We are in that period of the month in which the main browsers publish their new versions and, following the recent releases of Chromium 109 and Chrome 109, both focused on fundamental changes and of purely technical relevance, comes Microsoft Edge 109which more or less follows the same line, with nuances.
Nuances like that, with this release, Microsoft Edge says goodbye to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, versions whose official support has ended this month. In the case of Windows 7, it had already done so, except in its business edition; and in Windows 8.1 it does now. Be that as it may, the two versions of Microsoft’s operating system have ended their life cycle for the remains. From now on it is Windows 10, Windows 11 or take a chance.
Thus, and as part of the monthly Windows maintenance update, the last Patch Tuesday that Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will receive, Microsoft Edge 109 is included, which, like other browsers such as Chrome itself, abandons support for these two versions . Or, in other words, upgrading to Windows 10 or Windows 11 is no longer optional, but an essential requirement to maintain a minimum of security.
For the rest, Microsoft Edge 109 is a fairly bare-bones version that relies on Chromium security patches and bug fixes and little else, again, with one exception: the TextPredictionEnabled policy that allows the activation of a typing help, although it is not yet available for all browser versions, depending on the platform. For now it is only for Windows and macOS.
Specifically, TextPredictionEnabled is an addition to the browser typing assistant that “provides grammar, spelling, and style suggestions,” including, depending on the level applied, text predictions. As seen in the image, the differences between one mode and the other is that the Microsoft Editor “sends the data to Microsoft for processing.”
Ergo, the new Microsoft Edge writing assistant will help you with more or less expertise depending on the data you offer it to work with. It is the fate of the Internet: the more comfort, the less privacy. Let the user choose what he prefers to sacrifice. That which, By default, basic assistance is maintainedalthough it is possible to completely deactivate the function by unchecking the option in question.
If you’re a Windows user, a Microsoft 365 user, and generally use Microsoft software on a daily basis, you shouldn’t have privacy concerns around this option. It’s like drinking coffee with saccharin after filling up on cakes.
