Some Helpful Windows Features You Might Like

4 min readMay 25, 2021

Dictate inside Word, instead of type, if that’s faster, and open a suspicious link in a virtual sandbox to protect yourself.

Disclaimer: I’m not responsible for what you do on your computer… or anyone else’s either ;)

Built In Dictation For Word

This isn’t entirely new, but still might be new enough to have went under the radar for many. Simply by pressing Windows H, while inside a Word document, you can talk over your mic and dictation will write it down for you. I’ve tested it out some and it’s pretty good. Even though no dictation, on any device, is perfect it still might be faster than typing for some people. Also, depending on the way you process information, it might be best to just let your thoughts flow, quite literally out of your mouth.

A tip working with Word Dictation –

One way you might increase productivity is to have two word documents going. You could have your main window, where the main document is, and a blank, sort of throw away one in which you do the dictation in. That way it’s easy to edit, page by page, and then select all, copy, alt tab, and paste into your main document. Everybody’s different so that might be less productive for some.

Now, onto the main show of this article…

How Edge browser’s Defender window can keep you safe online.

Defender’s Application Guard will change internet security, and hacking for some time. Step back for a moment and realize, if you were unaware, that for the past several years more than 80% of viruses and malware have been Windows based. That’s for the same reason most businesses run on Windows. So many other people already use it, it’s most likely to be compatible.

Unfortunately, redirect links are growing in popularity. Redirecting puts marketers desires before their potential customers cyber security, so they can be tracked. However, redirect links hides the end location that users are directed to. Who wants to get in a car without knowing where you’re going?

Google redirect links don’t protect users either, and are often abused. Since they have the word Google in them, many people automatically assume there’s no problem, and click.

What the Edge browser has now, and has now been made available to other Chromium based browsers, is the ability to open a link within a virtual environment. Basically, it’s like having a fake computer running so the virus doesn’t hurt your real one. While the virus is throwing a tantrum inside the Matrix, you can sit back and see how it ticks… then delete it, or just close it out. It’s definitely a great idea.

I’ve read that a regular virtual machine might not protect as well as this defender window, because not all virtual environments are sandboxed, but this one does so that’s good to know.

“Would I trust it?” I guess it’s kinda like going out in a new bullet proof vest. You can feel somewhat comfortable knowing you’ve got one on, but I wouldn’t go out looking for trouble either.

Maybe this is already a thing, but it’d be a good idea if they added an option inside Outlook to open suspicious links using this window; since fishing attack emails infect a lot of computers. Maybe it already does, since they open in Edge. Best case scenario it does. Worst case, a glitch makes Edge automatically trust anything opened from within Outlook; which, as ridiculous as it sounds, is possible.

I can only imagine though, because Windows 10 would never allow me to enable the feature. I’m still unsure as to why. I really would like to try it out.

This will change hacking, for sure. The one thing sure about hacking, is people’s resourcefulness, and creativity in sniffing out new ways to get over on somebody else. Perhaps they’ll spend all their time hacking routers instead. By the way… Public Service Announcement: If you never set your router from its factory default settings, like names and passwords, it’s only a matter of time before your devices are hacked. Routers get hacked, and some people search and search until they find a way in. They know lots of people will never change the factory settings so it’s only a matter of time before they find someone.

Even Apple isn’t as secure as it used to be. It’s still more secure, and probably least likely to be hacked, but to be fair Windows Defender has gotten pretty good too. Recently, I heard about a bot net attack run from several thousand iPhones. Pretty crazy. All it takes is downloading a free app from the App Store, and secretly the app is gathering data or whatever. It might even be a free game, but is logging all your keystrokes.

Long story short, I think we can be vigilant, and keep best practices that will root out the vast majority of attempts, but nobody is invulnerable. Thankfully though, the best hackers generally go after bigger fish, because they feel it’s more worth their time.

I hope something of this article was helpful, entertaining, or both. Here’s another article you might like about some old Windows games from the 90’s.