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Backing up Windows 11
Why bother?
Over the years, countless people have asked me to revive a Windows laptop or desktop after losing vital data. Asking "Where's your backup?" feels cruel when you already know the answer — there isn't one. macOS users have long had Time Machine as a reliable safety net, but Windows users still get caught out far too often. Windows 11 has had several years to mature now, and Microsoft has made meaningful changes to its backup story — some welcome, some that will genuinely surprise you. If you haven't revisited your backup setup recently, 2026 is a good moment to do it properly.
TL;DR — Windows 11 includes capable built-in backup options, but the landscape has shifted: Microsoft has been quietly deprecating some legacy tools while pushing its cloud-centric Windows Backup app. The safest approach is still a local external drive combined with at least one cloud layer. Get an external drive larger than your PC's internal storage, connect it, and work through the three backup layers covered below. You won't think about any of this until the exact moment you desperately wish you had.
For the local backup examples in this article I used a Samsung T9 Portable SSD, 2 TB — a solid, fast choice that has come down noticeably in price. If your machine lacks an optical drive and you want a bootable System Repair Disc, you'll also need an external USB DVD writer, though a bootable USB recovery drive is the more practical option today.
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Redesigned but so many inconsistencies remain
Now that version 14 is out, the macOS system settings redesign that first appeared in macOS Ventura can be considered settled.
Many things have changed, and while many remain the same, some things are better and others are worse. Today I needed to make some System Settings changes and found it difficult. Perhaps it is me, having grown up with macOS System Settings and all its quirks over the last more than twenty years but there seem to be a couple of hurdles now that weren't there before. But I do note that other operating systems tinker with settings screens too and all seem to face the same problem of how to organise infrequently used choices that can have quite an impact for the behaviour of the OS in a way that doesn't get in the way of getting things done.
TL:DR — System Settings in macOS is a halfway house between what was there before and something inspired by iOS/iPadOS but it is not very intuitive. Setting up a power schedule requires an obscure command from the terminal now. Thats progress? Sharing and other important functionality is hard to find or gone. Power schedules in particular is now relegated to the terminal via the obscure pmset command.
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A client asked me to help with some enterprise software in Amazon Web Services (AWS) — and that meant getting back into Windows Server for the first time in a long while. Despite having been one of the first Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers in the UK, my certification expired long ago and I have no plans to renew it. But this was an interesting project in an industry vertical I know well, with people I like working with. Before diving into the client environment, I built out my own private Windows Server infrastructure on AWS to see what I was letting myself in for. What follows is an updated walkthrough for 2026, reflecting how the AWS free tier, Windows Server AMIs, and SSL tooling have all shifted since this guide was first written.
What you can do with this guide
- Set up a free-tier-eligible AWS account using a new domain name and email address.
- Install Windows Server 2022 in an Amazon EC2 instance, securely.
- Install Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft's web server.
- Add a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, trusted and supported by all major browsers.
- Set the Let's Encrypt SSL certificate to auto-renew through a scheduled task.
- Install a modern browser on the server for local testing, since Internet Explorer is gone and Edge — while present — benefits from a backup option.
TL;DR — It is relatively straightforward to set up a free Windows Server-based web server with a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate on AWS EC2. There are a few hurdles, but once past them it works reliably.
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Read more: FREE Windows web server with a Lets Encrypt SSL certificate in AWS
How to ensure that AWS data that must be hosted and accessed in one specific AWS region is protected effectively?
A project I am working on has data that must be hosted in one specific AWS region for regulatory reasons. AWS is a worldwide service and certain elements of it such as the root user, and users set up using Identity and Access Management (IAM) are globally provided and cannot be region restricted. However it is possible to deny access to specific AWS features based on the requested AWS Region using an AWS Organizations service control policy (SCP). IAM provides control over users and roles in individual accounts, and is itself managed by the AWS root user account which should be used sparingly and carefully. AWS Organizations expands that control to the member accounts level by giving you control over what these accounts can do.
Organising your member accounts in AWS into AWS Organisations is good practice and is especially useful for delegating control for budgetary, security, or compliance needs, for example in different departments or separately budgeted development teams, while retaining overall governance through management accounts with responsibility for consolidated billing, security and governance. AWS Organizations is a no-charge feature of AWS, the only cost really is the investment in time in designing and setting it up to match the structure of your organisation.
What I was able to do
- Create an organization and organizational units (OUs) in it
- Create a member account inside an OU
- Enable all policy categories in AWS organizations
- Create service control policies (SCPs) that apply to member accounts in the OU
- Confirm in the AWS Consol that those policies were working correctly
TL:DR — AWS Organisations is a powerful way to provide more granular access to AWS features. It requires the creation of member accounts, which are different to IAM accounts and the root account. Once you set it up it is easy to adjust to meet any future AWS budgetary, security, or compliance needs. And its FREE to use.
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Before you start!
This is how I fix my Virgin Media not very smart modem.
TL:DR — This is really for me. YMMV
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MS Teams is one of those tools that sometimes, no matter what your preference, you have to use. While there are other great alternatives like Google Meet and other not so great alternatives like Zoom, its just one of those things you can't control as often clients or suppliers or customers will have a preference. The build of MS Teams published on Wednesday, August 31, 2022 was at last a universal binary and on initial inspection and use in a meeting worked just fine on my M1 based Mac Studio.
TL:DR — This isnt a finished product. I didn't see anything missing apart from the 'About MS Teams' dialog, but it came direct from GitHub and was built on Wednesday, August 31, 2022 so don't install it if you care about such things. Teams from the standard release pages fully supports Mac computers with Apple silicon now. This note was written when it didn't.
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Looking for some essential best practices
Needing to brush up on Amazon Web Services (AWS) knowledge of best practice for standing up a service using AWS. I thought I'd just curate the best of what I found in case it was useful to someone else.
Before you start!
You'll need an AWS account - why not sign up - theres a free tier and much is free in the first year.
TL:DR — Looking for a quick refresh on AWS - here you are - you're welcome!
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