Avira dishonours paid subscription, blames it on the customer

I see Avira has downgraded me to their free version despite my being paid up. As far as I can tell, this has been the case for months, and I remember Tweeting them back when Twitter was a thing. I can’t log in at all, and it keeps showing a ‘Get Prime’ button to force […]

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Forget Duck Duck Go, Bing, and Google—I’m trying Mojeek

It was disappointing to note that after switching to HTTPS, and signing on to Bing Webmaster Tools, the search engine results for those sites of ours that made the change are still severely compromised. I’ve written about searches for my own name earlier, where my personal and company sites lost their first and second positions […]

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Vivaldi 5.2’s bugs: time to go back to Opera GX?

Above: Vivaldi appears for less than a second; each entry then disappears. One of the bugs from last night.   Vivaldi updated last night, and nearly instantly shut down. Sadly, there’s a bug which shuts the program down the moment you hit a form field (filed with them, and they are working on it), and […]

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Replacement for Notepad found, but what about Windows Explorer?

  Now that Microsoft won’t let us type certain characters into Notepad (anything above ASCII 127, at least on a standard US keyboard), I’ve had to look for alternatives.    This is a daft move on Microsoft’s part as I am sure I am not the only person in the world who needs to type […]

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When Here WeGo still sends you to the wrong location six years on

Six years ago, I reported this error in Here Maps (a.k.a. Here WeGo), both via the official channels and to a software engineer I knew working there. It’s still there. There aren’t two Wharekauhau Country Estates (this is the route between them, to highlight just how wrong it is; the westerly one is correct).   […]

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Xiaomi’s tiny idiosyncracies

There were a few surprises switching to Xiaomi.    First up, it asked me to do a voice identification by saying these four words, 小爱同學. Only thing is, it doesn’t understand Cantonese.    The default weather app was able to give me details based on exactly where I am (location service turned on, and I […]

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What succeeds my Meizu M6 Note?

  My Meizu M6 Note has had to be retired, due to an expanding battery, something which I probably shouldn’t have tolerated for so long (it began happening months ago). I only made the call to stop using it last week after the volume buttons could no longer function, and I probably should have stopped […]

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A smooth upgrade to Windows 11 (so far)

The Windows 11 upgrade arrived on my desktop machine before my laptop, which was a surprise. Also surprising is how uneventful the whole process was, unlike Windows 10, which led me to become a regular on the Microsoft Answers forums.    A few tips: (a) do back everything up first; and (b) do take screenshots […]

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InShot Music Player is also forgetful, though it’s not as bad as the last two

One bug that creeps up at unpredictable intervals with InShot’s Music Player—though it is not as severe as the bug on Muzio Player—is that after a while, it forgets that it should shuffle the tracks and resorts to alphabetical order, starting from the top.    Considering this isn’t something that has affected any other music […]

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Cellphone apps: InShot’s Music Player may finally be the one; Über remains a total waste of time

Forgetful Muzio Player has been replaced by a program (or app) called Music Player, which isn’t the best brand name considering the many other apps out there with the same name. This one’s version 2.5.6.74 and its maker is InShot Inc., so if all goes well, this is the one Meizu users should go for. […]

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