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Practical Electronics Editorial offices Electron Publishing (Aust.) Tel +61 2 9939 3295 Unit 1, 234 Harbord Road Email pe<at>pemag.au Brookvale NSW 2100 Web www.electronpublishing.com Australia Address mail to: Electron Publishing (Australia) PO Box 194, Matraville NSW 2036 Australia Advertising enquiries +61 2 9939 3295 pe<at>pemag.au Editor Nicholas Vinen Publisher Nicholas Vinen Digital subscriptions Stewart Kearn Tel 01202 880299 Online Editor Alan Winstanley Web Systems Kris Thain Production Bao Smith Technical staff Tim Blythman, John Clarke Print subscriptions Practical Electronics Subscriptions PO Box 6337 Bournemouth BH1 9EH Tel 01202 087631 United Kingdom Email pesubs<at>selectps.com Technical enquiries We regret that technical enquiries cannot be answered over the telephone. We are unable to offer any advice on the use, purchase, repair or modification of commercial equipment or the incorporation or modification of designs published in the magazine. Questions about articles or projects should be sent to the editor by email: pe<at>pemag.au Projects and circuits All reasonable precautions are taken to ensure that the advice and data given to readers is reliable. We cannot, however, guarantee it and we cannot accept legal responsibility for it. Some projects and circuits published in Practical Electronics employ voltages that can be lethal. Do not build, test, modify or fix any mains-powered equipment unless you fully understand the safety aspects involved and you use an RCD (GFCI) adaptor. Component supplies Silicon Chip Publications may offer kits or other parts for making our projects, but not in all cases. When kits are not available, readers will need to find and source parts themselves. We advise readers to check that all parts are still available before commencing any project in a back-dated issue. 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The laws vary from country to country; readers should check local laws. 2 Volume 54. No. 3 March 2025 ISSN 2632 573X Editorial Microsoft’s constantly moving target Because I like to feel that I own my computer, and I want to be free to do whatever I want with it, I run Linux at home. I’ve been using it for probably 20 years now and it certainly has come a long way. When you know how to use it, it is extremely capable. Unfortunately, I can’t really do that for my work computer. While there are other packages, most large publishers use Adobe products like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop etc. I also need to use Altium Designer for PCB design work and CorelDraw too. None of these programs are available for Linux, nor do they run well in emulation. So basically my choices are macOS or Windows. Altium Designer only runs natively on Windows and CorelDraw runs very slowly on macOS, so Windows it is. I don’t have a major problem with Windows 10; I feel that it is inferior to Linux in many ways (mainly in terms of performance and configurability) but I am used to it. Of course, now that I’m used to it, Microsoft is threatening to end support for Windows 10. They’re certainly trying to get people to move to Windows 11, but I’ve tried it, and it’s miserable – definitely an overall worse experience than Windows 10. The Fox Report in this issue goes over some of the trials and tribulations involved in ‘upgrading’. I’ve been forced to migrate several times thanks to Microsoft, from Windows 2000 to 7 to 10. Each time I felt like it was basically pointless and I got nothing out of it, other than not being ‘left behind’. So I’m not keen to do that again. Happily, I discovered the website https://0patch.com This is a Slovenian company that provides security patches for Microsoft Windows. Unlike Microsoft’s patches, apparently you don’t have to reboot to install them. They say they will continue to support Windows 10 for at least five more years (I suspect it will be longer than that). The service is free for personal, non-profit educational and testing use. Otherwise, it costs €24.95 (about £21) per computer per year. I don’t know about you but I would gladly pay that to avoid dealing with any more of Microsoft’s shenanigans and forced reboots for a few years. Nicholas Vinen, Electron Publishing (Australia)* Publisher & Editor, Practical Electronics Magazine * a division of Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. Practical Electronics | March | 2025