Windows 11 gets a Widget boost as Amazon cuts off old Kindles

Its Sunday again, which means its time for another edition of Trusted Reviews Winners and Losers where we round up the best and worst news in tech from the last week.

This week saw Sony start rolling out PlayStation Plus globally and reveal the PSVR will launch with 20+ games. Asus unveiled a blazingly fast 500Hz gaming monitor and Apple, Disney and Amazon reportedly entered into talks to acquire EA.

In the world of mobile, Motorola teased a 200-megapixel smartphone, Xiaomi teamed up with camera manufacturer Leica and Apple was rumoured to be dealing with production delays over the iPhone 14 Max.

This week’s winner title went to Microsoft after it announced a handful of handy new features coming to Windows 11, while Amazon was our loser after the company reached out to users regarding its older Kindle models…

Winner: Microsoft

This week, Microsoft held its Build ’22 conference where it announced the next array of features coming to Windows 11. 

One update that caught our eye was the addition of third-party Widgets. 

Microsoft introduced Widgets in Windows 11 to allow users to see important info and app content at a glance in the taskbar view – similar to how iOS and Android widgets work on your phone. 

Right now only first-party apps, like the weather and traffic apps or Bing Maps, have Widgets, but soon third-party developers with Win32 and PWA apps will be able to add their own ones into the mix. 

Another time-saving addition soon to be entering beta is the Microsoft Store’s “Restore all” button.

This feature will be be incredibly useful for those upgrading their Windows PCs. Where users have previously been forced to reinstall the apps they had on their old PCs manually, the Restore all button will allow them to move them all onto their new computer in one click. 

Not only will these new features maker it faster for users to set up their PCs, but it should also make the apps more helpful too as they’ll no longer need to wait for them to load up as they show the most crucial info directly in the Windows 11 taskbar. 

Loser: Amazon

Our loser this week is Amazon – or rather, Kindle users still holding on to old hardware – after the company warned they’d no longer be able to buy new e-books on certain e-readers. 

According to an email sent out to users this week (via Goodereader), those using the Kindle (2nd Gen) International, Kindle DX International, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle (4th Gen), and Kindle (5th Gen) will not be able to browse, buy or borrow books on their e-readers from August 2022. 

Users will still be able to buy books using other devices and have them sent to their Kindles, but Amazon is offering a 30% discount to anyone willing to part with their old Kindle in a mission to convince them to upgrade to one of the newer gen models.

Amazon isn’t the only company cutting off old tech right now. A report by WABetaInfo revealed that WhatsApp will be ending support for iPhones running iOS 10 and iOS 11 from this October. 

This will put iPhone 5 and 5C users at risk of losing the access to the messaging service and all their group chats, as these models don’t actually support iOS 12. 

All-in-all, it seems many people using 9-10 year old devices will be feeling the push to upgrade their hardware this year if they want to continue chatting on WhatsApp and downloading e-books in 2023.