Tip o' the Week 447 – October is usually boring

October is – in the northern hemisphere at least – a generally pretty unexciting month. The early blaze of autumnal foliage settles into a muted rusty colour before falling away; everyone’s used up their vacation allowance so the roads are clogged with traffic just as the weather starts to worsen and the mornings and evenings get dark. Kids are bored, and folkin’ folkster Roy Harper tells us we do nothing but coagulate. If you get excited about updates to your computer’s operating system, however, October is going to be a bit more interesting, as the next release of Windows – hitherto known as Redstone 5 – will be with us. Read more from MJF, and see a good summary of what’s coming, here. There are lots of user interface changes, tweaks and improvements. If you like “dark mode” in apps, it’s getting more pervasive. Windows Weekly talks about the momentum behind Windows 10 if you have a spare hour-and-a-half to listen. There’s a great new cloud-oriented clipboard experience that can be enabled (it’s off by default, so no need to get spooked) , and there will be an improved screen snipping capability – both examples of the kinds of supposedly small improvements which can make a big difference to anyone with more than one PC. And both of these are features that have been proven using “Garage” projects in the past. The Your Phone app discussed in ToW 442 will be available to all, too. The much-anticipated “Sets” feature isn’t coming this time, though. So keep ‘em peeled over the next few weeks, for the appearance of the October update. Maybe more news will come at Ignite.