureBeat article, Brilliant Labs claims Noa can provide instantaneous price checks for clothes just by scanning the piece, or fish out home listings for new houses on the market. All you have to do is look at the house in question. It can even generate images on the fly through Stable Diffusion, according to ZDNET.
Evolving assistant
Going back to VentureBeat, their report offers a deeper insight into how Noa works.
The digital assistant is always on, constantly taking in information from its environment. And it’ll apparently “adopt a unique personality” over time. The publication explains that upon activating for the first time, Noa appears as an “egg” on the display. Owners will have to answer a series of questions, and upon finishing, the egg hatches into a character avatar whose personality reflects the user. As the Frame is used, Noa analyzes the interactions between it and the user, evolving to become better at tackling tasks.
(Image credit: Brilliant Labs)
An exploded view of the Frame can be found on Brilliant Labs’ official website providing interesting insight into how the tech works. On-screen content is projected by a micro-OLED onto a “geometric prism” in the lens. 9To5Google points out this is reminiscent of how Google Glass worked. On the nose bridge is the Frame’s camera sitting on a PCBA (printed circuit board assembly).
At the end of the stems, you have the batteries inside two big hubs. Brilliant Labs states the frames can last a whole day, and to charge them, you’ll have to plug in the Mister Power dongle, inadvertently turning the glasses into a high-tech Groucho Marx impersonation.
(Image credit: Brilliant Labs)
Availability
Currently open for pre-order, the Frame will run you $ 350 a pair. It’ll be available in three colors: Smokey Black, Cool Gray, and the transparent H20. You can opt for prescription lenses. Doing so will bump the price tag to $ 448.There's a chance Brilliant Labs won’t have your exact prescription. They recommend to instead select the option that closely matches your actual prescription. Shipping is free and the first batch rolls out April 15.
It appears all of the AI features are subject to a daily usage cap. Brilliant Labs has plans to launch a subscription service lifting the limit. We reached out to the company for clarification and asked several other questions like exactly how does the Frame receive input? This story will be updated at a later time.
New drivers for Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices have just been released by Intel aimed at resolving several network issues, like the dreaded blue screen of death popping up under heavy workloads or the ‘No Wi-Fi networks found’ pop-up when connecting to Miracast devices.
According to Neowin, the drivers will also address other bugs creeping up on some user's devices including a Windows System Event ID 5002 and 5010.
The former code usually appears when the DFS Replication (a role in Windows Server that lets you replicate folders across folders and sites) is unable to establish communication with the desired partner. Windows System Event 5010 refers to an event that is caused when a process serving an application stops responding to a ping.
Better safe than sorry
The above bugs seem to be triggered after users' PCs are resuming from standby or restart mode, which is… pretty often. You can download the Intel Wi-Fi driver 23.20.0 from the official site and bat the blue screen of death away. Not only are these kinds of bugs relatively annoying to have to deal with – especially if you’re constantly getting blue-screened for no real reason – but they also leave your devices vulnerable to viruses.
Even if you haven’t noticed these bugs on your device just yet, we still recommend downloading the drivers anyway just to stay on the safe side.
Windows 11 getting a redesigned BSOD – the dreaded Blue Screen of Death that pops up when a PC crashes – might be a joke on X (formerly Twitter) right now, but it highlights a serious issue.
OK, 'joke' might be a strong word, but the BSOD mock-ups presented by Lucia Scarlet on X are certainly tongue-in-cheek, featuring colorful emojis which are rather cutesy – not what you really want to see when your PC has just crashed and burned.
this will be BSOD in 2025 pic.twitter.com/A3ag4khydyJanuary 6, 2024
See more
That said, the overall theme of the design, giving the BSOD a more modern look, isn’t unwelcome, even if the emojis aren’t appropriate in our book.
That said, there are comments in the threads of those tweets that highlight how some folks are disappointed that these aren’t real incoming redesigns for Windows 11. In some cases, there are people who appreciate a more friendly emoji appearing, as opposed to the frowny face (a text-based one, mind) which has been present on BSODs.
That disappointment is likely, at least in part, to be a more general indicator of the level of dissatisfaction with the BSOD – particularly in regards to the lack of information the screen provides, and shortfalls with the help that is supplied.
When a BSOD appears, it’s usually highly generic, and tells the Windows 11 (or Windows 10) user very little – you’ll read something like “a problem happened” with no elaboration on exactly what went wrong.
Meaningless error messages (known as stop codes that can pop up elsewhere in Windows 11, too) which are a jumble of hexadecimal letters and numbers might be cited, or a techie reference to a DLL perhaps, none of which are likely to be a jot of help in discerning what actually misfired in your system.
Never mind visual redesigns, Microsoft improving the info and help provided with BSODs would be the biggest step forward that could be taken with these screens. We've witnessed one innovation in the form of the QR codes provided – as seen in the mock-ups above – but these were introduced way back in 2016, and haven’t progressed much in the best part of a decade, often linking through to not fully relevant or up-to-date information.
We feel there’s definitely more Microsoft could do to improve BSODs, and in fairness, a more modern touch for the visuals wouldn’t hurt – though there’s another thought that occurs. Should we still be getting full system lock-ups at this point in the evolution of desktop operating systems?
Ideally not, of course, but to be fair to Microsoft, BSODs are definitely a whole lot less common these days than in the past. For those who do encounter them, though, we have a handy Blue Screen of Death survival guide.
Let’s face it, almost everyone could use a bit of help saving money these days, with the cost-of-living crisis and various inflationary pressures still kicking around globally, alongside other factors that can make finances a struggle.
I’ve certainly been counting the pennies here and there, but one area where I’ve slacked off is with web browsing. I have, of course, been aware that there are ways to save money using extensions for my chosen web browser – Chrome – but I just haven't got round to doing anything about it, or installing any of those helpful add-ons.
That’s all about to change. Read on to see the extensions that I’m going to enlist in an effort to save me a bit of cash over the course of 2024, in case you might want to follow in my footsteps.
Honey, I shrunk the price tag
Why haven’t I used Chrome extensions to help with online shopping before? It’s a good question, and one that I don’t have a good answer for. ‘Procrastination’ about sums it up, though.
Anyway, for money-saving, the recommendation from my fellow colleagues (TechRadarians, if you will) is that one of the most important extensions that I should make a beeline for is Honey (pun fully intended, in all its awfulness).
(Image credit: Honey)
What’s Honey? It’s an extension from PayPal that’s essentially an online shopping assistant, so when buying a product in Chrome, Honey will also scour the web for coupons for the best discount. These can then be applied and one way or another, I’m hoping I’ll save a bit of cash. Plus it’s possible to get cashback reward points on top, as a bonus, for those who have a PayPal account in ‘good standing’ (but only with participating retailers).
There will likely only be small savings here and there, but as they say, it all adds up, and over the course of next year I’m hoping to be a noticeably better off by the time the online shopping dust settles.
Camel companion
3 tips for saving money with your Windows PC
1. Power settings
Type ‘power’ in the search box on the taskbar and click on the option for ‘Power and sleep settings.’ In here, you can set your monitor and PC to go to sleep after a short while of not being used, making some power savings on your energy bill. 2. Power settings part deux
While in the ‘Power and sleep’ panel, check out the ‘Additional power settings’ link which allows you to specify more frugal power plans if you really want to cut the running cost of your PC (but remember, doing so will impact performance). 3. Tab taming
One of TechRadar’s best Chrome extensions, Tab Wrangler is great if you’re a tab addict like me. It automatically closes tabs that aren’t being used (but you can easily fire them up again), helping to save a tiny bit of power usage.
The Camelizer is another extension I intend to bag in the new year as a partner to Honey for saving money on my online shopping. It's widely used by the TechRadar team all year round, but particularly during shopping events like Prime Day and Black Friday.
The Chrome add-on is particularly handy for anyone like myself who’s a Prime member and orders regularly from Amazon – because it tracks historical Amazon pricing.
For most Amazon products, the extension serves up a graph of how its pricing has dropped, and risen, over time. That way, I can be sure of whether any item really is at a good price, or if it might be likely to drop a good chunk again (perhaps at the next big sale), so I can wait and save more if that’s a likely prospect. This extension also gives me the ability to have an alert piped through if a product drops to a certain price level – pretty nifty.
(Image credit: Future)
If you're in the US, the aforementioned Honey does also have a price tracking feature for Amazon. I live in the UK, though, and Honey won’t track anything but Amazon.com (US) pricing – so myself, and everyone else across the globe, needs an alternative.
The Camelizer extension (and another alternative, Keepa) are built especially for this purpose, and provide more detailed info on price history than Honey (including third-party marketplace listings, and second-hand prices for that matter).
Cashing in with cashback
Lastly, another recommendation given to me by TechRadar's online shopping whizzes has been TopCashback. The savings made with this service – in the form of cashback returns, as you might guess, on purchases – can really add up. I’ve seen the evidence of this, and don’t need any more convincing – moreover, the Chrome extension is a great way to access these benefits.
The idea is simple: a load of companies sign up with TopCashback and when anyone makes purchases from those retailers, TopCashback gives the buyer a certain percentage of cashback on the outlay.
With the normal service, the user needs to go to the TopCashback website and search for the retailer to see if they’ve signed up to the scheme, and what items might apply. It’s all a bit clunky, but the beauty of the Chrome extension is that it automatically checks any site visited and flags available cashback offers on products, which is much more convenient.
(Image credit: Future)
To get cashback, all you need to do is click the ‘activate’ prompt that pops up when buying something. This Chrome add-on also flags up some voucher codes as a bonus.
The slight catch with the extension is that not every retailer is supported. But most are, and the convenience aspect is what swings it for me. I don’t really fancy having to constantly navigate to the website to perform pre-purchase searches (and realistically, I’ll probably forget to do so half the time anyway).
I'm also going to risk the temptation of filling up my Chrome toolbar with more extensions than the three that I've mentioned (Honey, The Camelizer and TopCashback). While I'm aware that there are countless others (including Rakuten, Fakespot and more), I'll be starting the year with that golden trio – and if you fancy saving some money in 2024, you should too.
Software designers Oliur and Shane Levine have released a series of wallpapers that convert the lock screen on your iPhone into an iPod Classic.
It’s a real blast from the past. The collection is known as the iPod Wallpaper Pack, consisting of “12 high-definition wallpapers” sporting a multitude of colors. Just to name a few of the shades, you'll get the classic silver look, black, turquoise, hot pink, and lime green. But one of our favorite aspects of these covers is the attention to detail the designers gave each of them.
(Image credit: Oliur)
One wallpaper is completely covered by heart and flower stickers, and it looks exactly like something your little sister would do to your iPod. Another has carefully placed stickers around the click wheel: AC/DC in one corner with Rockstar Games in the other. Plus, we like how a few of the selections have scratches and chipped-off paint because who among us did not drop their iPod multiple times?
(Image credit: Oliur)
Availability
The date and time will hover around the same location – somewhere near the top of the screen with battery life over in the top right corner. There’s even a little bit of room for widgets in the iPod display.
Oliur’s iPod Wallpaper Pack is currently available for $ 14 on its official website. Upon purchase, the images will be placed into a 58 MB ZIP file that needs to be extracted to be used. According to tech news site T3, you can save the wallpapers by uploading them to your iCloud account if you’re buying them on your iPhone.
If you’re curious about what happened to iPods, Apple officially retired the series back in May 2022 with the final model being the 7th generation iPod Touch. The company continued to sell the device for a little while on its online store, however, if you go on there today, it’s completely gone. It’s sold out. Nowadays if you want an iPod, you’ll have to try your luck on a third-party retailer like Amazon or Walmart.
Or better yet: get yourself something more modern. If you want recommendations, check out TechRadar’s roundup of the best MP3 player for 2023.
2024 is about a month away, and to celebrate the end of the year, Google has named the winners of the Google Play’s Best of 2023 Awards.
For the sake of brevity, we're going to primarily focus on the best Androids apps as the company introduced a new categories for this year, such as Best with AI and Best Multi-device App. This caused the list to grow by a significant amount so we couldn’t include the likes of the best Chromebook or best tablet apps (If you’re curious to know, the winner of the best Chromebook app is FlipaClip, software that can help people create 2D animation, and the winner for best tablet app is Concepts, a vector-based drawing tool).
Google states the list on its blog is centered around the American winners. Other countries are said to have different winners. However, when we looked at other region, the entries matched the US list except for a single outlier which we’ll shout out later on.
Android Apps of the Year
1. Imprint: Learn Visually
(Image credit: Future)
Google has given the Best App of 2023 award to Imprint: Learn Visually, an education software that strives to teach you new skills and the world around you in bite-sized lessons. It offers a personalized experience where you can learn about topics that interest you from human history to psychology. And Imprint does this via eye-catching visual storytelling.
Spotify has earned the Best Multi-device App award for allowing music streaming across a variety of locations – be it in the kitchen, on the commute to hike, or out on the town. The company highlights the service’s ability to “remotely control playback on another device”. Plus, you can download your favorite songs for offline listening. What’s interesting, it's the only music streaming app on the whole list.
At the beginning of November, Google allowed people to come in to vote for what they believed was the best app of the year. Winning the Users’ Choice Award is ChatGPT, which isn’t surprising in our opinion. ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2023 as one of the premiere generative AI platforms and whose technology fuels Microsoft’s Bing Chat. On top of that, 2024 is shaping up to be a big year for it.
If you’re looking to make new friends or have recently moved to a different city, the company recommends installing Bumble For Friends (BFF for short) on your smartphone. It differs from the regular Bumble app as it doesn't focus on helping you find dates. Instead, BFF is all about helping you make genuine friendships, as the name suggests, with others in your local area
Voidpet Garden: Mental Health won the Best for Personal Growth award and it’s pretty unique. Its goal is to help you practice mindfulness and self care as a way to improve your mental health. It does this in a Pokemon-esque manner by having you collect Void Pets which are said to be creatures born from negative emotion. You raise these creatures by completing tasks in order to turn them into celestial-looking dragons with each representing a positive attribute about the user.
Artifact: Feed Your Curiosity is similar to Imprint: Learn Visually in that it’s an app that can teach users about the world, but it does so in a different way. The service functions like X’s (formerly known as Twitter) Explore page by offering a curated stream of news articles from across the internet. It covers a variety of topics like the tech industry, politics, and gaming. Users even have the option to mark certain stories as clickbait for better curation.
In the UK, the award went to ReciMe, a social platform where home cooks share their family recipes.
Aware is another mental health app like Voidpet Garden although it takes a more grounded approach towards mindfulness. It’s a type of journaling software housing “science-based exercises [alongside] live guided sessions”. You don’t have to create an account, plus it’s totally free. No subscription necessary.
It’s worth mentioning this has the least amount of downloads out of everything on this roundup although we do expect it to grow exponentially since it won the Best Hidden Gem award.
Despite winning the Users’ Choice award, ChatGPT was effectively snubbed by Google as it didn’t get the crown for Best AI. That honor went to Character AI, an app filled with personality-driven chat bots that you can talk to. For example, you can talk to Amelia Earhart, Julius Caesar, or Poseidon, God of the Ocean. People can even talk to Whiskers the Cat.
As you can probably guess, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. It aims to be a fun interactive experience – almost like a video game.
For families, Google has given the nod to PAW Patrol Academy, an app where young kids ages two to five can learn problem-solving skills, gain confidence, and get in touch with their creative side. It features characters from the popular animated series in a variety of interactive adventures as well as clips from certain episodes. What’s more is it doesn’t need to connect to Wi-Fi so kids can enjoy it on the go.
Rounding out the list of Google’s best Android apps for 2023 is AWorld in support of ActNow. Its purpose is to teach people how to counteract climate change by calculating their carbon footprint and learn how they can change their lifestyle to reduce the impact they may have on the environment. The software will recommend basic activities like planting trees to lessen carbon emissions or use natural products among other things. AWorld will also encourage you to join group challenges by completing a set number of environmentally-friendly actions.
Windows Photos is getting a significant update that will introduce a selection of new features designed to improve user experience.
According to Microsoft’s official blog post about the Photos improvements, users can expect features like in-depth search, background blur, location search, and ‘Motion Photos’ – think live photos on iPhones – which will bring a little life to the currently rather drab photo software.
Background blur will surely be welcomed by Photos users who want to remove backgrounds from their photos, highlight certain subjects, or modify the area being blurred. To be honest, it may be cruel to say it, but like the majority of these updates, it’s about time. Many of the new features have already existed for a while on other platforms, most notably within Apple’s software ecosystem.
Get with the times, man
You’ll also be able to search for specific photos by the type of content within the photo. This means you can now type in things like ‘cat, car, beach, holiday’ and more, with the app attempting to identify and collate relevant images. You’ll have to log into your Microsoft account to be able to use the feature, and the blog post does warn that the enhanced search bar may not work right away.
Other features to expect include live photos and location searches, which will help you find the right picture when you’re ready to reminisce (or plan your next vacation Instagram post). If you went to the beach, you can type in either ‘beach’ or the name of the specific beach, the city you visited, or just home and school.
Microsoft seems to be on a roll recently, dishing out updates and new features across its product range, and it’s really good to see. With updates to Microsoft Edge, the continuing popularity of Bing AI, and now a Windows Photo refresh, we’re really eager to see what the company has to offer in the near future.
Nearly thirty years ago, Microsoft unveiled WordPad, a basic text editing software that later often came pre-installed on Windows machines, but now it’s going the way of Windows Movie Maker and Internet Explorer, and getting discontinued.
WordPad was packaged as a part of Windows 95, which was Microsoft’s flagship operating system back in the day, and has been included in each release of Windows since then. It allowed a user to perform basic text edits without any additional software, with capabilities like being able to include images and links to other files, and supported multiple popular text formats.
Now, Microsoft has decided to retire WordPad, as detailed in an updated version of the latest Windows software documentation. It explains that as part of planned development lifecycles, some features get introduced and some get removed to improve user experience. To this end, WordPad will not see any new developments or updates, and it will be removed from Windows 11 in a future software update.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
A potential security risk
There is also speculation by Bleeping Computer that WordPad posed a security risk. Earlier in the year, some computers running Windows were infected with Qbot malware, which dodged detection by exploiting a hijacking flaw in the WordPad app for Windows 10.
So, despite our nostalgia for the software, it’s perhaps best if Microsoft does indeed drop it.
If you are an avid WordPad user, or just looking for some good free text editors, don’t worry, I’ve got you. Here are some alternative program recommendations you can get for free both from Microsoft and from third-party developers.
Microsoft’s own recommendations
Microsoft’s first recommendation is one you are probably already familiar with: Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word continues to be a favorite choice for many users, offering a wealth of features for writing, editing and formatting text, as well as document sharing, and uses rich text file types, most notably .docx, a proprietary file type that not every text editor can open or edit. You can access Word online free here.
Its second recommendation is another staple text editor that’s been featured in Windows for years: Notepad. It’s primarily intended for plain text documents such as .txt files. While WordPad is being dropped, Notepad continues to see updates to its functionality.
You can now open multiple files at the same time with its new tabbed interface, have sessions be autosaved, and carry on working on a file in a different program like Word.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Notepad is a favorite tool among programmers, especially for developing Windows programs and applications. One big feature it doesn’t have besides the rich text format features is spell check, so it’s worth checking your text by copy and pasting it elsewhere.
If your device came with Windows installed on it, you should already have Notepad installed. You can search for it in the search box in your taskbar.
Free third-party substitutes for WordPad
The first substitute I would recommend is a favorite among modern professionals and students: Google Docs. All you need is a Google account, which you can sign up for using any valid email address for free.
Microsoft Word does offer more layout and formatting options, but Google Docs is optimized for collaboration between users and changes are constantly saved in real time. If you’re already familiar with text editors, it’s pretty easy to pick up. It’s part of the Google Suite of apps that you can use in conjunction with Google Docs, such as Slide, Google’s presentation software.
(Image credit: Future)
Next up, I’d recommend LibreOffice Writer. LibreOffice is a suite of free open-source software that’s an alternative to Microsoft Office, and Writer is the suite’s word processing software that has a ton of text formatting and layout features, as well as compatibility with Microsoft Word document formats, including the newer .docx format.
LibreOffice also sees active development, and frequently receives updates and new features. LibreOffice has a polished interface that is very user-friendly, and you’ll be up and running in no time.
My final recommendation is WPS Office Writer. In order to get this, you’ll have to download WPS Office.
Once installed, you’ll either have to create or sign in with a WPS account, or alternatively you can sign in with Google, email, or Facebook.
WPS Office Writer has an interface that’ll be familiar to Microsoft Word users and it even has a built-in WPS AI assistant to improve your writing and help generate ideas (you can also download the WPS AI assistant separately).
You can then integrate WPS Office with Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
(Image credit: Future)
Other features that are being disabled
There are other features that will also be discontinued in a future Windows update. Cortana, its voice assistant challenger to the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant, will be turned off.
Microsoft is also ending support and functionality of the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) and it will be turning off the old Transport Layer Security to improve Windows 11’s security. Cortana’s been replaced by Microsoft Copilot, which debuted at this year’s Microsoft Build conference, and aims to bring artificial intelligence features to Windows 11 in the future.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
The full details and explanation of changes, including the discontinuation of features, can be found in the full updated software documentation for Windows. As far as we know, Wordpad will remain functional and accessible until the Windows update is actually installed. Microsoft hasn’t yet specified a date for when this will be, however.
1 844.742.7448 
Email Us
Remote Support 
Contact
