Category Archives: WED Blog

Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Turbotax Tribulation and Triumph 2025

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Yesterday was October 15th. Among other milestones, it’s the last day one can submit 2024 taxes upon obtaining an extension for filing. I’d planned to do them over the weekend, but a huge project blew into my life instead. So I ended up having to wait until the very last day to file. So yesterday, I experienced Turbotax tribulation and triumph: let me explain…

Surviving Turbotax Tribulation and Triumph 2025

I’ve been using TurboTax since before Intuit bought them in 1993. In fact, I think my accountant used them on my taxes even before then. And when she retired in the 1990s, she told me “you can do them on your own, if you stick with Turbotax.” She was right. And the program just keeps getting better at dealing with nearly all aspects of tax preparation and filing.

What amazes me most, right now, about this program is the connectors it offers into the accounts from whence most financial data flows anyway. I have a lot of activity from my brokerage account because I’m drawing on retirement accounts. Turbotax logs into the brokerage, sucks over all of my 1099s, and populates all the relevant fields for me. Same with bank accounts and such, too. Ditto for social security.

Because I’m self-employed, I get numerous 1099s from the companies I write for. Last year that included TechTarget, AskWoody, IDG (ComputerWorld), and others. Because I’ve been working for all of them for a while, Turbotax already knows their names, EINs and so forth. All I have to do is plug in the income numbers for 2024.

Shoot! My son’s in college and uses money from a 529(c) his grand-dad left him to cover tuition. Turbotax makes that easy, too.

Same as It Ever Was, But Better…

I remember watching my Dad shuffle mountains of paper to file his taxes when I was still living with my parents until 1970 or thereabouts. It used to take him a full day to work all the way through those papers and fill out all the necessary forms. But because Turbotax remembers what I did last year and automatically carries over refunds left over to cover the current year, I can usually get through the whole shebang in under 4 hours. That’s a big improvement.

Here in Windows-World data sources and sinks are increasingly connected. This can pose security headaches, but gosh: it makes working through complex data analysis exercises easier. Even the data-driven member of the eternal duo: Death and Taxes! Done for another year, hooray…

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Insider stuff, Remote Desktop (RDP), WED Blog, Windows 11

Latest Beta CU Keeps Remote MSA Login Glitch

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OK, then. I just logged into the ThinkPad X380 Yoga, where I run the Windows 11 Beta Channel Insider Previews.  I’ve been forced to remote into that laptop using a local account for months. But just now, I got fooled by a successful MSA login to Office immediately after login on that PC. I thought the MSA issue was fixed, but I thought wrong. The Remote Desktop Connection used my LocalOnly account to set up that remote session, after which the MSA worked fine to login through MS to access Office. Despite my hopes to the contrary, the latest Beta CU keeps remote MSA login glitch. Sigh.

Showing Latest Beta CU Fixes Remote MSA Login Glitch

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you’ll see two important things. One, Office asking me if I want to stay signed in. Two, it’s showing the account that stays that way if I agree (“Yes”) is an MSA. For the record, that is an old, expired MSA whose mail server/domain got turned off in 2024, so I don’t mind sharing it publicly. But as I explained, that’s not the same account that Remote Desktop Connection used to make the RDP connection in the first place. I got fooled!

The interesting thing, of course, is that RDP (via the Remote Desktop Connection, aka mstsc.exe) is still cannot resolve MSA lookups to the MS authentication servers during login. I’m still getting an invalid credentials error. I’ve also seen “unable to contact LSA” (Local Security Authority) errors as well. Sigh again.

Even though I tried an MSA, the error message still shows the local account.

With the update to Build 26120.6780 in the wake of KB5067103, that problem seems to persist. But, I’ve been through this on-again, off-again ability to use MSA logins for RDP for some time now. So I’m wondering: when will MS fix this thing? That’s the way things go with Insider Previews, here in Windows-World. As long as I can work around it, that’s OK!

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AI, Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much

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I’ve been excessively busy for the past few days, working on a legal matter. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about Copilot’s limits. Turns out this tool is extraordinarily adept at running down references and finding sources that document specific quotes. But it’s also inclined to get stuck sometimes if my queries assume too much about what it already knows. That is, echoing William Blake’s Proverbs of Heaven and Hell Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much?  Thereupon it becomes unresponsive. Yesterday, I had to reboot a machine to bring Copilot back to life. Even ending the task and restarting the app didn’t help. Weird!

When Copilot sez: Enough, or Too Much,
Do This…

So I had to ask Copilot “Why do you choke or become nonresponsive sometimes?” It had 5 answers, at least 3 of which corresponded to yesterday’s circumstances:

1. Overloaded or ambiguous input: Messages (prompts, I would say) are too long, too vague or contain multiple conflicting instructions.

2, Tool or system glitches: Copilot avers it relies on a whole box of tools (it names “search, image generation, memory, etc.”). Should one fail to respond, Copilot has to wait, and may stall while waiting.

3. Safety or Policy Filters: By design, Copilot won’t respond to prompts that violate its safety and policy rules. Good thing, and I hope they’re sufficiently broad and devious enough to foil hackers.

4. Missing Context or References: It’s too easy to assume Copilot remembers and understands what you’ve been asking it recently. TLDR version: not always. Be specific.

5. Complex Reasoning Bottlenecks: Technical, multi-layered tasks require Copilot to find, assemble and structure lots of information. Takes time, enough so that it might seem like forever.

I’m pretty sure yesterday’s hangup was a mix of items 2, 4 and 5. I try very hard not to overload my prompts, and what I work on shouldn’t trigger failsafes — of any kind. But hey, here in Windows-World, hang-up and delays are all part of the daily routine. Yours too, I guess?

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Copilot+ PCs, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, Thoughts & concerns, WED Blog, Windows 11

Pricing Rugged Copilot+ Tablets

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Cruising X yesterday, I hit a thread touting Dell’s Pro Rugged 10″ and 12″ tablets. Out of curiosity, I started digging. Want a 12″ Copilot+ Rugged tablet? Think hard, and dig deep! Expect to spend between $4-5K for the privilege of owning one. I costed one out and it came to $3,745, not including the detachable keyboard. So I looked for other makers including  MobileDemand, Getac, and Panasonic/Toughbook. Pricing rugged Copilot+ tablets tells me they’re painfully expensive. That means other makers are charging about the same for comparable offerings as Dell. Ouch!

For the record, spending that kind of money gets you a Copilot+ system with at least 40 TOPS of NPU, bright graphics (has to be visible in sunlight), 32 GB RAM, and at least 1 TB of storage. It also typically includes at least one form of long-haul wireless capability (e.g. 5G). If you’re going this route, you’ll want to spring for a second, hot-swappable battery as well. Don’t want to run out of juice in the middle of nowhere!

Pricing Rugged Copilot+ Tablets Means $$$$

I’ve long been fascinated with powerful tablet PCs that come with detachable keyboards. They make great readers, untethered, and they work reasonably well as laptops with keyboards plugged in. But gosh, this latest generation costs up to 4X as much as any model I’ve ever purchased. I’ve owned or reviewed other Toughbooks, Dell, Fujitsu, and Microsoft Surface models configured to work this way. Of those the Fujitsu Stylistic Q704 was the most costly at just under $3K; the Dell Latitude 5285 was my definite favorite. Neither was ruggedized, though…

The markets for rugged tablets and PCs are usually the military, first responders, field crews for utilities, field scientists and data collectors, FEMA and disaster relief teams of all kinds, and other folks who must work outdoors or in hostile environments (sometimes, literally). Adding expense to achieve reliability and dependability is something that comes with such roles– and related uses, for PCs or tablets.

There are lots of specialized niches in Windows-World. This is one I’m happy to visit when companies like Panasonic want to send me review units. But at those prices, I’m unlikely to buy one myself, unless I get a job that requires me to compute in the field where I might have to work in rainy, dusty, or otherwise hard-to-handle environments. At this stage of my career, that seems kinda unlikely — but you never know.

 

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Canary Build 27965 Gets New Start Menu, But…

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I have a strange and twisted history with access to new Windows features. If they’re on gradual rollout, I’m not in the first cohort. If they target specific hardware or configurations, that’s not what I’m using. Today brings another case in point. If you read the MS announcement for the latest Canary drop, you’ll see it starts with this bold headline: Introducing the new Start menu for Windows 11. Here’s the catch: Sure Canary Build 27965 gets new Start menu. But that big new layout requires “a larger screen device” on which users “can see more of your apps and files.”

Canary Build 27965 Gets New Start Menu…On Big Displays…On Gradual Rollout

Wouldn’t you know it? I’m running Canary on a Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Convertible Tablet. The 12 indicates a nominal 12″ display, so it doesn’t qualify for the bigger, broader layout. Sigh. It doesn’t even kick in when I remote into the system through a 27″ monitor. Go figure!

Given the size limitation, I could see why my Start menu didn’t get bigger on the X12. But then, I read the fine print at the end of the New Start menu section:

[We are beginning to roll this out to Windows Insiders in the Canary, so the experience isn’t available to all Insiders just yet as we plan to monitor feedback before pushing it out to everyone.]

It seems that because I can’t access the UI features discussed earlier in that section, I’m not in the initial release cohort to get this feature anyway. Is that adding insult to injury, or just more of the same old, same old? Here in Windows-World it can be hard to tell the difference!

 

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AI, Cool Tools, Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog

Give Me Real Agentic AI, Please!

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I’ve been using Copilot a lot more these days for all kinds of things, both personal and work related. But I have to say, I wish AI could DO more. That’s why this blog post is entitled “Give me real agentic AI.”

Let me explain what I think “real agentic AI” means. It means when you ask for information, AI goes out and does what it must to obtain that information. For example: yesterday I needed information about a specific patent case on the docket in a US Federal Court. First, I spent 15 minutes to access what I now understand is an old, obsolete docket management system. Then, I learned they’d switched to a different docket management system. Another long sign-up process loomed. Long story short: I opted out because of time and effort for another sign-up.

Why I Say: “Give Me Real Agentic AI!”

I want to be able to ask my AI agent to go out and find stuff for me that requires action — and perhaps even payment. Then, I want it to do that work, especially handling the niggling little details. I don’t want to have to jump a bunch of hurdles to get information I need. I want AI to do that for me.

In fact, handing the details involved in obtaining access is what I think AI is best used for. Let me decide what I need and focus on the results; let AI free me of the mundane details and hurdles necessary to get me those results. Then, we can both knock off and share a beer (I cheerfully confess Bender from Futurama is the inspiration for the — wait for it — AI-generated “agent avatar” that serves as the lead-in graphic for this blog post).

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Cool Tools, Insider stuff, PowerShell, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11

Bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6

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Flo6 is what I call my new production desktop. Today, I finally got around to installing and turning on the OhMyPosh shell prompt tool on said desktop. I’ve done this before, and it’s always interesting to see how things work now, as opposed to the way they did the last time I did this. Indeed I hit some changes: nothing insuperable, but enough to make me stop and think about what I was doing, and how best to do it. In bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6, I had to overcome bogus Copilot guidance, re-read my own 2024 OhMyPosh article, and visit the OhMyPosh website to grab my preferred theme.

After Bringing OhMyPosh to Flo6, A Snazzy Look

If you examine the lead-in graphic you can see what adding OhMyPosh to the mix does for PowerShell inside Windows Terminal. It definitely adds to the visual appeal of the command prompt, and lets you see more info right away.

Here’s brief summary of the steps involved (all the deets are covered in the afore-linked OhMyPosh article, which I will henceforth abbreviate as OMP):

1. Install a nerd font (necessary for OMP to show its colorful symbols and glyphs)
2. Change the default profile in WinTerm to invoke that nerd font
3. Change PowerShell startup to call OMP and its theme on startup
4. Reload the startup info ($Profile variable) to invoke the new setup

In theory, this is dead easy. In practice, it requires a fair amount of command line jiggery pokery. The whole operation took half an hour or so, mostly because I had to remember (and read about) those steps and their details. OMP also no longer downloads its themes when it’s installed, so I had to visit the themes page and download the one I wanted (it’s named JanDeDobbeleer.omp.json) and put it in the OMP default folder (C:\users\<acct>\ohmyposh) to match the configuration in the associated profile info.

Eminently doable, if a bit more time consuming than I remembered. But shoot: that’s just another normal day here in Windows-World!

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Insider stuff, Recent Activity, WED Blog, Windows 11, Windows Update

Gradual Rollout Strikes Notification Update

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I guess it’s inevitable. Upon reading about how Windows 11 25H2 finally extends notification area pop-ups to non-primary displays on multi-monitor rigs, I checked my own production PC. This is, of course, the Asrock B550-based Ryzen 7 5800X with its dual Dell 2717 UHD displays. And wouldn’t you know it? Works on the primary, but not the secondary. As I check the KB5065789 announcement, I learn why. Once again, gradual rollout strikes notification update, and my PC is NOT in the forefront. Sigh.

Explaining Gradual Rollout Strikes Notification Update

If you look at the lead-in graphic, you can see the text from the afore-linked announcement. It reads:

​​​​​​​[Notification Center] New! The Notification Center functionality is now available on secondary monitors. To open it, select the date and time in the system tray on the taskbar. With the August 2025 non-security update (KB5064081), you can also show a larger clock with seconds above the calendar.

What that doesn’t show, alas, is that this occurs under the “Gradual Rollout” heading in that announcement. In turn, that means this feature is trickling out to 25H2 PCs, not all of them at once. I’ll hook a second monitor up to one of my Copilot PCs and see if that machine gets the new functionality. Nope, doesn’t work when I used HDMI to connect up a second monitor to the Lenovo Copilot+ AIO9i model, either.

It Remains the Hardest Part: Waiting…

I’m just going to have to wait for MS to flip whatever switch it takes to get one  or more of my 8 or so 25H2 PCs to attain this capability. I’m no stranger to this position in the Windows-World feature sweepstakes — that is, on the outside, looking in. Sigh again.

 

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25H2 Notification Gets Time

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Earlier this week, Windows 11 25H2 started making its way onto desktops via Windows Update (and other means). By now, I’ve got about half my eligible PCs updated. So far, it’s been a positive experience. Though others have reported issues  — knocks wood — so far, things at Chez Tittel have been hunky-dory. I read this morning at NeoWin that clock time is returning to the notification calendar in 25H2. If you look at the right-hand item in the lead-in screencap, you’ll see what I mean, as 25H2 notification gets time back.

What 25H2 Notification Gets Time Means

The left-hand side of the lead-in shows what the notification calendar looks like in 25H2 without a small settings change. This is the calendar that pops up when you click the date & time area to the far right of the notification area in Windows 11. Note that the left-hand side shows the weekday, month and date up top. The right-hand side shows time in hh:mm:ss AM/PM on one line, and then weekday, month and date below that. The difference is the presence or absence of the clock line.

How do you make this appear in 25H2? Good question! Here’s a step-by-step:

1. Click through Settings > Time & language > Date & time
2. Toggle Show time in Notification Center from Off (default) to On.

The next time you click on the date & time in notifications, you’ll see the time info above the typical weekday, month and date line. Easy-peasey, right?

Back from Windows 10, But I Never Missed It

If you read the Neowin story linked above (or other copious coverage on this tiny but often-requested UI change), you’ll get the sense that this little change is a big deal. And apparently it is, for some. But as a long-time and ongoing user of Helmut Buhler’s Gadgets from GadgetPack.net, I’ve been able to see a clock (and turn the second hand on) since Windows 8 came along just over 13 years ago. So it’s no big thing for me.

The clock gadget shows an analog clock to which I add the Windows machine name. Always on the desktop: handy!

But for others in Windows-World, it appears to satisfy a long-standing desire. Who am I to say them nay? Enjoy!

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Winget Update Re-Raises Restart Requirement

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Late last April, I wrestled with getting winget updates (aka Microsoft.AppInstaller) to “take.” That is, figuring out how to follow the advice to “restart the application” so the new version could take over. Turns out that nothing short of a restart seemed to guarantee that the update would run in PowerShell/Windows Terminal. Other techniques — killing all active processes, open/close WinTerm, and so forth — did not always suffice. A recent Winget update re-raises restart requirement, as I tried to move from version 1.26.430.0 to 1.26.510.0. It was the same darn thing all over again!

Why Winget Update Re-Raises Restart Requirement

If you read into my April blog post that offered explanations from two winget mavens, you’ll see that the winget upgrade waits until dangling APIs and runtime modules, plus pending package updates, all get resolved before completing its own upward move. For the chronically impatient — including yours truly — that makes a restart/reboot a surefire way to FORCE the changes through as a consequence of shutting down, then starting back up.

It worked last April, and it still works now. But a restart on my production PC with its numerous peripherals and 6 drives showing in File Explorer, is no small thing. It takes over a minute to shut down, and another 2-3 minutes to get through restart and to the desktop. So while it does the job, it also makes me wait rather longer than I’d really like to.

But hey: that’s the way things go in Windows-World sometimes. When things change, waiting for “out with the old, in with the new” can take some time. Maybe I should go get another cup of coffee…

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