If you have a subscription to Windows Live OneCare, you are covered until the choices for security software are more clear towards the end of 2009. Keep using OneCare.

Your OneCare subscription will not expire. Starting last month, Microsoft began extending OneCare subscriptions automatically for six months for free. You’ll get an email to confirm that before your subscription expires. Here are the details of the free extension.

You are not obligated to continue using OneCare. You can switch to another program whenever you choose. Here is information about the security software on the market now.

I’ve been testing Microsoft Security Essentials, the free antivirus/spyware program released briefly to a small pool of beta testers. It is exactly what many of us need. It installs nearly instantly and runs invisibly, with virtually no impact on system resources. It will be available to all Windows users by late 2009 or early 2010. I love it. The beta test is now closed. Here is more info about MSE.

New computer, ready to switch from OneCare, or unhappy with your current software? If you are one of my clients and you want to try Microsoft Security Essentials, drop me a note.

Labels: OneCare, security, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 7/01/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

There will be some new experiments with subscription fees for online services, after the last few years when it seemed everything online would always be free or could be financed by online advertising. Adobe has just turned on “premium” subscriptions for Acrobat.com, its portal for file sharing and collaboration. Here’s what I wrote about Acrobat.com when it first appeared last year.

It’s still possible to use basic Acrobat.com services for free – store PDF and Office files online and share them, convert a limited number of files each month to PDF format, and use Adobe ConnectNow for online meetings. Premium subscriptions (for a hefty $14.99 or $39/month) increase the number of files that can be converted and the number of meeting participants, plus a few other things. There are a few more details about the subscription plans and the reasoning behind them in this article.

At the moment the idea seems slightly daft. Who would pay for this? Free alternatives are easy to come by, and Acrobat.com’s interface continues to be a bit baffling. It’s obviously elegant and streamlined and very attractive. It’s only when you try to use it that it becomes clear that the way it’s organized doesn’t really make much sense.

In particular, it’s not as important as before to have a way to create PDFs if Acrobat isn’t installed. Office 2007 users have the built-in ability to create a PDF from any Office document after installing Office 2007 Service Pack 2.

Perhaps the real importance of Adobe’s move is that it begins to soften us up for the big move to subscription-based online file services that will happen when Microsoft releases the next version of Office. When Office 2010 arrives in the first half of next year, it will include deep hooks into files stored online to make them as accessible as local files, plus web-based versions of Word, Excel, and some of the other programs, with monthly subscriptions to turn off advertising and turn on all the features. Here’s more information about what to expect from the next version of Office.

Labels: Acrobat, file_sharing, Office, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/22/2009 12:08:00 AM | permalink

Have you noticed the collapse in the market for boxed software? We used to go to Best Buy or Staples or Costco and buy the latest programs in boxes. The only time we do that now is for Quicken and Quickbooks. Just about everything else is either preinstalled on our computers or downloaded.

The latest sign of a changing time came in the announcement that Microsoft is dropping Microsoft Money, the competitor to Quicken that never quite found a place in the market. It’s only the most recent of Microsoft’s cost-cutting decisions and its movement to online services. A few months ago, Microsoft dropped the Encarta encyclopedia; Windows Live OneCare will be off the market completely in a couple of weeks; and it’s already been two years since we lost Digital Image Pro.

Even Microsoft Office may turn into a downloadable product if you buy a new computer and discover it’s not included, or want to add Powerpoint or upgrade your copy of Outlook. Dell just announced that it will be the first place to buy Office online (other than Microsoft, which has had a little-known online store for a while selling its products at full retail prices). The Dell Download Store has an interesting selection of downloadable software at prices that are reasonable – perhaps not the best deal around but certainly the most convenient at times. It seems like a natural fit for Amazon, which launched a software download utility more than a year ago; so far it has never moved past a limited selection of tax software but I wouldn’t expect it to leave the market alone for long.

Labels: business, Microsoft, Office, software

posted by bruceb at 6/16/2009 03:05:00 AM | permalink

One of the most important things you can do to keep your Windows computer running smoothly is to be conservative about what gets installed on it. Do custom installs of all new software, look at all the choices, and turn down the ones that don’t fit your needs.

I ran across a good example of the kind of bloated software that slows down our computers and causes conflicts. A good friend asked for advice about installing Nero software for working with video and burning CDs and DVDs. The Nero suite is one of the best-known commercial products on the market for those tasks, sold at the big stores and marketed aggressively.

Let me emphasize that I’m using Nero as an example. It’s not much different than a lot of other software out there. The Nero suite is quirky – hoo, boy, is it quirky - but it does some things very well. I use it myself.

Still, it’s hard not to be frightened when you realize that turning the Nero installer loose would put all these programs on your computer:

Isn’t that extraordinary? Each one of those is a separate program with its own purpose and its own learning curve and its own quirks. Many of them overlap other programs on your computer; there’s a good chance the Nero programs will steal file associations and become the default program when you click on certain kinds of files, whether you want that or not.

The lesson is not to avoid the Nero suite. Rather, I want you to take responsibility for your computer. Learn something about software before you install it. Take it seriously and learn how to use what you install. Remember one of the central tenets of computing in 2009: if you install it, you have to update it. That’s what it means to stay secure.

Oh, and I’ll give you an idea of how I approach the Nero suite for my own purposes:

• The core functions are: SmartStart; Express; Vision; Recode; Burning ROM; and ControlCenter.
• The fairly useless ones are Live; Discspeed/Drivespeed; Rescue Agent; InfoTool; PhotoSnap; and BackItUp.
• The one to actively avoid is: InCD.

Labels: software, video

posted by Bruce Berls at 6/03/2009 01:09:00 AM | permalink

Adobe Acrobat has been the target for some very nasty attacks by the bad guys this year. In March, all versions of Acrobat got a major update to close a hole that theoretically allowed a computer to be possessed just by hovering over a link to an evil PDF file.

It was one of the scariest bugs in recent memory but it didn’t stop there. New exploits emerged and new patches for Acrobat and Acrobat Reader were released a couple of weeks ago. (Here’s an article with more details.) If you are prompted to update your copy of Acrobat, you should get the update; if you’re not sure, you can manually check for updates by opening Acrobat and clicking on Help / Check for updates.

Adobe has also had to deal with a security hole in Flash Media Server – not a consumer product but still not the publicity it needed.

Lots of people got excited recently when a representative of security vendor F-Secure said that almost half of the targeted attacks in 2009 were directed at Acrobat Reader. Nasty stuff, if true. (Security vendors have occasionally shown the teensiest inclination to exaggerate security problems.)

Acrobat/Acrobat Reader is installed on almost every computer, especially office computers. Adobe is facing the same dilemma that Microsoft dealt with years ago – its products have to be updated on an ongoing basis or Adobe will take the blame when the bad guys take advantage of unforeseen bugs. Many people do not understand that the Acrobat updates are directed to security issues.

Adobe is going to adopt Microsoft’s strategy of releasing updates on a regular basis, starting with quarterly updates that will coincide with Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday” updates on the second Tuesday of the month. Here’s an article with the details. Adobe products alert you from the lower right corner of the screen when updates are ready. Pay attention and install the Adobe updates!

Incidentally, the F-Secure rep suggested using a different PDF reader. I don’t have strong feelings about that although I don’t quite see why it’s necessary; I have good experiences with Acrobat for the most part. Security attacks against Windows and Acrobat can almost always be defeated by being careful, using common sense, and keeping things up to date.

But lots of people prefer the FoxIt reader, and I’m sure it’s swell. There are many more. For what it’s worth, here’s an overview of many of the best-known alternative PDF readers by an author who reluctantly finds that each of them has some problems or is less than a perfect substitute. FoxIt is singled out because it has had several security problems in the last year, including some that Symantec said were circulating in the wild. FoxIt is perfectly safe – if you install updates regularly. (Sigh.)

Labels: Acrobat, security, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 6/01/2009 12:56:00 AM | permalink

Just a quick note about Google’s announcement of a new service named “Google Wave,” intended to mash up email, instant messaging, social networks, and real-time collaboration into a single space.

“Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

It’s a big, complex project that is nowhere near being ready for public consumption – it’s got some open source components and Google is hoping that developers will embrace and extend it. Bloggers and news outlets got terribly excited and wrote lots of words about how the world will change. They do that a lot.

I bring it up mostly so you can look at the screen shot that Google used to illustrate the wonderfulness of Google Wave. Make no mistake – I’m perfectly familiar with the idea that complicated programs can look intimidating on first glance but fully justify the effort to learn them. This might be swell.

But when I look at this screen shot and imagine what it would be like to use the program – or perhaps more to the point, to live the life where I’d find that helpful – well, I just feel very old. Because to me, this looks like a complete train wreck. It makes me want to keep my life simple so I never, ever have to use it. Click the picture to see it full-size and tell me if it doesn’t make you feel inadequate . . .

Labels: Google, software, web_services

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/30/2009 12:30:00 AM | permalink

It happens all the time. I stumble on something basic online that I’ve never seen or heard of before, even though I read about Windows technology for 16 or 17 hours every day to avoid working.

Apparently Microsoft has had the “Microsoft Update Catalog” since 2007 as a central source for IT professionals and network administrators to download hardware and software updates and drivers. According to the FAQ, it has the same content that is distributed through the Automatic Update system but searches can be done on a wide variety of fields:

These include the update title, description, applicable products, classifications, and knowledge base articles (e.g. KB9123456). When searching for hardware updates ("drivers"), you can also search for driver model, manufacturer, class, or a 4-part hardware id (e.g "PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_1677&SUBSYS_01AD1028").

I think this would have saved me a lot of time in the last couple of years. I don’t recall ever seeing a reference to it before. One more shortcut for the Favorites page (under Computers / Microsoft)!

Labels: hardware, Microsoft, software, web_services

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/22/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

I’ve been a fan of the New York Times Reader for a long time. New version 2.0 was just released, bringing a few refinements to a winning presentation. The Times Reader is a software program that displays the contents of the New York Times on your computer in a way that is much more appealing than visiting nytimes.com or other news sites using your web browser. It’s not quite the same as a newspaper but it’s not a bad substitute.

The New York Times Reader is now built on Adobe Air, which means it runs on Macs and Linux computers in addition to Windows PCs.

As before, the program adjusts to any screen or window size and never needs scrolling - no scroll bars, ever. That’s a huge step forward for comfortable browsing, probably the most important thing about the program.

Font sizes are fully adjustable and stories flow naturally to fit regardless of font size. Content is stored locally on your computer and updated automatically at regular intervals, so everything appears instantly. (That means it's also available offline - you can flip open your laptop on the plane and read the news. The program holds a week’s worth of newspapers at all times.) Controls are intuitive. Stories can be annotated and stored and printed and mailed and anything else you might want to do. There's a powerful Search mechanism and some cool ways to display pages for browsing. Ads are unobtrusive.

The new version closely mirrors the articles in the print edition, but also adds additional photos and videos. Updating is far faster than the original version and articles are updated more frequently through the day, with easy access to recently updated items.

You can try it for free and read the front page. Full access is free for home delivery subscribers, available by subscription for $3.45/week to everyone else. I highly recommend it for news junkies.

Here’s a blog from the New York Times with lots of information about the new version of the Reader, and here are some additional details from Adobe. The team that developed the software at Adobe has its own site about the project. Good technology!

Labels: software, web_services

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/14/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Here’s one more tip about LogMeIn Pro that you might not discover right away. Imagine that your subscription is set up and the software is running on your office computer. You’re going to sit down routinely at your home computer to connect to the office.

You can always go to the LogMeIn web site and log in with your email address and password, then connect to the office computer from the control panel. You’ll be happier, though, if you follow a couple of steps to create a desktop shortcut on your home computer that connects you directly to your office computer with a single click.

Log into the online LogMeIn control panel at home and click on “Edit” by the name of the office computer.

On the Settings screen, look for “Desktop Shortcut.”

On the next screen is an icon that can be dragged out of your browser and dropped on your desk. Clicking on the desktop icon will take you directly to your office computer.

Not bad, eh?

Labels: remote, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/11/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

When I talk about the “learning curve” associated with new software, I have two things in mind. One is the obvious part – learning the basic functions of how something works. That’s where many people stop. Let me encourage you to look around a little bit just in case you can discover one or two more things that you didn’t know about. If you’re lucky, you’ll find something wonderful and change some deep part of your computer routine for the better. (Vista is loaded with them.) Here’s an example from LogMeIn Pro.

If you need to transfer a large file to someone and you’re a LogMeIn Pro subscriber, you have an elegant, unexpected way to send that file without clogging up your email pipes.

Open the folder with the large file and right-click on it. Follow the menus to Send To / LogMeIn – Sharing.

When you click on LogMeIn – Sharing, you’ll be able to type a description (the file name, by default), and set limits on the number of downloads and how long this sharing will be active. You’ll see what that means in a minute.

When you click OK, you’ll get a window with a lengthy URL. Click Copy to transfer it to the clipboard.

Start an email message. Click Paste to paste the URL into the message.

When the recipient gets the message and clicks on the link, they’ll see this screen:

The recipient will click on the “Download Your File” button and get a standard Save/Cancel dialog. They’ll save the file on their computer. Simple. Anyone can do it.

Here’s the cool part. The file never leaves your computer until the recipient downloads it. It’s being downloaded directly from your computer. It’s not being uploaded in an email message; it’s not being transferred to some online server. The LogMeIn server puts the recipient directly in touch with the file on your computer, and does it in a way that is completely secure.

Because the transfer goes directly from your computer to the recipient, there is no limit whatsoever on the size of the file. You can see why you want to set limits on the number of times the file can be downloaded and the number of days the link is alive – that way you won’t have a link escape and get the world downloading that file from your computer.

Isn’t that great! It’s the easiest, most intuitive solution I know to the problem of sending a large file with a minimum of technical fuss.

There are two things to remember:

• This creates a link for a single file. If you need to transfer multiple files, you’ll create a link for each one and the recipient will have to download each one separately.
• The recipient can only download a file while your computer is turned on. If you’re running LogMeIn Pro, your computer is probably left on continuously anyway – that’s required for your remote access.

I love this feature. Try it!

Labels: file_sharing, remote, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/08/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Many people are looking for an easy way to use their home or office computer remotely. I’m starting to push LogMeIn Pro as the best way for many people to set up their remote access.

Remote access to a computer at another location has obvious appeal for people leaving an office who would benefit from being able to get on the office computer after hours. Or perhaps you have a notebook computer and it would help to access the home computer to run Quicken or get an address. Most of the remote access choices allow you to use any computer for the connection – you can connect to the office as easily from an Internet cafe as from your home computer or notebook. We’ve come a long way from the days of PCAnywhere, which required installation of the program and elaborate configuration on each computer.

Businesses running Small Business Server have an elegant system for remote access to office computers. Bigger companies frequently have something set up for employees, and Microsoft is rapidly improving the remote access options in Windows Server 2008. This is addressed to the rest of you that don’t already have a remote option.

Typically, remote services install a bit of software on the computer to be controlled that sends out a little beacon to the servers running the remote service. The big servers can follow that beacon back to the computer at any time and start the software that sends pictures of the screen to computers at remote locations.

Microsoft’s new service Live Mesh includes built-in free support for remote connections to computers running the software. It works easily and smoothly but there’s a problem: it’s slow. All too often, screens paint agonizingly slowly and menus creep into place instead of popping. As near as I can tell, Mesh handles remote control by sending all the traffic through Microsoft’s central servers, which slows things down. Other programs use the beacon to make contact but then put your two computers directly in touch with each other, allowing the very-efficient remote desktop protocol to work quickly.

LogMeIn is one of the long-standing competitors in the world of remote services. The others (GoToMyPC, WebEx PCNow, even Dell [!]) are probably just fine – LogMeIn happens to be the one I’m most familiar with and I know it has a good reputation at all levels. (LogMeIn Rescue is the service that powers the remote support tool that my clients see so often.)

A subscription to LogMeIn Pro costs about ten dollars per month; a subscription allowing up to five computers to be controlled in a unified account currently costs twenty dollars per month, an introductory price that will go up after a year. You can try it free for thirty days. You can continue using a basic version of LogMeIn for free after thirty days but I think the extra features justify the Pro subscription fee for most people.

I’m not going to list all of the features in LogMeIn Pro but I want to mention a couple of the ones that make it stand apart.

• The controls and menus are laid out beautifully. It’s more intuitive than many of the other programs. Live Mesh also has clear and concise controls but it doesn’t include many other important features and it suffers from a few glitches that need to be fixed.
• The paid version of LogMeIn Pro supports remote printing, allowing you to sit at home and bring up a Quickbooks report on your office computer, then print it on your home printer. That’s always been hard to do and there are no guarantees of success but LogMeIn Pro does better than almost any other remote service. (Small Business Server 2003 supports remote printing but has always been difficult to configure, frequently failing on USB printers. SBS 2008 uses new remote printing technology and almost always works. Mesh and the free version of LogMeIn don’t have any support for remote printing.)
• LogMeIn Pro handles file transfers between the two computers better than any of the others. You can either drag and drop files between the local and remote computers, or use a very easy file transfer display.
• If your LogMeIn Pro subscription covers multiple computers, you can set up sub-accounts and let employees or family members access their own computers but not someone else’s.

There’s an extra bonus feature for file sharing in LogMeIn Pro that I’ll save for tomorrow. It might be worth the cost of admission by itself.

Labels: remote, SBS, software, web_services

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/07/2009 12:44:00 AM | permalink

Vista is more than two years old and has achieved the dubious distinction that Windows XP achieved at about the same time: installing updates on a new computer has become an arduous, time-consuming pain in the butt.

I took two new Dell Optiplex 760 computers out of the box today. They ship with a lean, streamlined configuration that has virtually no craplets (unwanted software) to uninstall.

When Vista is started the first time, if you check the “recommended” box for automatic updates, it immediately starts to download the first round of updates. I’ve learned that the best thing to do with a brand new Vista computer is to put it online and walk away.

The first round of Vista updates were about 100Mb and took 15-20 minutes to download and install on a standard DSL line.

After the system restarted, I opened Windows Update and clicked the box to “install updates for more products.” That allows the Automatic Update system to take over the job of installing updates for Office as well as Windows. Then I sent the systems out to check for updates.

If you manually check for updates on a Vista computer today, you’ll be offered Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2. The two computers today lined those up along with all the remaining Vista and Office updates since Dell last updated its hard drive image.

It was 425Mb of updates and took 45-60 minutes on each computer.

Sigh.

Dell is pre-installing some of the Windows Live programs now. I usually suggest that people take a look at Windows Live Photo Gallery, one of the friendliest photo programs. Since the Windows Live programs were updated recently, that means a trip through the Windows Live Installer, which offers to install five other unneeded programs (no) and change the browser home page (no) while it installs the updates for Windows Live Photo Gallery plus the other pre-installed Live programs – another 15-20 minute process.

Adobe Acrobat doesn’t insist on its update right away but I know it will ask eventually, and the Acrobat update is seriously important. Another 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile Java keeps popping up with User Account Control windows for permission to install the latest update. Clicking on OK doesn’t seem to do anything to make Java happy – it just goes away again without really following up. Eventually it turns up with an icon down by the clock that starts the update process, where it tries to install the MSN toolbar (no) along with the latest update. Sun releases updates for Java every 48 hours, I think, and it does not uninstall earlier versions, leading to a ridiculous list of Java crud in the list of installed programs.

Still, it’s safe to install updates to Java, as long as they come from the Java icon by the clock. (Never install anything suggested by a popup window on a web site! You knew that, right?)

That’s a long way to go before installing a line-of-business program or setting up printers or any of the hundred other things that make the computer actually usable. There’s no end in sight, either – Microsoft just finished Vista Service Pack 2, Firefox has been releasing updates frantically in the last few weeks for horrid security holes, and the list goes on and on. (Mac users are waiting for the 80 updates and bug fixes in Mac OS X 10.5.7, which is on a separate track from the random releases of security updates for Mac OS X 10.5.6 and a stream of updates for Safari and iTunes and Quicktime. You know the grass is not greener over there, right?)

Labels: computers, IE, Office, Outlook, photos, software, Vista

posted by Bruce Berls at 5/01/2009 09:30:00 AM | permalink

Previously:
Backups - Introduction
Backups - Data Backups vs. Drive Images
Backups - External Hard Drives
Backups - Software for Data Backups
Backups - Online Backups
Backups - Image-Based Backups
Backups - Windows Home Server
Backups - Small Business Server
Backups – Recommendations

There was an announcement today of a new backup product that caught my eye. Seagate is introducing an external hard drive with specialized software for backups that looks very attractive.

Seagate Replica is intended to be as simple as possible, literally requiring nothing more than plugging it into a USB port and clicking OK on a license agreement. A bit of software is installed, a new icon appears by the clock, and the drive begins backing up your computer – no fuss, no decisions.

Replica begins by creating an image of your computer’s hard drive, then starts backing up changed files continuously, every time a file is changed. If the drive is disconnected for a while, it does an incremental backup when it’s reconnected.

There is a file browser intended to be similar to Apple’s Time Machine; Replica keeps multiple versions of files so you can pick and choose from earlier versions of files to restore. (Vista Business already has a similar capability but Microsoft did nothing to make it visible or easy to use, letting Apple take all the credit for Time Machine. If you’re running Vista Business or Ultimate, open up your Documents folder and right-click a document or folder, then click on Properties. Take a look at the Previous Versions tab. You might be surprised. It ought to be one of the most powerful features of Vista but it’s completely hidden.) The Seagate Replica software runs on any version of Windows XP or Vista.

And like other image-based backup software, you can replace a crashed hard drive on your computer with a new one, boot from the Replica CD, and restore your computer from the image within a few minutes. (There’s no indication that it can do a hardware independent restore to a different PC; my guess is that it cannot. That’s a hard thing to do.)

Replica is scheduled to ship in May. A 250Gb drive will be $129; a 500Gb drive will be $199. The larger drive can be used with more than one PC but backups don’t happen across the network – using it with multiple computers requires carrying the drive around and plugging in the USB cable at each one. The drive does backups, nothing else – you can’t copy files manually onto the drive.

The prices seem fair – quite a bit more expensive than a comparable drive would be without the special software, but worthwhile if the software performs as advertised and backups get done that otherwise might not happen. Really, that’s worth any price!

This is a kind of post that I normally shy away from – rewriting a press release before anyone has any hands-on experience with a new device. There’s always the possibility that Replica will have bugs or problems that aren’t apparent yet. I’m optimistic – a few people have been using it in the real world and seem happy, and the technology behind it is nothing new. Seagate has really just written a nice front-end to the same volume shadow copy service that has been around for years. I thought Microsoft would have done this before now, to be honest.

This looks good! I’d encourage you to look at the comments on the usual online shopping sites next month after it’s released and consider buying it for your individual PCs if no crippling problems emerge.

Labels: backup, computers, hardware, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by Bruce Berls at 4/28/2009 12:03:00 AM | permalink

If you’re running the free version of AVG antivirus, you may have seen a window appear unexpectedly in the middle of your screen.

That’s a legitimate message. But let’s take a step back, because it reflects poor judgment on AVG’s part. That’s not how I expect to be notified of a program upgrade. When a program runs an icon by the clock, I’m accustomed to a bubble in the lower right corner from that icon notifying me of an upgrade – just like AVG does when it’s getting virus definition updates. When you see an unexpected popup window onscreen, I want you to be skeptical and cautious. The bad guys can spell “AVG” just as well as the real company!

When you click on “Download now,” you’ll be taken to AVG’s web site – and that’s the best indication that things are okay. Learn to look in the address bar to see if the name of the web site matches the page. Internet Explorer 8 (the new version of IE) highlights the meaningful part of the web site name, making it harder to obscure the name in a bunch of other codes. Take a look at the way “avg.com” is highlighted in the address bar below:

AVG’s free antivirus program provides quiet, adequate protection for most people against viruses and spyware. The AVG company should be congratulated for doing a wonderful thing for the world. I can’t blame them for wanting to make money! Still, screens like this irritate me.

See the link for the free version? It’s in the little tiny type down at the very bottom, after the advertisement for the paid version and the big buttons for the paid version and the link to download a trial of the paid version and in general after every single thing has been tried to fool you into signing up for the paid version.

I clicked the little tiny link yesterday and I got a confirmation that my version of free AVG would be upgraded within a few hours. So far, 36 hours later, no change. I’ve seen one report online from someone who had to download and run the setup file for version 8.5 manually and choose “Repair” from the setup options. Nothing is easy!

Labels: security, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 4/20/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Let me give you some updated generalizations that may help you get started when you’re shopping for a new computer.

Generalizations are dangerous things. Not everyone ought to make the same choices. You’ll be driven by your budget, your level of tech knowledge, any specific goals or desires that drive you, considerations of style or size or weight, and many other things. The term “computer” is fragmenting into devices that range from classic big towers under a desk down to two pound netbooks. Take this advice and modify it to meet your needs!

• PROCESSOR  Intel's lineup is a blur but in general, get Intel Core 2 Duo processors or better, not a low end Celeron or an older “Pentium Dual Core” processor. The clock speeds are impossible to compare; instead look for a step up from a smaller L2 cache to a 4Mb or 6Mb L2 cache, a bit of technical wizardry that's worth a hundred dollars or so to speed things up. That being said, all of the processors on the market will serve you well - processor speed is no longer the defining point of a computer.
• MEMORY  I strongly suggest 4Gb of RAM for a new computer. That’s the most memory that a 32-bit operating system can address. If you’re getting a 64-bit operating system (see below), think about getting 8Gb or more. Nobody ever regrets buying extra memory.
• VIDEO  It is essential to look for a video card with 256Mb of RAM! There are many more differences between video cards than that but you'll get what you need if you just focus on that single number. If your new computer doesn't have a 256Mb video card, you'll be disappointed in ways large and small - perhaps you might just not be able to turn on Vista's eye candy, but at worst the computer's entire performance will be compromised. On a notebook, get the best video card available. On a netbook, wait until it’s possible to get Nvidia’s graphics technology later this year.
• HARD DRIVE  You'll get lots of storage space with any new computer, but the speed of the hard drive is a new and important consideration. The speed is measured in RPM; you want a speed of 7200RPM or above. If you see 5400RPM, avoid it - the whole system will be slow regardless of the other specs. (You'll run into this problem more often on notebooks.)
• OPERATING SYSTEM  Vista Business is the best choice for most people; get Vista Home Premium if you're interested in one of its specific features, but be aware of what you're missing.
• 32-BIT vs. 64-BIT OPERATING SYSTEM  There are two different versions of Vista on the market. Any new computer can run either a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Vista; one meaningful difference is that the 64-bit version can address more than 4Gb of RAM. We will all become comfortable with this idea in the next couple of years but at the moment it’s causing some confusion – for example, Costco has been selling cheap HP desktop PCs without calling attention to the “64-bit” reference.

• The 64-bit operating system needs different drivers for devices hooked up to it, and some programs will need special attention before they run properly. Drivers are becoming easier to find but there are still no guarantees that any particular printer or scanner or program will work with 64-bit Vista. If you are technically proficient, this is not a big deal. If you’re not, then each device and each program will be a little adventure in discovering how to make it work, with no guarantee of success. Buy carefully!
• OPTICAL DRIVE  Make sure you get a drive that can read DVDs - software is being distributed on DVDs now. Almost every computer includes this routinely now.
• SOFTWARE  If you're ordering from Dell, you can get Microsoft Office preinstalled at an attractive price. Other manufacturers almost never include MS Office. Make sure your budget is ready for the $150 Home and Student Edition of Office if the computer will be used at home (which does not include Outlook), or $300 and up for the standard versions.

When you buy your new computer, think about buying these accessories at the same time:

• SECURITY  Your first job with a new computer is installing a security program. Remove any preinstalled software from Norton or McAfee. If a 2009 version of software from a reputable company came with the computer, activate it and bring it up to date. If not, follow this advice.
• If you want to trust me instead of reading all those words, buy Trend Micro Internet Security 2009.
• BACKUPS  Buy a 750Gb-1Tb USB external hard drive. Read about backups and come up with a plan.
• If you want to trust me instead of reading all those words, buy the Western Digital Elements 1Tb drive.
• If you got Vista Business, use Complete PC Backup to create an image of the hard drive as soon as Windows is up to date and you’ve installed your basic programs. Make a note on your calendar to update that image once a month, and set up Vista’s basic backup program to do backups daily or weekly.
• Or, for even more effective backups, buy ShadowProtect Desktop Edition.
• UPS  Replace your old surge protectors with an APC UPS for better protection against electricity glitches.

Happy shopping!

Labels: backup, computers, hardware, software, Vista

posted by Bruce Berls at 4/17/2009 12:50:00 AM | permalink

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of Microsoft’s web browser, released in final form a few weeks ago. Starting soon, it will be offered to you by the Automatic Update system. The rollout will begin in the third week of April but it will not hit everyone at the same time – you may not see it for several weeks after that. It will be presented as a “High Priority” update for Windows XP users, and an “Important” update for Vista users.

IE 8 will not be installed automatically. You have to click an “Install” button before it will go forward.

You should install IE 8. I don’t see any reason to delay or avoid it.

Your first impression will be a yawn because it is very similar to Internet Explorer 7 – and that’s good! Most of us are fed up with change for change’s sake. This won’t disturb you much.

You should take the time to become familiar with the new browser and its new features! Your web browser is the program that defines your computer experience these days. Much of your time on the computer is spent in this one program. You need your web browser to be fast, stable, and secure, and the current versions of all the browsers more or less deliver that. But there are differences between IE 7, IE 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, and the others, and it’s worth some attention to learn what those differences are and whether they matter to you.

IE 8’s performance is similar to IE 7 and other browsers: despite what you may read in the reviews, there are no important real world differences between them in starting up and opening pages. (I will enthusiastically support whatever different conclusion you draw about whatever browser you decide just blows your hair back. Religious convictions are wonderful things if they make you happy.) IE 7 and IE 8 are both susceptible to being slowed down by badly written add-ons, as is Firefox. A bit of attention to Tools / Manage Add-Ons can fix a lot of problems.

IE 8’s security is improved over IE 7, which was already quite good, and it’s a step ahead of other browsers in some ways. There’s another layer to the phishing filter that adds even more malware protection.

IE 8’s compatibility is interesting. For years Microsoft has successfully pushed proprietary standards for web pages on the world, much to the disgust of web developers and competitors. Now Microsoft is making an effort with IE 8 to support open standards, like a good citizen – and the odd result is that many web sites don’t display correctly because they are based on the old proprietary standards. Microsoft has done some clever work to minimize that problem with a “compatibility view” that displays those pages correctly. It will be handled automatically by the browser for most web sites – Microsoft is keeping a list of web sites that need the compatibility view and handing it out behind the scenes so the feature gets turned on and off automatically. If a page isn’t displaying correctly, a click on the “compatibility view” button will frequently fix the problem and IE 8 will remember the setting for future visits.

And finally, I expect each of you will give me different feedback about IE 8’s functionality and new features. Personally, I’ve turned off all the toolbars, the enhanced “Favorites” bar, and other features at the top, making it as streamlined as Firefox or Google Chrome.

By default, you’ll see more than that at the top of the screen, including new buttons that go along with new features - “web slices” and “accelerators” – that might become valuable to you. There are new privacy features, including “InPrivate” browsing that prevents the computer from retaining any record of web sites visited – no cookies, no record of searches, no history, no temporary files. (It is theoretically possible that this could be used for some other purpose than visiting porn sites but researchers do not expect to find any evidence of that in the real world.) Tabs are color-coded to keep them organized for those of you that open lots of pages together, and crashes on a page on one tab are much less likely to bring down the entire program. There are more changes, big and small, that you’ll notice as you keep using IE 8.

I haven’t found anything that makes me nervous about having you install IE 8. You might not use all of the new features but I don’t think you’ll resent anything. It’s nowhere near as much of an adjustment as the shift to IE 7 when all the buttons moved around.

Paul Thurrott has done his usual thorough job describing the new features. Take a minute and read his article! Among other things, he goes through the screens that you’ll see during installation, which might be helpful when the time comes.

If you want to get a head start, you can install Internet Explorer 8 any time from this page. Good luck!

Labels: IE, Internet, Microsoft, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by Bruce Berls at 4/13/2009 12:19:00 AM | permalink

Previously:
Backups - Introduction
Backups - Data Backups vs. Drive Images
Backups - External Hard Drives
Backups - Software for Data Backups
Backups - Online Backups

If you missed the earlier lectures, then go back and review the class notes about the difference between backing up individual data files and backing up an image of your entire hard drive.

You don’t care what a backup program does while it’s working. You only care about what happens when you need to restore your computer after a crash. The cost of the hardware is trivial compared to the other costs and difficulty of getting back up and running. Hard drives are cheap; if your hard drive has to be replaced (after it stops working, say, or after a nasty bit of malware invades it), you can replace the hardware easily.

Then, if you have an image of the hard drive, you can restore your computer to exactly the way it was at the moment that image was created – all the programs, all the settings, all the user accounts and desktops and mail and documents and photos, everything, in a single operation. When all goes well, that can be done in 15 minutes or so. (Use the term “bare metal recovery” in conversation – people will respect you.)

Vista’s Complete PC Backup creates that kind of image. You use the Complete PC Backup program to create an image of your computer at a moment when your programs are installed, Windows is up to date, and things are nice and stable.

In a crisis, you’d buy and install a replacement hard drive that is the same size or larger than the old hard drive, then start the computer from the Vista installation DVD and choose Repair your computer / Windows Complete PC Restore. The whole process is described with screen shots on this page.

When the computer restarts, you’re back to your position when the image was created.

The Complete PC Backup program cannot be scheduled easily and it takes a while to run. You’re not going to want to do this every day. It makes more sense to update the image on a schedule – once a month, once every two months – and also use a program that backs up your data automatically every day or every week. You can use the image to restore your computer to what it was like a month ago, then restore your data to what it was like a few days ago. That process takes far less time than installing Windows from scratch, then installing each program individually, and only then restoring your data.

Unfortunately, Complete PC Backup is only a feature in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. If you have one of the Vista Home Editions, it’s not there, and it was never part of Windows XP.

The best backup software on the market is ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3 from Storagecraft. It costs under a hundred dollars, including a year of support. You should buy it.

ShadowProtect runs on Windows XP and Vista. It creates images of your hard drive on an external hard drive or a network device. It seems remarkable but it updates those images every hour, with no impact on the computer’s performance. You can recover individual files or restore an entire hard drive from any of those backups – you can go back to a version of a document from three hours ago, or four days ago. You can store as many backups as the backup device can hold, so you can go back for weeks if you like.

It’s not quite as simple to set up as Vista’s built-in utility. You might want some help to be sure it’s doing its chores.

But it does one more trick which might be crucial. ShadowProtect includes support for a “hardware independent restore,” and that is very good stuff indeed.

An image-based backup is very closely tied to the specific computer that created it. You can swap a hard drive for a similar hard drive without any fuss, but what if the computer itself has to be replaced? Normally you would not be able to use a backup image on completely different hardware – different motherboard, different processor, different networking.

ShadowProtect does some special tricks to accomplish that. It can be tricky – you might wind up paying me or working with Storagecraft’s support team to get past some hard parts. But it is simply miraculous that it can be done at all, and the odds of success are actually quite high. (Trust me – the more you know about the technical details of it, the more magical it becomes.)

At least one other company makes a similar product with a good reputation – Acronis True Image Home 2009. I don’t have any experience with it but reportedly it is also high quality. I’ve had such good luck with ShadowProtect in the last couple of years that I have an almost mystical faith in it, so I’m going to recommend it single-mindedly.

So let’s start to summarize a bit.

• ShadowProtect Desktop Edition is a sufficient backup solution for a home or office desktop computer.
• Adding data backup to a different place (online storage, for example) would be a nice addition.
• A complete backup strategy can be created by running Vista’s Complete PC Backup every month or two, and setting Vista’s data backup program to run automatically.
• Adding data backup to a different place (online storage, for example) would be a nice addition.
• Other data backup programs and services work fine but personally I’d want to have two different methods at all times – backup to an external hard drive by some program, AND backup to an online service, for example.

Next: backups for small groups with Windows Home Server.

Labels: backup, computers, software, Vista, web_services, WinXP

posted by Bruce Berls at 4/02/2009 01:09:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft announced today that it is discontinuing its Encarta encyclopedia in all of its various incarnations. The DVDs will be off the market by June, existing subscriptions will stop getting updates later this year, and the MSN Encarta web sites will be turned off on October 31.

For the last few years, Microsoft has been marketing Encarta with Microsoft Student, templates and learning guides aimed at middle and high school students. Microsoft Student never really got much traction and will also be withdrawn from the market.

I always liked Encarta. The articles weren’t very deep but the multimedia presentation was pretty compelling – it had music from around the world, thousands of photos and videos, and inventive timelines and graphs. I went looking for an online atlas last week and couldn’t find anything that was as nicely presented as Encarta’s atlas.

Microsoft only gives one reason for getting out of the business:

“People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”

Well, yes, and it can be stated in one word: Wikipedia. According to one Internet ratings service, Wikipedia got 97 percent of the visits that Web surfers in the United States made to online encyclopedias in January. Encarta’s authors could never get Encarta to be as deep or up to date as the army of contributors to Wikipedia. The New York Times has an article today about how Wikipedia grew to be one of the top ten global web sites, “a rags-to-rags story of world domination in information that could only have happened in the Internet age.”

Alas, poor Encarta! I knew it well.

Labels: Microsoft, parents, software

posted by Bruce Berls at 3/31/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Some random troubleshooting notes.

I don’t know why Word 2007 got cranky. My poor computer is working hard these days as I load it up with programs and services, so maybe it was my fault. A couple of days ago, Word developed three symptoms: it stopped opening when I clicked on a .DOCX file in Explorer; it stopped responding to mouse clicks in a document, although I could still type and move around with arrow keys; and it started crashing every time I saved a file or closed it.

I was suspicious of a recent program that I had installed even though I knew it was old and had compatibility problems, so I did a system restore to the day before the problem developed. No change.

Word 2007 can be opened without any add-ins by clicking on Start (Vista) or Start / Run (WinXP) and typing in

winword /a

(There are all kinds of switches to start Word in different modes – safe mode, without startup macros, with a particular template loaded, etc. Search for “startup switch” in the Word help file.)

When I turned off the add-ins, Word operated normally but still didn’t open when a .DOCX file was clicked on and still crashed when it was closed.

Word’s add-ins can be seen under Word Options / Add-Ins / Manage COM Add-Ins. I had three add-ins: an add-in to open and save files directly to Office Live Workspace, plus tools from Acrobat 8 and SnagIt 9. I uninstalled the Office Live Workspace add-in (not using it), and uninstalled the Office add-ins for the other two programs from Control Panel / Uninstall a Program (highlight each program and click “Change” to remove just the add-in but leave the rest of each program intact).

That helped Word behave more normally when it was open but didn’t get to the other problems.

Office 2007 has a “repair” function that works wonders. It’s always worth trying when the Office programs have difficult problems. Go to Control Panel / Uninstall a Program, highlight Microsoft Office 2007 and click on “Change” – you’ll see the option to repair the suite. It’s fully automated and safe to run. Office 2007 also adds a thorough diagnostic program that you can find on the Start menu or in each program under Options / Resources.)

Neither one helped.

I finally stumbled on a registry key that apparently can be safely deleted to resolve odd Word problems. I deleted

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Office\12.0\Word\Data

Voila! Everything was back to normal. I reinstalled the Acrobat add-in with no difficulty. Just another completely senseless problem with no cause and no obvious solution – typical! All it took was two hours of headscratching and occasional weeping.

Obligatory warning: This is an interesting anecdote about the difficulty of solving odd problems, not an instruction manual. Careless registry editing can cause irreversible damage to your computer. Do you see the word "irreversible"? Do you have it clearly in mind? You can kill your computer in seconds by mucking around in the registry. Don't go there unless you are 100% sure of what you're doing.

Labels: Office, software

posted by bruceb at 3/20/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Previously:
BACKUPS – INTRODUCTION
BACKUPS – DATA vs. DRIVE IMAGE
BACKUPS – EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
BACKUPS – SOFTWARE FOR DATA BACKUPS

There are dozens of services to help you back up your data online.

• Some programs include built-in services for online backups of the program data. (Examples: Quicken & Quickbooks; Adobe Photoshop Elements.)
• Services come and go like wildflowers to copy data to online servers, where it will be safe until the backup company goes out of business. A quick Google search for “online backup” will turn up too many choices. I don’t know anything about this collection of reviews but at least it focuses on only eight of the online backup services and most of the names have been around for a while – Mozy, Carbonite, BackBlaze, IDrive, and more. All of them are cheap, a few dollars per month. (If you enjoy being confused, here’s another set of reviews that reaches wildly different conclusions.)

Typically the online services install a bit of software that runs continuously with an icon down by the clock. You’ll identify what data to backup (with more or less effort), then the software will copy that data to the online vault. Some of them run at scheduled times, others claim to run kind of continuously. Some of the services will keep different versions of files as they change, some claim to use bandwidth intelligently so the backup doesn’t choke off your Internet connection, some offer unlimited space for a fixed price and others charge by the amount of space used by your backups.

I don’t have any strong reason to steer you to one or the other. Any of them will protect your data if you understand how it works, set it up correctly, and make sure it’s doing its job. Here are a few thoughts:

• Online backups are surprisingly slow! If you’re backing up several gigabytes of data, the first backup might take literally a week to finish. Don’t panic.
• Mozy has been around forever. I had a poor experience with it a couple of years ago but that could happen with any of these services. The Mozy software used to put up this message when a backup job was starting:

“Reticulating spines.” See, it’s a joke – it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just a geeky sounding phrase from a Sims game. It’s not clear that the startup of a backup program is a good time to make a funny joke. I don’t know if Mozy still tells funny jokes.

• BackBlaze is worth considering because of the cool video on the home page of the woman setting fire to a notebook – plus it’s easy to set up and only five dollars per month. To give you an idea of how opinions vary, here’s a writeup from somebody who found the simplicity was just right, and here’s somebody who got pissy because it was too simple.
• I signed up with JungleDisk because backups are stored on Amazon’s S3 servers, so theoretically my data can be recovered even if JungleDisk goes out of business. I’m not positive that’s true but it makes me feel better. JungleDisk is much more flexible – it can be run on multiple computers and it offers complete freedom to choose folders to back up. That works if you have enough knowledge to identify the folders with important data.
• If your computer crashes, you’ll run a routine from the service to restore your data. Some of the services let you access your backed up files from any computer in a web browser; others require that their software be installed on the repaired computer to run the restore process. It will be a slow process in either case. A few of the services will send you DVDs with your data after a crash for an extra charge.

Let me make one suggestion. I want each of you to have two methods of backing up your computers. If you like the idea of using an online service for backups, choose one and make it work - but also do backups onto an external hard drive or one of the other types of backups I’ll be discussing in the next few days.

Next: Image-based backups.

Labels: backup, Internet, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 3/18/2009 01:18:00 AM | permalink

If your computer has Adobe Acrobat 9 or Acrobat Reader 9, you should have already installed an update to version 9.1, issued last week. Open the program and click on Help / About to check the version, or click on Help / Check for Updates to see if you’re up to date.

If you have any version of Acrobat / Acrobat Reader 7 or 8, Adobe is scheduled to issue an update on Wednesday. Install it when you are prompted, or check for it manually on Wednesday or Thursday.

These are critical updates! In January Adobe was notified of a hole that lets malformed PDFs do terrible things to your computer with almost no interaction. There are bad guys pushing out PDFs that can possess your computer and kill household pets. It’s one of those security issues that is so awful that security-minded IT folks have been hospitalized just thinking about it. If you knew the details, you’d be seriously spooked.

One researcher created a proof of concept and posted the explanation along with a simple video. Go watch it! The bad PDF crashes the computer: (1) when it is selected in a list of files by highlighting it with a single click; (2) when the list of files is changed to thumbnail view, without any further interaction with the individual file at all; and (3) when the mouse cursor hovers over the file name, without any click or highlight. Think about that!

The same vulnerability could lead to a bad guy taking remote control of your computer or installing other bad software. It’s genuinely scary.

Adobe is taking some heat for being slow to get these patches out. You don’t need to get weird and be afraid of all PDF files, but be careful if you get any unexpected PDF email file attachments – and get these patches installed!

Labels: Acrobat, security, software

posted by bruceb at 3/17/2009 12:32:00 AM | permalink

Previously:
BACKUPS – INTRODUCTION
BACKUPS – DATA vs. DRIVE IMAGE
BACKUPS – EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES

I’ll mention a few ways that you can make a backup copy of your important files, but this is necessarily just an overview. Remember, the important things are:

(1) you have a copy of your data stored somewhere besides its primary storage on your computer;

(2) you know what program you’re using to make the backup copy and you set it up correctly; and

(3) you know how to tell if the backup copy is being updated periodically.

With that in mind, here are a few ways to do backups.

VISTA’S BUILT-IN BACKUP Vista includes a backup program that can be scheduled for automatic backups to an external hard drive or a networked computer or other network storage. (It can do backups to blank CDs but please, please don’t do that. It will take forever, it won’t burn the disks reliably or something will go wrong, and recorded CDs aren’t as long-lasting as you think they are.)

Vista’s backup program is inflexible. It will automatically back up all the files in several categories. Checking the box for “additional files” catches just about everything on the hard drive other than system files and program files (the files that run Windows and your other programs). You cannot exclude specific files or folders. If you have a folder full of large pictures and in your opinion that folder simply must not be backed up to save time or disk space or something, then Vista’s backup program will drive you crazy. The rest of you will find that this is simple and effective and it will keep you well protected.

Like all programs that back up your data, it will be quite an effort to recover your data if your computer completely crashes. You might have to reinstall Windows and your programs and then run the restore program to put those recovered files back into place. It might be easy to find your documents and pictures but it can be challenging to locate the restored data from different programs (e.g., email, Quicken/Quickbooks, or business or legal software) and put it into place so that newly installed versions of programs can use it.

WINDOWS LIVE ONECARE If you’re a OneCare user, its built-in backup program is similar to Vista’s backup program – good enough for many people, especially home users. It used to have some flexibility to add additional folders but that was removed to simplify it, meaning there is some uncertainty about whether data is being backed up from programs other than the obvious ones. That’s not a problem for most people. Many of the other security suites also now include simple backup software.

BUNDLED BACKUP SOFTWARE Many external hard drives will offer to install backup software automatically. If you don’t have any other backup plan, use the included software, as long as you observe the cardinal rule of all software now: take the time to learn how it works, how to set it up correctly, and how to know if it’s working. When you turn to me for help in a crisis, your backups will be useless unless you can tell me what backup program you used and where the software came from!

INDIVIDUAL PROGRAM BACKUPS If you run a program that offers to do a backup when it’s closed, always do the backup. Store the backup on that big external hard drive. It is far easier to restore an individual program from its own backup files than from the global backup of all data. When you are prompted by Quicken or Quickbooks or Timeslips or Time Matters or Act or any of the other programs with a built-in backup routine, always do the backup! Remember – that’s why you got the big external hard drive.

SYNCTOY Here is an explanation of Microsoft SyncToy, a simple program that copies everything in one folder to another folder. The idea is that you can do a perfectly good backup by dragging a copy of your files to the external hard drive; SyncToy automates that process. It takes a little more knowledge to set it up and it’s difficult to schedule SyncToy to update its copies automatically - you’d have to be diligent about running it regularly.

I won’t describe more specific programs because I’m not familiar enough with the others and I don’t have any strong reason to believe one is better than the others. If you look at backup software from other companies, bear in mind that you have to consider whether the company that makes it will still be in business when you need their help to recover from a crisis.

Next: basic information about online backups!

Labels: backup, OneCare, software

posted by bruceb at 3/11/2009 11:05:00 PM | permalink

If you click the wheel of your mouse on a link in IE7, the link will open in a new tab. (Click down like it’s a middle button, don’t just rotate the wheel.)

Did you know that? I didn’t know that. I thought I knew a lot of cool IE7 tab tricks, but I had to learn that one from my son. Wow, that’s way easier than remembering the Ctrl-click thing! These kids make me feel like such an old fogey sometimes . . .

Labels: IE, software

posted by bruceb at 3/02/2009 09:10:00 PM | permalink

Here’s a couple of tricks that might be worth learning!

When you click on a link in Internet Explorer, it’s not always easy to know what to expect – you might leave the page you’re on and go to the new page, but you might also open another copy of Internet Explorer in a new window. Internet Explorer can also open multiple tabbed pages in a single window. You can decide what happens!

• Hold the Shift key down and click a link to open a new IE window.
• Hold the Ctrl key down and click a link to open a page in a new tab in the same window.

You can also right-click any link and choose “Open in new tab” or “Open in new window.”

Tabbed windows can be handy! You can open new tabs by clicking on the little empty tab at the top of the IE window.

When you open a new tab, you might see a blank page or some fairly dull text. Personally, I prefer to have my home page appear on each new tab as a starting point. Click on Tools / Internet Options / Tabs – Settings to check a box.

When you’ve got several windows in tabs in an IE window, you can hit Ctrl-Tab to move through the tabs, one by one, without using the mouse.

There’s a built-in visual display of all your open tabs that’s quite nice. When more than one tab is open, you’ll see a little tab on the left with squares on it.

When you click on it, you’ll see thumbnails of all open pages. You can click on one to switch to it.

Now that I’ve gotten used to tabs, I frequently do all my Internet browsing in a single window. Happy tabbing!

Labels: IE, software

posted by bruceb at 2/26/2009 01:26:00 AM | permalink

It seems we’re constantly buying printers to replace the ones that break before their time. A quick word of advice if you buy an HP printer: don’t put that installation CD in the drive! The chances are good that you’ll wind up with hundreds of megabytes of bloated software that will muck up your nice shiny computer (and at worst thoroughly break it).

Always check the HP web site for the slimmest drivers that will support the basic functions – making the printer available to the computer for printing and scanning. You already have nice programs to take over from there.

There are frequently several different choices of drivers for any given printer on Vista or XP. Simple example – a choice between 38Mb “basic drivers” and 146Mb “full feature software and drivers.” Trust me – you don’t want the “full features.” (I’m deliberately not naming the particular models. I want you to check HP’s web site regardless of what model you get, just in case.)

On another model there’s a “basic print and scan driver” (119Mb!) as an alternative to the “full feature” software (507Mb!!) – but there’s also an even more streamlined driver for “IT Professional Use Only” that’s only 53Mb. Really, over 500Mb of software to install a printer? That’s just awful. And you wonder why your computer runs slowly?

Occasionally HP will refer to the smallest package as “corporate only.”

You may also be offered a “universal print driver.” HP has attempted to create a generic print driver that will work on many of its printers and simplify all this driver confusion. That’s a noble goal but my experience so far has been awful – I’ve been unable to make the “universal print driver” work correctly despite several attempts in different offices with several different printers. Hey, try it! Your mileage may vary. I’m just cynical and pessimistic.

Labels: hardware, printers, software

posted by bruceb at 2/25/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

When I got back from vacation, I got a quick lesson from Microsoft about how we get unwanted programs that slow down our computers, and how our computers are changed behind our back. It’s nothing underhanded or evil, just a reminder that we have to read every screen carefully before we click OK.

I’ve got Windows Live Messenger running on my computer. (Don’t send me instant messages. Maybe it’s a generational thing – I find them intrusive instead of convenient.) The message tonight was innocuous – a little window that said an update had been downloaded and was ready to install. Do I want to install it? Sure. I clicked OK.

Here’s the first screen that came up.

On the bottom left is a list of four programs that would be updated automatically, not just a single update for Messenger. Not really what I intended to start, but okay, I’ll take the latest versions of the programs that I use regularly.

But see those checkmarks in the upper left? If I click Install, I’m going to get a new toolbar in Internet Explorer, family controls that I don’t want on my office computer, and a connector for Outlook that has no relevance to my Exchange mailbox.

Those aren’t awful programs. Some people would find some of them to be quite useful. But almost no one needs all of them and to be honest, most of you don’t want any of them, not one little bit. Installing unnecessary programs by default is exactly what causes our computers to become cluttered and confusing.

I unchecked those boxes and watched as the installation program downloaded all the updates. (What about the message that said the updates had already been downloaded? They were kidding, apparently.) Five or ten minutes later, the computer had to be restarted. Restarted? For an update to an instant messenger? I’m guessing that some deep changes were made to the computer. Maybe it’s that list on the right – it’s not just an instant messenger, it’s “Visual Studio Runtime, Search Enhancement Pack, Sync Framework Runtime, Sync Framework Services,” whatever those things might be. Starting to see why your computer is running slow even though you don’t think you’ve changed anything?

After everything was installed, another screen came up.

The “search provider” checkbox would change the search box in the upper right corner of Internet Explorer, currently set to Google, of course. You’re not meant to notice the clause about how it would “prevent programs from interfering with this choice.” In other words, if Google cooks up something to change your upper right corner back, then “Live Search” is prepared to fight to the death. If you try to do it yourself, “Live Search” will throw up a couple of extra barriers before you’ll be allowed to win. (To be fair, Google plays exactly the same game and tries to lock itself into place when its toolbar is installed.)

(An interesting story about the Live Search service – Microsoft is frantically trying to make it interesting, adding rotating background images and trying to improve the search results. No one cares. No one uses it. Google’s market share just keeps increasing. In one of the more pathetic, sad promotions that I’ve seen recently, Microsoft introduced “Live Search Cashback” which offers to pay you if you’ll just use its search service for something, anything. Even cash bribes haven’t worked.)

The second checkbox will change your home page, which I assume is currently set to bruceb internet favorites. If you click Continue without looking, Internet Explorer will open up on MSN.com, a cluttered, unappealing piece of work. Yup, you’d start every single Internet Explorer session looking at headlines like these – taken from the middle of the MSN.com page right at this moment, god help us:

I think it’s fine that Microsoft offers the option to change everyone’s IE home page – but I don’t want those boxes checked by default! (You probably know this, but your home page can of course be anything you choose. Here are simple instructions if you need them.)

Microsoft is the model of restraint compared to other companies. Please always do a custom installation of new programs so that you only install things that are genuinely necessary, and watch those checkboxes!

Labels: IE, Microsoft, software

posted by bruceb at 2/23/2009 12:12:00 AM | permalink

I don’t use iTunes and I don’t want Apple’s version of Quicktime on my computer. I have a pretty low opinion of Apple’s skills at writing software for PCs.

If you have iTunes, you also have Quicktime. Or perhaps you’ve installed it separately. This isn’t for you. In fact, this isn’t for any of you unless you specifically need it and you know with confidence that you don’t already have Quicktime installed.

If you don’t have Quicktime, you may sooner or later wish you did. There are web sites that stream Quicktime videos, especially movie trailers, and you can’t watch unless Quicktime is installed. In my case, I came up against it because my camera takes low-resolution movies in .MOV format and I wanted to watch the videos of the kids doing ski jumps.

There are a couple of alternatives to Quicktime that will allow Quicktime videos to be played by your regular media player or by Internet Explorer with a minimum of fuss, and without all the extra crud that Apple includes.

This violates all my instincts. I don’t know anything about the software – I don’t know who wrote it, I don’t know if it’s any good. But there was a referral from a moderately trusted web site so I went ahead and installed QT Lite version 2.8. It only took a second – no restart required, no visible change to the computer, no icon by the clock, no new programs, no new network services, no hijacking my Internet Explorer file extensions. So far it appears to be exactly what was promised.

When I click on the movies, I get to watch my kids flying through the air. They look marvelous!

Labels: Apple, software, video

posted by bruceb at 2/20/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Small businesses running Microsoft Small Business Server have not had an easy time finding antivirus software.  Security suites designed for large companies are frequently complex, difficult to install and configure, and all too often require an inordinate amount of handholding.

On the other hand, every small business discovers a shortcoming of security software that is managed individually by each user: there's always someone who doesn't pay attention.  As a consultant collecting an hourly fee, I’m reluctant to log onto each workstation in a client’s office individually every couple of weeks to check whether updates have been installed and whether virus definitions are up to date.  These days though, the consequences of falling behind can be dire indeed.

Windows Live OneCare has offered a compromise for the smallest of offices, letting a single workstation monitor the status of a “circle" of computers in the network.  Theoretically that's limited to three computers, although I've successfully used it for larger groups.  I've got some clients who can and should continue to use OneCare with a central computer monitoring the group.

Small Business Server 2008 increases the desire for centrally managed security, because it does other management chores so well.  Windows Server Update Services, for example, takes over the task of downloading Windows updates, monitoring and installing the updates on each workstation, and reporting on results.  I had terrible experiences with WSUS when it was first released for Small Business Server 2003 R2, but the version integrated with Small Business Server 2008 is working flawlessly so far.

As I move around in the Small Business Server community online, I consistently see Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Advanced identified as the program of choice for Small Business Server networks. My experience installing it on my own SBS network has been beautiful so far - all the default choices were the right choices, installation on the workstations took only a moment, and no restart of the server or workstations was required. The program installed on the individual workstations is extremely light and unobtrusive.

The server-based security suites cost about $40.00 per user per year, more than the individual programs, and certainly more than OneCare and other antivirus programs in the last couple of years, which have sometimes cost almost nothing or been given away.  That cost will quickly be recovered, however, if I don't have to bill for checking the computers manually, and of course the cost is trivial compared to the cost of a computer or network brought down by out of date security software.

I’m going to settle on the Trend Micro suite and recommend it to my SBS clients. I expect quirks and glitches but at the moment I’m optimistic that it will serve you well.

Labels: computers, Microsoft, OneCare, SBS, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/09/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

In 2009, almost every security suite has been slimmed down and simplified. The vendors finally responded to years of criticism and have made their programs more stable, light on system resources, easier to understand, and less intrusive.

Although you can easily find comparisons showing that one or another antivirus and spyware program is more effective than another, the reality is that all of them are more or less equally effective – and you must use common sense and not click OK on everything, regardless of what security software is running.

FREE PRODUCTS

AVG still has a free bare-bones antivirus/spyware program, as does Avast. Either will protect you at home if you are careful to also install Windows updates and do backups.

SECURITY SUITES

The products from all the vendors are reportedly much improved. Each will have its own quirks and glitches but I don’t have any reason to steer you toward one in particular.

Here’s a thorough comparison of the leading suites from PC Magazine. I have very little hands-on experience but I can add a couple of extra impressions gleaned from surfing around and reading reviews and feedback.

Symantec claims that Norton Internet Security 2009 is completely rewritten, and the reviews agree that it has a very low impact on computer performance, as well as being less intrusive than earlier versions and easy to manage. That might be true. But Symantec has worked hard for more than ten years on its poor reputation and I think it deserves our skepticism and scorn for at least a while longer. You really have no idea how bad Symantec products have been! I want a lot more information before I tell you to trust a Norton product.

If you consider Norton, make sure you get Norton Internet Security 2009 and not the Norton 360 program, which is stinky.

McAfee continues to struggle and seems to be at the bottom of the barrel in 2009. There’s still a lot of negative feedback on the McAfee lineup.

If you want me to just pick one for you, then go buy Trend Micro Internet Security 2009. It appears to be a safe choice – stable, easy to install, easy to manage, effective, well supported.

You won’t go wrong choosing any of the others, though – Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, Panda Internet Security 2009, BitDefender Internet Security 2009, or the new (and reportedly impressive) Vipre Antivirus & Antispyware from Sunbelt Software, among others.

SHOPPING TIPS

Licenses will be enforced. If you buy a product that’s licensed for one computer, you will only install it on one computer! Watch the licensing terms and buy what you need. Many of the suites permit installation on three home computers but don’t assume that. Example Norton Antivirus 2009 has two different versions at different prices – one for a single computer, another box for three computers.

Each vendor has several different versions of their security suites. Trend Micro, for example, offers a basic product, “Antivirus & Antispyware 2009,” in addition to Trend Micro Internet Security and Trend Micro Internet Security Pro. Most of them treat the cheapest product as a bit of a stepchild and either attempt to divert attention from the low end product or actually leave out meaningful components – root kit detection, for example. The features added on the high end products, on the other hand, are often not very compelling. If you don’t want to study the details, then get the one in the middle.

If you’re not technically skilled, buy the program in a box instead of downloading it. You don’t want to have to call me because you can’t find the file you downloaded.

Uninstall any existing security program before installing a new one. This is crucially important. You never want to have two antivirus programs running simultaneously.

Become familiar with the icon in the notification area by the clock. You have to know when your program needs attention. Do not allow problems to go unresolved – keep your subscription current and do whatever is necessary to stay protected.

If you’re running Windows Live OneCare, keep it current. It’s not broken and you don’t have to replace it. It will be supported until December 2010. Personally, though, I think you should consider switching to a current product when your OneCare subscription expires.

Don’t use a computer without current antivirus and spyware protection.

I’ll have more information soon for businesses running Microsoft Small Business Server.

Labels: computers, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/06/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Many of you are seeing an update for “.NET Framework 3.5 SP1” that isn’t installed automatically; the little gold shield or Vista update icon appears by the clock looking for you to click the OK button manually.

.NET Framework is a programming environment that underlies many programs. This is a safe update that improves performance and fixes lots of little issues, but it’s not likely to make any difference that you’ll notice. It shouldn’t break anything. (I won’t be installing it on your servers for a while – that’s a different environment.)

You should install the update but be prepared – it may take a long time to install! It’s been running 10-15 minutes in my experience. The system has to restart and it’s a slow restart, as the update continues to do its work during the process of shutting down and starting up.

There are reports that some people have had to turn off their antivirus programs for the update to install successfully. That has not been necessary with OneCare.

When updates are pushed out from Microsoft, we have to be diligent. Remember, all of the news reports about the latest virus are irrelevant to you because you installed the emergency update released last October. I know it’s a pain, but stay up to date!

Labels: security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/02/2009 11:26:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft SyncToy is the best utility you’ve never heard of.

SyncToy automates the process of copying a folder and all of its subfolders to an external hard drive or another computer on your network. Once it’s set up, it efficiently keeps the two copies in sync – adding new files, replacing files that have changed, deleting files from the copy that were erased from the source.

That’s not all it does but that’s the important thing for most people. It’s free, it’s easy to set up, and that turns out to be a pretty wonderful thing to do.

You probably have a backup program. (You do have a backup program, right? Windows Live OneCare is doing backups, or you’re using Vista’s built-in backup features, or you have some other plan, right? Make it be true!) Those are wonderful things and you must keep doing them. SyncToy should not be your primary backup plan but it can provide an additional layer of protection.

Sometimes it helps to have an extra copy of your files – no muss, no need to run a program to restore anything, just another copy of your files. SyncToy makes that happen. In SyncToy, you browse to the source folder – My Documents, or My Pictures, say – and then browse to an empty folder on the external hard drive, or on another computer. SyncToy copies all the files from the source to the destination. The next time you run SyncToy, it makes whatever changes are necessary to sync the two folders in one click. And just that easily, you have another copy of all your family photos, or your music library, or your work documents, or your manuscript, or whatever deserves that extra bit of attention.

There are several different options for setting up that sync operation. Personally, I focus on “Echo,” which is a one-way sync – all the changes in the source are mirrored in the destination when I run SyncToy. If I’m worried about accidentally deleting files and not noticing for a while, I set up SyncToy to “Contribute", where changes to files are synced but no files are ever deleted from the destination.

SyncToy effectively has no limits on number of files or file sizes. I use SyncToy to make a copy of a library of than 40,000 files in thousands of folders totaling 325Gb. It takes about ten minutes to run SyncToy on that library and bring the copy up to date. In addition to your documents, photos, music, and movies, you might want to use SyncToy to make an extra copy of Quicken and Quickbooks data, or data from other programs; Outlook .PST files; Internet favorites; or saved games.

The important thing to remember is that SyncToy does not run continuously or automatically. It requires manually starting it and running it. I set a reminder for myself to run it once a week. Theoretically it can be scheduled to run regularly but I’ve never had much luck with that.

The new online services for syncing folders among multiple computers can give you similar peace of mind in a similar way. You can choose which method works for you; you probably don’t need to use all of these simultaneously. Windows Live Sync can be set up to sync folders on computers that are not on the same network. Live Mesh does the same thing and adds a copy stored online as well.

SyncToy has the virtue of being easy and fast and it makes me happy when I run it. If you have a big external hard drive and you want the peaceful feeling that comes from knowing you have an extra copy of the family photos, give it a try!

Labels: Microsoft, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 1/30/2009 11:05:00 AM | permalink

The newspaper business is quickly collapsing in waves of bankruptcies and layoffs and rapidly declining readership and ads. Our local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, just announced that it will be shrinking again, making it an even more pale shadow of a real newspaper.

Anything is possible in this economy but it’s impossible to imagine that the venerable New York Times won’t be the last man standing, still publishing a print edition when all the other newspapers have folded up – although even the NY Times is dealing with a crushing debt load, looking for investors and seeking to sell some of its assets to raise cash.

If you’re like me, the experience of reading the newspaper is an important part of understanding the world. It provides a different level of reflection on the day’s events and a different level of analysis than the thousands of online news web sites and blogs. Reading news online is interesting but distorting, with too many things that are instantly reported and dissected and parsed for a few hours, then just as quickly forgotten.

In many parts of Sonoma County, it’s possible to get home delivery of the New York Times. My subscription is about fifteen dollars per week. If you’ve been reading the Press Democrat or the San Francisco Chronicle, you may have forgotten what it’s like to get a real newspaper. The Press Democrat is owned by the New York Times Company and reprints national and international stories from the New York Times, but it’s not until you see the real thing that you discover that the Press Democrat is typically only printing the first few paragraphs of much longer, more informative and more nuanced reporting.

There is no shortage of theories about how newspapers can survive by moving online or to different platforms. This writer describes what’s possible with Amazon’s Kindle, the handheld book reader that now has several hundred thousand users and can download paid subscriptions to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and a dozen other daily newspapers. I know people who adore their Kindles, and it’s not a bad start – but it looks like a plastic toy from the 1960s and it’s not all that well suited to the kind of browsing that you’re looking for in a newspaper.

Many news publications experimented with paid subscriptions when they first went online and then backed away, turning to web sites laden with ads instead. Revenue from online ads is flattening, so expect some of the news organizations to try various types of paid subscriptions again.

If you want a glimpse of what a good online experience with news can be like, I encourage you to look at the New York Times Reader. A couple of years ago, the Times quietly released the Reader for PCs and Macs, available to print subscribers or via a separate paid subscription.

The NY Times Reader bypasses the web browser and presents the articles from the newspaper in a separate program that is readable and exceptionally easy to navigate. Its most important feature is subtle – there is never, never, any scrolling. It’s a far different experience than the NY Times Electronic Edition, which presents a PDF-like version of the print newspaper that requires constant scrolling, just like most online news sites.

Everything about the NY Times Reader feels natural. It’s one of the most impressive pieces of software I know. It needs a computer screen that can run at a decent resolution, so I don’t know how it would look on one of the inexpensive netbooks, but it’s brilliant for a notebook – it can be “filled up” with the day’s news while the notebook is online, then read anytime, online or offline.

Here’s a rave review of the NY Times Reader. I use it constantly and give it high marks. Think about it!

Labels: business, software

posted by bruceb at 1/18/2009 11:54:00 AM | permalink

It’s a little thing but it makes me cranky.

I type a lot of email addresses and login names in Word documents and Outlook email messages. Whenever I type a common first name (Richard, Michael, Dorothy), Word capitalizes it. I don’t want names capitalized automatically! Email addresses are always lowercase and frequently login names are lowercase. When the first letter is capitalized, it looks wrong and occasionally creates the potential for error when something turns out to be case-sensitive.

Word 2007 has many options to turn various auto-correct and auto-format features on and off (click on the upper left button / Proofing), but there’s no separate control over proper names.

The names are being changed when Word consults the spelling dictionary, as near as I can tell. The checkbox in the lower left of the AutoCorrect Options window tells Word to “automatically use suggestions from the spelling checker.” That’s an important feature! Many, many typos are corrected automatically when I type. Definitely don’t want to turn that off.

But here’s an interesting tip. If you hit Ctrl-Z immediately after an auto-correct change, Word will undo the change. As long as I’m alert, I can turn Richard back into richard with one extra keystroke, instead of mousing around later.

What’s more, that appears to make a permanent change in the dictionary so Word will not capitalize that word in the future. Cool!

Labels: Office, software

posted by bruceb at 1/14/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

If you open an email attachment from Outlook and intend to work on it - edit a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, for example - the first thing you should do is click on "Save As" and save a copy of it wherever you normally store files.

When you open an email attachment directly from Outlook, it uses a temporary folder on your hard drive to hold a copy of the file. The temporary folder is deeply hidden, locked up with security restrictions, and not intended ever to see the light. If you work on the attachment and save your changes to the copy in that temporary folder, there is a good chance that you will lose all your work.

The temporary folders are usually in these locations:

• Windows XP / Outlook 2003: C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK<series of numbers>
• Windows XP / Outlook 2007: C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\<random letters and numbers>
• Windows Vista: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\<random letters and numbers>

Very occasionally, I can find a file that was opened from Outlook, edited, and saved unknowingly in one of those temporary folders. It's arduous work to find the edited file and there's no guarantee of success.

Don't lose work! Open the attachment and immediately click on Save As and turn it into a file stored in My Documents, or in the shared folder on the server, or somewhere it can be found later. Then work for hours and hit Save with confidence that your work won't be lost if Word crashes unexpectedly.

Labels: mail, Office, Outlook, software

posted by bruceb at 1/08/2009 12:56:00 AM | permalink

Windows Live Sync replaced Foldershare last month. It's a good program but the upgrade experience for Foldershare users is pretty miserable.

Windows Live Sync and Foldershare are services that allow folders to be synced so that multiple computers have exactly the same files in them at all times. You can set it up to view your photos on both computers in the house, or have a folder of work files at the office synced with a laptop, or share a folder with a friend so it is identical on both of your computers. That's great stuff! I've written about it before frequently (and at length).

If you're new to this, these are the two most interesting things to know.

• It only syncs files back and forth when both computers are online at the same time. If you turn off the office computer and go home and turn on the home computer, the files won't sync.
• It's likely to be replaced someday by Live Mesh, Microsoft's other service that does exactly the same thing. That may take a couple of years but don't get emotionally invested in Live Sync - it probably won't be the survivor.

On a random day in December, the Foldershare team turned off the Foldershare servers and the program stopped working on everyone's computers. Various things were popped up to take people to this page (pictured below). Simplicity is a virtue in technology but this wasn't enough information for people to have any idea what was going on.

It wasn't made sufficiently clear that some Foldershare users would have to change their login information. Foldershare had been built on a proprietary service that was separate from all of Microsoft's other services, so login names and passwords were unique to Foldershare. Windows Live Sync is built on Microsoft's Windows Live ID. (Reminder: here are my instructions to check or set up your free Windows Live ID, which controls access to a rich array of Microsoft services.)

The team rolling out the upgrade promised in the support forum that the upgrade experience would be as seamless as possible, keeping our Foldershare libraries intact and synced. They noted pretty quietly that oh, by the way, we'd have to start over to set up folders shared with other people. I don't see that made clear anywhere on the web site.

Installing the software has a couple of kinks in it that just seem odd.

• Clicking the link for the software brings up a dialog box with "Save" and "Cancel." Here, take a look.

Y'know, maybe it's just me, but wouldn't you kinda think that "Run" would be an option for installing a small program? Maybe "Open"? That's just weird. It's an unnecessary, unexplained bit of confusion. It seems trivial until you talk to people. Trust me. It's not trivial.

Okay, so eventually you save the file somewhere, then go find it separately and run the installation program and it's done and it . . . goes away. You're left with a hollow, used feeling. Nothing starts up.

If you go hunting, you'll find a new entry for Live Sync on the Start menu. That lets you run it and sign in with your Windows Live ID and experience the mystery of whether it will discover the old Foldershare libraries and start syncing them automatically. I don't have any clear answer to that yet - it hasn't seemed to work that way a couple of times but there may have been other factors.

I'm also not sure if it automatically removes Foldershare. Seems like it should but I'm not convinced.

Tonight I went to use another feature that's less well-known. When you sign into the Live Sync web site from anywhere, you can connect to your computers running Live Sync and download files from them. That's pretty cool!

Except you can't, because that feature isn't turned on by default. On a computer running Live Sync, click on the Live Sync icon, then click on More / Settings on the menu and put a check in the box for "Allow remote access to this computer." Eventually I stumbled on this explanation in the help files.

That's not exactly a smooth process! The program is swell but I'm disappointed that it's not easier to get started.

SUMMARY - INSTRUCTIONS FOR UPGRADING FOLDERSHARE

1. Make sure you know your Windows Live ID, or set one up.
2. When you click on the link to install the Live Sync software, save it on your computer in a folder where you can find it.
3. After it's downloaded, open the folder and double-click the installation file that you saved named "WindowsLiveSync.msi".
4. After it's installed, find Windows Live Sync on the Start menu and run it. Put in your Windows Live ID. If necessary, install it on your other computers and set up your shared folders.
5. Uninstall Foldershare if it's still in your list of programs.

Good luck!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, photos, remote, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 1/07/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft's recent announcement that it will distribute free antivirus software was unexpected but in some ways it's just an expansion of efforts by Microsoft that have been ongoing for years. In 2006 Microsoft began including the "Malicious Software Removal Tool" in the monthly automatic updates for every Windows computer. Every month, your computer is checked for dozens of specific bits of malware and cleaned if necessary.

In the last couple of months, Microsoft has targeted the fake security programs that are prevalent now - here's my writeup about one variation that presents realistic, professional-looking warnings of viruses and insistently tries to convince you to surrender a credit card number for $49.95 of useless software.

The removal tool runs automatically and silently. It does not need to be run manually, although it's always possible to visit the Microsoft web site for the tool and download it as part of responding to any possible virus or malware attack. It's not a substitute for an antivirus program - it doesn't run continuously watching for threats and it is not directed at all of the malware out there, just a specific set of programs that represent the worst of the current malicious software.

Anonymous data is sent  back to Microsoft so it can track the effectiveness of the tool. In November, the removal tool cleaned bad stuff from almost a million computers in nine days, and in December, it removed the prevalent "Antivirus 2009" malware from 400,000 computers.

As always, the bad guys are getting better at imitating legitimate programs. Read carefully, be skeptical, and be careful out there!

Labels: Microsoft, security, software

posted by bruceb at 1/02/2009 12:05:00 AM | permalink

The headline tells the story of this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Severe system performance problems occur on a Windows Vista or Windows XP-based computer after you install HP printer software, version 11 (Microsoft KB960673)

To be honest, I don't know if I've ever seen this problem in the real world. "On a Windows Vista or Windows XP-based computer, you install the HP Customer Participation version 11 software that is included with Hewlett-Packard's new printers. After you do this, you may experience an overall slowing of your computer performance because of an error in this application."

But I know that HP has been doing a terrible job of supplying software with their printers for the last few years, so this is just an extreme example of a bigger problem. HP's installation and uninstallation programs take waaaay too long, they install useless and unrequested services to monitor registration and ink cartridge status and software updates and customer satisfaction and phases of the moon, and if you're lucky you can also print. Typically there are no options during setup to reduce the amount of clutter installed from the CD. Sometimes (but not always) there are simpler drivers on the HP web site for people willing to take manual control of the process.

The result is that I'm not too keen on HP printers lately, because the quality of the hardware doesn't matter if the software brings down your computer. It's not like HP is the only offender - I've spent hours trying to squash a nasty little Epson status monitor that slows things to a crawl if a shared printer isn't online. The biggest reason to prefer Brother printers for the last couple of years is the simplicity of their software.

Remember one of the important rules for being responsible for your computer: always do a custom install of any software and take the time to understand the options and decline items that don't apply to you (especially unrelated products included because one big company paid another big company - Google Desktop/Google Toolbar/Windows Live Toolbar/Open Office and so many more.) You won't avoid all the unnecessary stuff but you can minimize it that way.

Labels: computers, hardware, printers, software

posted by bruceb at 12/23/2008 01:29:00 AM | permalink

On Monday, for one day only, you can pick up a copy of Quickbooks Pro 2009 for free at Staples.

This appears to be a real offer. Staples stores will sell Quickbooks Pro 2009 for $159, after applying a $40 "instant rebate."

There will be coupons in the store to mail in for a $159 rebate.

There are more details in an email from an Intuit representative here. Quantities at the stores will be limited to stock on hand but this isn't a bait and switch deal - the stores have been bulking up their inventory. The same offer will reportedly be available online on the front page of the Staples web site. You can buy it online from the Staples web site. Don't forget to print out the rebate form!

Quickbooks is the only game in town for a small business. If you haven't upgraded recently, this is the time to do it!

Karl Palachuk, one of the best bloggers on small business technology, had this to say recently:

"The undisputed 800 pound gorilla among small business finances is Intuit's QuickBooks. No one loves it. Everyone uses it.

"Overall, QuickBooks does a great job or they wouldn't be where they are. Having said that, their program is amazingly bloated, filled with annoying spam and popups, and they have some of the worst technical support in the history of software.

""Everyone" integrates with QuickBooks. That is to say, everyone does something with QuickBooks. Most of them import and export aggregate data and lose all the detail. As a result, many people who could be "integrating" QuickBooks end up doing double-entry in their line of business application and QuickBooks."

Looking for an alternative to Quickbooks? Microsoft has several accounting programs that might look like contenders. Karl quotes a summary from Ernest Cook of Better Idea Group to clarify the current status of the various accounting programs from Microsoft.

"Due in no small part to the overlay in markets focus and similarity of the names, many people over the years have confused the Small Business Financials, Small Business Accounting and Office Accounting products so let me clarify for the group:

"Small Business Financials is based on the "Great Plains" code base. A quick call to Customer Source today confirmed that I can say publicly that Microsoft has NO plans on creating any more new versions of this product. The LAST version of this program is version 9 and if you have a client on an earlier version and is still current on support they could upgrade to that version. If they are NOT current on support, they need to start planning on what they will migrate to. In short, Small Business Financials is in fact going away +++ DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT TO YOUR CLIENTS +++

"Small Business Accounting - This product was written from scratch in 2004-2005 with a target market of 1-5 users. The only version that has this name is the inaugural edition that was labeled 2006. Due in no small part to the iterative nature of the initial product, a "service pack" came out later in the year but was still called SBA 2006. It had SQL 2000 technology and was based on the .Net 1.1 framework. Anyone that is still running this program and "stuck" on the workflow should, at the very least migrate to Office Accounting 2009 +++ Small Business Accounting is GONE - DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT TO YOUR CLIENTS +++

"Finally...

"Microsoft Office Accounting - The first version of this was in 2007 and was a direct descendant of "Small Business Accounting". The BIG difference is that the 2007 version was based on .NET 2.0 and SQL 2005 technology and Microsoft broadened the offering by creating a FREE "express" version and pushed it thru download sites etc.
In 2008, some bugs were fixed and new functionality was added to the product, most notably the addition of a Spanish language version. The most current version, 2009 was recently published and consists primarily of resolutions to issues that had been brought up by customers and partners for quite awhile.

"As an ISV who has invested a SIGNIFICANT amount of money into my products that need Office Accounting to work, it would be easiest for me to tell you that Office Accounting has a bright future and tell you to recommend it to your clients. I can't do that. I am NOT investing anymore time or money in the Office Accounting product line. Not only that but friends on the list might also be interested in hearing that I am migrating my own company books BACK to Intuit's QuickBooks."

See you at Staples!

Labels: business, software

posted by bruceb at 12/21/2008 12:12:00 AM | permalink

Lately I've seen this message turn up out of nowhere on Windows XP computers that do not run Outlook Express.

I don't know why it's turning up now after years of staying quiet but it reminds me that Outlook Express is one of several obsolete Windows components that can be safely removed from most Windows XP computers.

Open Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs and click on the left on Add/Remove Windows Components.

I routinely remove some of the items in the list that comes up. If you think you might be using any of them, please do not uninstall them. I don't want any silly mistakes.

• MSN Explorer  This was Microsoft's attempt to create a customized browser that looks like America Online. It's unclear why anyone would want to look like America Online.
• Outlook Express  This is now obsolete and replaced by Windows Live Mail. Look, let me reiterate - if you're using Outlook Express for your mail, don't uninstall it! This is not the same program as Microsoft Outlook, of course; if you're using Outlook, you can safely uninstall Outlook Express.
• Windows Messenger  This is NOT the same program as Windows Live Messenger, the one that most people use. If you have a useless instant messenger icon down by the clock that's always said "Not connected," it's probably a remnant of this program.

Uninstall them by unchecking the box by each item.

You may see an error message about MSN Explorer. I don't know what it means but in my experience it's harmless if you click OK.

Labels: mail, Microsoft, software, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 12/16/2008 01:52:00 PM | permalink

Microsoft has released Windows Live Sync, a free utility that syncs folders among two or more computers and makes it possible to share synced folders with others. It is the successor to Foldershare - and really not much more than a facelift for Foldershare. It accomplishes an important goal for Microsoft, though, by integrating the service with the Windows Live ID authentication that is driving all the other online services from Microsoft. Here's the blog from the Windows Live Sync team.

If you're not familiar with Foldershare, here's some background and an explanation of the basic principles. Windows Live Sync runs continuously on your computer; you can designate any folder and Windows Live Sync will copy the contents of that folder to any other computer of your choice running the software. The two folders will then always be kept in sync - if something is deleted from the folder at one end, the same file will be deleted at the other end, for example.

The program only copies files when both computers are turned on and running the program online at the same time. That can cause confusion - I know people who shut down their office computer at the end of the day, went home and turned on their home computer, and were disappointed that they didn't have their synced files. I was ready to criticize them for being unclear on the concept but what I found was that this is a hard concept and frequently leaves people confused or frustrated. I don't want to dissuade you from trying it! Just plan to give it some attention until you have that "Aha!" moment.

Windows Live Sync closely overlaps the Live Mesh service, but as far as I know the two services run on completely different underpinnings. I have this vision of the two Microsoft teams fighting it out for dominance and we'll find out at some random time which one is the victor and which program will die. Maybe they'll both live forever. Maybe they'll both be renamed and squished together by spring. Who knows?

There's an interesting detail in one blog today: apparently Windows Live Sync will be quietly included with every copy of a new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery due soon. That might just be to help people make their photos available on every computer in the house, or perhaps to make it easy to share photos with friends and grandparents. But I've also seen speculation that it will be set up to automatically copy your photos to the online photo storage space provided for free by Microsoft (which is now tied in to the Skydrive service). This will take careful work - many people are overwhelmed by all the names floating around and are ready to drop out at the first confusing bit.

FOLDERSHARE USERS: You'll be prompted to install this update automatically. There may be some confusing bits - you'll have to associate it with a Windows Live ID (and create one if you haven't done that yet), and you'll have to start from scratch to set up shared folders with others. Let me know if you have any problems!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 12/12/2008 12:42:00 AM | permalink

Ho hum. Another day, another batch of updates.

Microsoft released its regularly scheduled monthly updates last night. Your computer may have restarted automatically last night or it will tonight.

If you are using Live Mesh, there is an update that reportedly improves a number of features. Mesh may prompt you to install it at some point soon - I'm not sure if it's completely automatic.

You might want to take a look at the available updates proactively. Go to the Microsoft Update page. In Windows XP, you'll arrive at a web site where you can click the Custom button; in Vista, you'll open up the built-in update program where you can click on View Available Updates.

In addition to any required updates, you'll likely see some "optional" updates. Some of those are interesting! I found the Live Mesh update listed there today. If you're on Windows XP, you might find Windows Search 4.0, a truly useful tool. Perhaps you never got around to Internet Explorer 7, which is significantly safer to use than IE6.

Be careful installing hardware updates that way. If your hardware is working, you may want to be conservative and not install an updated video driver or network card driver. I have mixed feelings about suggesting that because many of the new drivers can be a significant improvement, but installing hardware drivers through the Windows Update system does not always go smoothly and I don't want you to blame me.

The other optional updates are likely to be safe. See if there's anything you're missing!

Labels: IE, search, software, Vista, web_services, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 12/10/2008 10:51:00 AM | permalink

Let me leave a few notes behind about some of the glitches during the migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008. I don't have many answers but perhaps it will help someone to know that I'm able to commiserate with them. (Loyal clients - this is not aimed at you and it won't help you get your work done. I'll be back to general interest topics next week!)

As background: I was migrating an SBS 2003 server with a very basic configuration - no ISA, no use of Sharepoint, a single NIC and external firewall, and no particular pre-existing issues.

MIGRATION WIZARD

Microsoft provides a detailed guide to the migration procedure. (Have you noticed that Microsoft's documentation has been getting better and better lately? There's much less ambiguity about what to click next - each step is described in precise and accurate detail.) The guide was great.

SBS 2008 begins a migration when a USB stick with an answer file is inserted in the new server before the SBS 2008 installation starts. Several people have reported that the USB stick has to be present when the server is turned on or SBS 2008 is likely to miss it. After installation, the first and most important item on the SBS 2008 is the "migration wizard" that leads through all the steps required to be successful.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the wizard when I took a break and installed the Server 2008 updates that were waiting. When the server restarted, the migration wizard crashed with a mysterious error that proved impossible to fix. I researched it and got nowhere. I removed a couple of the updates that conceivably might have unsettled something and got nowhere.

The wizard never came back to life. Fortunately most of its steps only lead to help files that describe the process for actually accomplishing each task by going into AD or MMC consoles or the like. I think - I think - I was able to finish the migration and cover the remaining steps without the wizard. There is still room for some surprise glitch - I'm going to cross my fingers when I demote the source server.

MAIL MIGRATION

I expected the mailbox migration to be slow but was still surprised. The Exchange 2003 mailbox store was about 25Gb after I pruned and archived as much as I could from the biggest mailboxes. The mailbox move took just about ten hours.

PUBLIC FOLDERS

I had no luck moving the public folders, and didn't really expect to, given the reports I had read. That may have been the result of a pre-existing glitch on the source server - this server, like several other of my SBS 2003 servers, throws up an error message when I try to do anything to the public folders in Exchange Server Manager. I've researched that one, too; I've removed the SSL requirement from EXADMIN in IIS, and a few other things suggested in other places, to no avail. I exported the public folders to a PST and stored them for now, since public folders were not being actively used and may not need to be implemented at all on the new server.

BACKUP

The most mysterious problem involves the backup system. The firm had been using ShadowProtect to back up to an NAS and two rotated external Maxtor hard drives. The backup built into SBS 2008 looks like it will be just fine but it does not directly back up to an NAS. I connected a Maxtor drive, formatted it, and ran the backup wizard. Hmm. Error message at the very end.

Since the message says "Cannot configure backup schedule," I started trying every scheduling option - once a day, twice a day - as well as swapping in the other (identical) hard drive, and couldn't get anywhere. I couldn't find anything in the logs at all. I got the flavor that it might be caused by the server disliking the external hard drives.

I'd like to talk to the person who thought it would be helpful to write: "If this problem persists, contact the person who provides you with technical support." It made me irritable.

ShadowProtect claims that the current version will back up SBS 2008 servers. With any luck I'll be able to install that and never know the answer to this one.

PHONE PASSCODES

This isn't a glitch, just something to warn your users about. By default, Exchange 2007 enforces a new passcode requirement on Windows Mobile phones (and iPhones) syncing with the server. Users are forced to set up a four-digit password that will be tapped in every time the phone is used. I'm sympathetic to all the reasons that this is an important security measure, but I'm also sympathetic to the desire to keep my job and not be fired by the attorneys who began flipping out immediately. It's possible to turn the requirement off in Exchange Management Console / Organization Configuration / Client Access / Windows SBS Mobile Mailbox Policy, which then allows it to be turned off on the phones. The iPhone balked and refuses to relax, even after the policy was changed, which apparently is a known glitch.

SERVER CERTIFICATE

I was determined to allow my users to continue to use the familiar URL for remote access, even though it didn't match the naming scheme preferred by SBS 2008. The email domain is www.bigfirm.com, say, and my users have been reaching RWW at www.bigfirmnet.com for years. I have a GoDaddy SSL certificate for www.bigfirmnet.com and heck, I just like it. Plus I've got migrations coming up where I know it will be difficult to work with the web hosting company to set up a subdomain and MX records for the primary domain name.

The Internet address wizard insists on getting the primary address and only allowing RWW to be reached at the same address with a prefix - remote.bigfirm.com or something like it. I had to work around that by lying to the wizard that the primary domain name was bigfirmnet.com, which (in Advanced Settings) would then let www.bigfirmnet.com be the remote access address.

When that was in place, then I could set the primary email addresses back to @bigfirm.com in Exchange Manager / Organization / Hub Transport / Email address policies / Windows SBS Email Address Policy.

ONECARE

Windows Live OneCare has been a trusted friend but it does make me a little crazy sometimes. SBS 2008 expects to get feedback from each workstation about its security status and apparently OneCare isn't set up to let that happen. So far I haven't found the firewall port or other hack that will let the workstations report in, so they're all showing in the server console as "unknown." I can't even find a definitive statement that it's possible or impossible with the standalone version of OneCare. I'm not going to install OneCare for Server so I may just not get good feedback in the console until we switch to Trend Micro. I was hoping to procrastinate on that - everyone has been used to OneCare for a long time - but change happens.

DRIVE MAPPING

Drive mapping is supposed to be accomplished in Group Policy now. I was comforted that other people online said they had trouble with it, because I couldn't make a mapped drive appear on a workstation no matter what I did in Group Policy. After a fruitless half hour of researching and trying things, I put the nice simple logon script in the folder and assigned it to everybody. I feel kind of crude, but it works.

SHARED PRINTERS

Another little headache - it was easy to install 64-bit drivers for network printers and share them from the server. At least, it was easy once I stopped clicking on the "Add printer" button and getting an "Access denied" message when it tried to set up a TCP/IP port. Right-click in the Printers folder and click on Run As Administrator / Add printer - ah, that's intuitive! Sheesh.

Out at the first workstation, I was reminded forcibly that there were no 32-bit drivers around, so I downloaded the corresponding 32-bit drivers for a few of the printers (a couple of HP Laserjets and a Toshiba copier) and went to add them on the server using Additional Drivers on the Sharing tab. The server thought that was a terrible idea - it never agreed that the 32-bit drivers corresponded with the 64-bit drivers. (I read somewhere that it was known problem with some HP drivers but I had the same epxerience with the Toshiba drivers.) So I parked the 32-bit drivers where I could get to them, went back to the workstation, and browsed to the 32-bit drivers when the workstation tried to connect to the shared printer and rejected the 64-bit drivers. Nope! The workstation also didn't agree that it was a match. It was the closest match, trust me - these were the identical 32-bit and 64-bit drivers for the same model running the same PCL level.

Fortunately, we already had reason to be running a Windows XP virtual machine on the second server with Hyper-V. I've shared all the printers from there and I bet it's rock solid.

A migration is a complex project! I think it went smoothly. These are the kind of glitches that happen constantly, every day at every level. Some of them will happen to me the next time, others will come up that are brand new. It's the nature of IT today. With luck I'll bring good instincts and a lot of experience and use them both the next time I come to your office!

Labels: computers, domains, mail, Microsoft, mobile, network, OneCare, printers, SBS, security, software

posted by bruceb at 12/05/2008 12:09:00 AM | permalink

Click here for a list of Adobe Acrobat training videos, focusing on features for lawyers. There are related blog articles for many of the topics, and some videos are still to come - you'll have to check back.

The list covers the basics (including the differences between printing to PDF and the PDF makers in Office programs, which is more interesting than you thought), binders and portfolios, PDF comparison, OCR, security, redaction, Bates numbering, forms, and more.

Labels: Acrobat, law, software

posted by bruceb at 12/01/2008 12:58:00 AM | permalink

Vista's built-in utility for screen shots is just perfect for most people. If you haven't found it yet, click on the Start button, type in Snip, and click on Snipping Tool. It's got all the basic tools to capture an entire window or a region, add some simple annotations, and do something interesting with it - send it by email, save it as a JPG, or put it on the clipboard so you can paste it into another program. Here's my thoughts about the snipping tool, and here's an explanation and some tips from Microsoft.

My computer has decided it doesn't like the snipping tool. About half the time I get this message:

As always, there are lots of people online with the same problem and the usual mishmash of advice and abuse and digressions. For many people, the problem can be cured at least temporarily by running "Office Diagnostics" from the Options / Resources menu in an Office 2007 program. No one seems quite sure why that works. It worked for me sometimes but it never lasted and I couldn't find a permanent fix.

I tried an inexpensive screen clipping program, Window Clippings, which worked fine but left me unsatisfied. It was kind of uninspiring - each thing I looked into wasn't quite as elegant or simple as I was hoping, and all the dialogs said "Kenny Kerr's Window Clippings," which looked silly. I know, that's not a big deal, but I kept looking at "Kenny Kerr" and wishing it didn't say that. What can I tell you? I'm shallow.

So I revisited a name I hadn't looked at for years, SnagIt, screen capture software that was first used on adding machines, or possibly abacuses, I think. It's been around forever.

It's expensive, $49.95 (free 30 day trial), and just wonderful. While I wasn't looking, SnagIt turned into a beautiful, full-featured office application. There are a variety of ways to capture screen shots - all the ones you'd expect plus a few you might not think of, like capturing an entire web page including the part that is scrolled off screen. An editor opens up to work with the snips with many of the features of a full-fledged graphics program, so it's a single click to add shadows, pointers, annotations, or more. It's a very pretty design and I'm finding the controls to be thoughtfully laid out and intuitive.

I'm going to pay the money and send you all screen shots bristling with arrows and circles, just because I can.

Labels: software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 11/26/2008 01:44:00 AM | permalink

That rumbling you feel is a seismic shift in the field of security software. This will affect every single one of you and cause major changes in the entire industry.

Microsoft announced today that it will deliver free antivirus and anti-spyware software for all Windows computers, beginning in the second half of 2009.

Windows Live OneCare will be phased out and it will no longer be sold after June 30, 2009.

From the press release:

"Code-named "Morro," this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs. As part of Microsoft's move to focus on this simplified offering, the company also announced today that it will discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare subscription service effective June 30, 2009."

Here's the Microsoft press release, and the post on the OneCare blog. There are a few more details in this interview with Microsoft's senior director of product management.

As far as I know, this is completely unexpected. No one seems to have had a clue it was coming. There have been rumors about an imminent new version of Windows Live OneCare; now there's no word whether it will ever be seen. When Microsoft officially released Small Business Server 2008 last week, one of its features was a new product, Windows Live OneCare for Server, and central management for up to 25 workstations running OneCare. To me, that was one of the compelling features of the new SBS, but it is now dead on arrival; it should not be installed and will not be supported after June 30, 2009.

I can easily imagine that Microsoft is frustrated. Windows is frequently blamed for the onslaught of viruses and malware but computer users around the world have resisted buying subscriptions to security software for a variety of reasons: they can't afford it; they don't understand that it's necessary; they don't keep it current or they never activate an expired trial subscription; or their computers are underpowered for the security suites that are currently available. It's a particular problem outside the United States, where the percentage of unprotected computers is much higher. The press release suggests that Microsoft particularly wants to provide protection for emerging markets and the new low-powered netbooks and OLBCs.

Microsoft claims that it will deliver new software (not a repackaged version of OneCare) which includes only the security protection, with the simplest, least intrusive, and smallest footprint possible. It will not be automatically included with every copy of Windows but it will be free and presumably so easy to obtain that it might as well be built-in.

I assumed that Microsoft had not done this up to now because it would be attacked as "anticompetitive" by the other security software companies. Apparently Microsoft thinks it can avoid those claims - or who knows, maybe it thinks it's the right thing to do and is willing to see how it plays out. Norton, McAfee and the rest will have to adapt - maybe by criticizing Microsoft's software, maybe by adding value to it with other features, maybe by exiting the field and finding something else to do.

ONECARE SUBSCRIBERS: Do not let your subscriptions lapse! OneCare will be fully supported and updated through June 30, 2009 and we will have much more information before then about our options. If your subscription expires on April 30 and you have to pay $49.99 for two months of updates, I'm going to insist that you renew without hesitation. I don't want anyone running a PC without current anti-malware protection - this is not an excuse to procrastinate!

COMPUTER BUYERS: If you buy a new computer, get it protected! If you have to pay $49.99 for OneCare and you don't get a full year out of it, so it goes. You'll get three months or six months or eight months, and that's just fine. Or get another product, I don't care. As long as your security, backup and update needs are covered, I don't care - but this is not an excuse to procrastinate.

[Update 11/20: It's likely that Microsoft will keep OneCare updated for the entire subscription term. See this post and watch for more information to follow.]

A few more points:

Microsoft Equipt was the ill-fated subscription package bundling OneCare with Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition, sold only through Circuit City. Microsoft never committed to it, Circuit City is defunct, and Equipt is being withdrawn from the market.

How could this major decision be made with so little notice that it kills a key feature of a major product launched last week? Is the SBS team angry, embarrassed, or resigned?

OneCare includes features that its users depend on - printer sharing, backups, system maintenance, attention to Windows and other Microsoft updates, control over the firewall, and control over startup programs. Everything that needs attention is reported by a single icon, and necessary actions are described in a consistent interface. If OneCare is discontinued, will something else be developed to provide those functions? Don't tell me that products from third parties will take over - I'll cry, really I will.

Will the new software run on servers? Small businesses really need easy software to protect servers and provide centralized security management. The choices now are difficult and expensive.

This is a remarkable change that will affect all of us. I hope it's for the better but boy, are there a lot of questions left to be answered. More to come!

Labels: computers, Microsoft, OneCare, SBS, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 11/19/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft is updating and integrating all of its "Windows Live" services. The results are overwhelming and quirky but the changes  include some things that are even attractive for cranky old folks like me that have no idea what to do with a "social network." (I'm not sure but I think it requires friends, so I have no reason to go there.) In particular, Windows Live Skydrive is getting some exciting new features but there is still some confusing overlap in Microsoft's services for storing and sharing files online.

The updates are a bit of a blur, really - it will mostly be people under 25, I think, that have a lot of names in Windows Live People and sort them into Windows Live Groups so it's easier to send them invitations to Windows Live Events that are tracked on Windows Live Calendar, with RSVPs sent using Windows Live Messenger and photos shared afterward on Windows Live Photos. Honest, those are all names of interlocking pieces of this big social network, which is all free and all tied together, and that's just the half of it - there are pieces that will run on mobile phones and pieces that will interact with other online social networking sites and a toolbar for Internet Explorer and a piece that will deliver pictures straight from your cell phone to a digital picture frame (honest!) and on and on. Here's an article about the upcoming new releases, and here's a press release that runs through most of the highlights.

Let's focus on Windows Live Skydrive, a free place where you can store files online that can be accessed from anywhere. You're required to have a free Windows Live ID to get started but that's nothing new - all these services are built around your Windows Live ID. You can have private folders on Skydrive, or you can share folders with specific people, or you can have folders that are open to anyone. Skydrive is one of the services that I strongly recommend you become familiar with! It will quickly become a tool that you use routinely.

When Skydrive is updated, everyone will be able to store up to 25Gb of files online, up from the current limit of 5Gb. That's a lot of space! There are big improvements to the way photos can be stored and shared, with bigger thumbnails and instant slideshows and tighter integration with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Right now it's clumsy to move files around on Skydrive; the update will make it possible to move and copy files between Skydrive folders.

And in one welcome improvement, apparently it will be possible to share files with people even if they do not have a Windows Live ID. That's been a stumbling block, since many people aren't ready to figure out the Windows Live ID concept.

One change to Windows Live Skydrive leaps out at me from this screenshot of the update - Microsoft has decided to put really big advertisements on the web pages for some of these services. Oh joy!

Now for the confusing part. Look at this list of Microsoft services.

• Windows Live Skydrive lets you store files online and share them with others.
• Windows Live Sync will be the new name of Foldershare, which syncs folders among several computers, either your own or shared with others.
• Live Mesh lets you store files online, share them with others, and sync folders among several computers, either your own or shared with others.
• Office Live Workspace lets you store files online, share them with others, and open them directly into Microsoft Office programs.

The overhaul of the Windows Live services announced yesterday does nothing to simplify that lineup. If Live Mesh lives up to its potential, it can absorb and duplicate all of the other services; perhaps that's the ultimate goal and the other services are only temporary, since it will take several years to build out Live Mesh and the framework it rests on.

While we wait, go start using Skydrive and Live Mesh. They're worth knowing about!

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, mobile, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/14/2008 01:06:00 AM | permalink

"Windows Azure" is a terrible name but you need to be aware of it anyway. Windows Azure is a breathtakingly ambitious platform outlined by Microsoft at last week's Professional Developer Conference, another attempt by Microsoft to position itself to profit from a paradigm shift that will be just as important as the move to the Internet in the 90s.

Yesterday I used word processing as an easy example to imagine what it would be like if you had universal access to your files with the ability to open and edit them from any computer. Of course, it's just as easy to imagine having easy access from anywhere to your Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, with the programs running in a browser if you don't have a copy installed on the computer nearby.

Okay, now stretch a little bit. Imagine that you could have something like the same experience on your phone - Windows Mobile can sync folders using Live Mesh and it runs little tiny versions of Word and Excel. Photos can be moved around from computer to computer and/or stored online, too, so you might not be surprised by this anecdote from someone who tried using Live Mesh on his phone to sync the folder where the phone stores pictures. There were the pictures on his computer a few minutes later with no muss, no fuss, no action required at all. The camera on the phone looks a lot more usable all of a sudden!

But now let's take a big step. Windows Azure is a platform that will allow you to run programs that are identical to programs installed on your computer but which are actually running from Microsoft's online servers. Microsoft's goal is to have all of its programs run from Microsoft's data centers in such a way that you cannot tell the difference between a program hosted online and a program on your computer. The developer tools will allow all the other software vendors to do the same thing.

Some of you already have experience with that. Businesses running on Small Business Server use Outlook to connect to mailboxes stored in Exchange Server. At the office, people open Outlook to do their work; away from the office, they might use Outlook on their notebook computer, or they might check their mail or calendar on their Windows Mobile phone, or they might use Outlook Web Access to display their Outlook folders in a web browser. Outlook Web Access is already significantly improved in Exchange 2007 so it more closely resembles Outlook, and it only takes a small leap of faith to imagine the experience being identical to using the full program.

The Azure framework is intended to give developers the ability to present their programs to you over your Internet connection so that virtually all the hard work is done by the online servers. Microsoft or Google or Amazon have responsibility for holding the data and backing it up; when a program is updated, the updates are applied at the source instead of requiring you to take steps to install updates on each of your computers.

I'll be writing more about Live Framework, the unified underpinning of the various Windows Live services as they become increasingly integrated, and Microsoft Online Services, which will introduce hosted online Exchange mailboxes to many of my clients. They're early signs of this movement to online services that will change your life, whether you're ready or not. There are many miles and many competitors and the future is not assured for Microsoft, but make no mistake - the company has staked its future on this ambitious transformation.

Here are some more early comments on Windows Azure: Dan Farber on "Microsoft's Manhattan Project"; Robert Scoble says not to underestimate Microsoft's ability to turn a corner; CBS News on the Azure launch; and Joe Wilcox on the significance of the project:

"I simply cannot overstate how enormous an undertaking is Azure. Microsoft plans to support cloud services in every product. Azure is hugely ambitious and will transform Microsoft, whether or not the vision stated on Monday makes it to market. As such, Azure is enormously risky and its success as envisioned is uncertain."

Labels: business, computers, file_sharing, Google, Internet, mail, Microsoft, mobile, Outlook, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 11/04/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

There are lots of projects intended to move our computing lives online. Let me try to paint a picture of where our world is heading over the next 5-10 years. I'll use Microsoft projects as examples but keep in mind that other companies have similar projects and goals.

Start with hundreds of thousands of high-powered servers all over the world, run by big companies, providing storage space and computing power to do interesting things. Amazon and Google are already in that business, and one of Microsoft's big announcements at last week's conference was that it intends to commit the future of the company to providing services from its own global network. Assume that the companies are doing what it takes to convince you that they have the resources to keep things safe and working at full speed.

Take a step forward from where we are now (a small step, really) and imagine that when you click on File / Open in Microsoft Word and see a list of the files in your Documents folder, you're seeing a list that is the same regardless of where you're sitting or what computer you're using. Your documents are listed when you're at your desk, but the same list appears when you're at a friend's house or at an Internet cafe in Paris. You don't give that a second thought - you expect it to happen and it works.

Well, it doesn't work yet but you might be surprised at how many steps you can take right now toward that goal.

• You can store documents in Office Live Workspace; on your own computer you can open them from within Word after installing a little plugin, and from any other computer you can access them in a browser and open them in Word if it's installed on that computer.
• If you set up Live Mesh, you can have local copies of your documents on all the computers you use regularly, appearing in your Documents folder when you click File / Open in Word, plus you can access the same files online by logging onto the Live Mesh website.

Those services are still in their early stages of development and will become easier to use. I have some criticisms of the way some Office Live Workspace features are designed and those will be addressed, but I've also seen references to the likelihood that Live Mesh folders will be accessible in Office Live Workspace and you'll just have to trust me - that moves us a huge step closer to that picture I painted up there of universal, easy access to your files from anywhere.

The bigger picture goes far beyond the basic ability to store files online - there are lots of ways already available to store documents online. The future lies in whether you can create and edit your files from any device.

So let's add one more element. Microsoft announced that you'll be able to use online versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote to work on your files if you're sitting at a computer where those programs are not installed. There are many, many details to be worked out about price, features (these will start out as "light" versions of the programs), and integration with your online files, but the concept immediately makes sense. Here's a screen shot of Word running in Internet Explorer - click through for shots of other programs:

Imagine that the experience of using Microsoft Word is identical regardless of whether you're using the copy installed on your computer or the online version, and you can open the same files regardless of where you're sitting. Under the hood, let's say Microsoft has done the heavy lifting to ensure that security precautions are observed for businesses. Interested yet?

Let's stop there for today. Tomorrow we'll take that a step further and try to understand just how wildly ambitious the plans are that Microsoft outlined last week.

Labels: business, file_sharing, IE, Internet, Microsoft, mobile, Office, software

posted by bruceb at 11/03/2008 12:33:00 AM | permalink

Windows Live Mesh has just been updated, as of about noon on Thursday 10/30. If you are using it already, you will be notified to install the update; it will stop working until the update is installed on each computer running it. If you are not using it yet, it has been fully opened up to everyone - read about it, make sure you have your Windows Live ID set up, and you are free to sign up.

Windows Live Mesh is a place to store files online, a program that runs on your computer to keep folders in sync on multiple computers, and a way to get remote access to your computer from anywhere. Live Mesh now supports Macs, and limited testing has begun for Windows Mobile devices. (Click here for more information about the Windows Mobile client.) You will be able to take a picture with your cell phone and have the photo show up immediately on your PC and your Mac, or share files with anyone by sharing a Live Mesh folder so they can access it online or synced to their own computer.

The remote access is extremely well designed and will make it unnecessary for most people to pay for a subscription to LogMeIn or GoToMyPC. Connecting from one computer in your Mesh to another one is a single click - hover over the Mesh icon and click on "Connect." Files can be transferred between the local computer and the remote computer by dragging and dropping copying and pasting them.

[Addendum 10/31: Although files can be transferred between the local and remote computers by copying and pasting them, Live Mesh does not currently support dragging and dropping them. Live Mesh Remote Desktop also apparently does not implement any support for printing at all, so you can work on your remote computer but you can't print something directly on your local printer. Those will be compelling reasons for some of you to use LogMeIn Pro instead of Live Mesh for remote access!]

Other updated features:

• Tips for new users.
• Better support for large monitors in remote sessions.
• Permission levels for shared folders - creator, owner, contributor, reader.
• Drag and drop files between your PC and Live Desktop.
• Multiple file upload to Live Desktop.

Microsoft showed only a couple of applications built on the Mesh framework at the PDC this week. The BBC demonstrated a Meshified version of its iPlayer, an extremely popular service in England for watching TV shows online. The Mesh version will remember what you've watched and spread that information to all your devices. If you watch part of a show on your computer, the episode will start where you left off when you tune in on your cell phone or on another computer.

But that's just a taste of what's coming. Under the hood, Live Mesh has been moved to the Windows Azure framework that Microsoft announced at the PDC underlying all of their upcoming web services, and it's powerful stuff indeed. You are watching and taking part in a transition that will affect you just as deeply as the initial shift to the Internet. I'll write more about that in the next few days!

Labels: Apple, file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, mobile, remote, software, Vista, web_services, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 10/30/2008 12:51:00 PM | permalink

Access everywhere! Lots of interesting services are being set up to make it easy for you to have access to files, folders, photos, and computers from anywhere, whether it's working on an office computer from home or bringing up pictures from your home computer on a mobile phone.

The latest entry comes from Dell, strangely enough. Dell just introduced Dell Remote Access, a ten dollar per month service for a number of tasks loosely related to "remote access." It's designed to be extremely easy to use. You'll install some software on the computer to be controlled; the software will run continuously and periodically check in with Dell Server Central Command. Then when you go to my.dellremoteaccess.com and log in, you can control your computer remotely as if you're sitting in front of it. That's not all, though! You can stream music and photos to your remote device or upload files to the computer running the Dell software. Plus one more interesting feature that I haven't seen before - you can send a link to someone by email that gives them an encrypted connection to a folder on your computer, so they can look at pictures, say, with very little fuss.

Here are a couple of places where people say nice things about the new service. The people saying those nice things work for Dell. Haven't seen much feedback from the real world yet.

That's pretty cool stuff, and you might want to try it, but I'd offer two thoughts before you jump in.

This is an increasingly crowded field. You have alternatives to choose from at a range of prices, with simple or difficult interfaces, and with similar or different features. You can jump into whichever one gets your attention first - just be aware that's what you're doing. LogMeIn will let you run its software and connect remotely to a single computer for free; its paid subscription adds very easy file transfers and the ability to email a link to a single file on your computer. GoToMyPC is slightly more expensive and aimed more at business users. Windows Live Mesh is a free service from Microsoft that will let you connect remotely to a number of computers, along with file and folder sharing and syncing and more to come; it's a little complicated to get started but might be worth the learning curve for its extra capabilities. Windows Home Server sets up remote access and photo sharing along with its file storage and backup features. Businesses running Microsoft Small Business Server already have remote access to their office computers using Remote Web Workplace.

Which leads to a point that gets more important all the time. A new program or service requires a commitment! Do not install programs or sign up for services on a whim! Each program will require time to learn its features and its quirks; it will require periodic attention to keep it up to date when security issues inevitably appear; if it's a good choice, it will require time to figure out where it fits in your life or your business. You'll likely have another web page address to memorize and another login name and password to add to the notes you can never find when you need them.

There are exciting new services out there! Choose them wisely and stick with the ones you choose so you can make them work for you. If you flit from one new thing to another, installing programs and abandoning them quickly,  you'll wind up talking to me about why your computer is slow and programs are crashing. You'll be depressed when I click on your Start menu and nod my head sadly and give you an economics lesson in the cost of cleanup versus the cost of a new computer.

With that in mind, get connected remotely! You don't have to leave computers behind any more.

Labels: computers, Internet, Microsoft, mobile, phone, photos, remote, SBS, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/21/2008 01:36:00 AM | permalink

Adobe released Flash Player 10, a new version of its ubiquitous software for displaying video clips and special effects in a web browser. You're using Flash every time you watch a YouTube video. There's a long list of new features on the Adobe web site, although really all that matters is whether it will stream higher-quality video without stuttering. Supposedly the new version will do better at that.

So I scurried off to install Flash 10, since I live for things like this - went to the web site and clicked on the "Get Flash Player 10" button and watched in excitement as a setup dialog appeared, followed by a couple of quick glimpses of setup windows coming and going, followed by the thrilling conclusion!

Hmm. Now Flash is broken.

I'm not discouraged! Back to the web site, click the setup button again! The computer whirs and belches and eventually the animation appears and I get the confirmation that installation was successful!

Version 9? Not quite what I was expecting.

Okay, fine. Let's get tough.

Off to Control Panel to uninstall Flash. There are two Flash programs listed, one of them for Flash 10 plus another one that probably was supposed to have been removed by the Flash 10 setup program. Uninstall them both.

Then back to the Flash web site, click the setup button, computer clanks and beeps, and wow, I've got Flash 10! Great!

I have no idea what difference that makes but perhaps it will be clearer after developers and web sites with video begin taking advantage of the new features.

Our experience with online video will steadily improve and this is one of the incremental steps forward. Microsoft just released Silverlight 2, Microsoft's competing technology for online video, which Microsoft hopes will chip away at Flash's commanding lead in the market. I don't care much who wins, but wouldn't it be nice if you could install useful tools without this kind of exercise?

Labels: IE, software, video

posted by bruceb at 10/17/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Some of you are running into unnecessary software included with many USB flash drives. The U3 Launchpad probably seemed like a good idea but I'm not aware of anyone who uses it, and I know a lot of people who find it irritating.

The U3 software is included with many popular models of USB thumb drive, including the SanDisk Cruzer series, some Kingston models, and a host of others. It is occasionally advertised as a feature (the "Kingston U3 DataTraveler"); other times it turns up unannounced.

When a USB drive with U3 is plugged in, the software autoplays and adds an icon by the clock to start the U3 Launchpad, which theoretically allows programs to be run from the USB drive without making any permanent changes to the computer. A U3 device shows up twice in the computer even if the U3 software is not run, identified once as a USB drive and separately as a CD drive for reasons that must make sense to somebody smarter than me.

Theoretically there are some advantages to the U3 features - data can be secured in interesting ways, programs can be run that already know all your favorite settings, and you can use your favorite software without the bother of installing it on strange computers.

Except you can't. Programs won't run on U3 devices unless they've been specially written for that purpose, and the selection is none too compelling. A special version of Firefox will run and there's a U3 version of Roboform, one of the most popular programs for keeping track of passwords and the content of web forms. Actually, there's a good case to be made for carrying the Roboform information with you in a secure way that's easy to access, so Roboform users might want to consider getting the U3 system to work. There's nothing compelling for the rest of us.

There are a handful of reports of problems. Well, more than a handful.

• The extra drive letter is annoying!
• The platform is proprietary, the programs designed for it cost too much, and it hasn't generated enough interest to attract developers.
• Some computers lock up, freeze, or crash to a blue screen (!) when the U3 software is run. The U3 support page helpfully lists six or eight programs you might want to uninstall if your computer explodes when you run U3.
• If you don't have local administrator privileges on the computer, you'll have nothing but trouble and might not be able to properly close programs before pulling out the drive.
• Many people report that the U3 software makes the drive slower, affecting the data transfer speeds. The company denies it and claims to feel just terrible that people are so unfair.

There are lots more criticisms listed here.

The U3 software (and the extra partition on the USB drive) are almost impossible to delete manually. If you just want a USB drive without any of this stuff in your way, you'll have to use the uninstallation tool from U3 (or this specialized removal tool for Sandisk drives.)

Be careful - you'll lose any data on the USB drive when the U3 software is uninstalled and there's no way to reinstall the U3 software later.

You know what? I don't think you'll miss it.

Labels: hardware, software

posted by bruceb at 10/15/2008 01:35:00 AM | permalink

I routinely set up a Windows Live ID for my clients when they get a new computer. There are many programs and online services in the world; Microsoft's programs and services under the Windows Live name are well designed, free to explore, and reasonably simple - a good choice for people who want to do some new tricks without being overwhelmed.

Here are the steps to get started.

Windows Live ID is a single sign-on service from Microsoft that allows people to log into many websites and services with one account. A Windows Live ID is an email address and a password stored in Microsoft's servers. It's free. Follow the instructions here to log in with your Windows Live ID, or set one up if you don't have one already. If you're at your own computer, check all the boxes to sign in automatically and remember your password - the services will then work automatically.

Download and install Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free program for viewing and editing your photos. It's an upgrade for the version of Windows Photo Gallery included with Vista, and also runs on Windows XP. It includes an easy way to share photos online for free. Here's more information about Windows Live Photo Gallery.

• Be careful when you install Windows Live Photo Gallery! You'll have the option to install other Windows Live programs; only install the ones that you are genuinely interested in. Watch the checkboxes on the right - if you're not careful, your Internet Explorer home page will be changed and you'll get an unnecessary extra toolbar.

Explore Windows Live Skydrive, a free place to store and share files online. It is a genuinely useful service, completely free and very easy to use! You'll have access to the files stored in Skydrive from any computer, and you can set up easily that can be shared with someone else, or left open for anyone. Once you're familiar with it, it can be very handy! Here's more information about Windows Live Skydrive.

Windows Live Mesh is (a) a place to store files online, (b) a program that runs on your computer to keep folders in sync on multiple computers, and (c) a way to get remote access to your computer from anywhere - and in the future it will do more! It's a little more complex to get started with but it's already one of the most interesting services available. There's basic information about the service here, and notes about how to get started here. (If you get a message that the Mesh service is not available in your country, it's a glitch - the instructions to solve it are here.)

The world is already flooded with online services, and this is just the beginning of a very big transformation indeed. We're moving from complete dependence on our usual computer, to a much more amophous relationship with a number of computers and other devices that communicate with each other and a mix of locally installed software and services running up in the cloud. Stay sharp! Things are changing.

Labels: file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, photos, remote, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/13/2008 12:49:00 AM | permalink

I've set up more new computers in the last few months than in the year before that. A lot of you are retiring your trusty Windows XP computers and sitting down to Vista for the first time.

Welcome to Vista! It's a great operating system.

You'll be able to get started right away. These are the new features that I point out to my clients - things that set Vista ahead of Windows XP that you might not discover right away. Go read about each one!

Vista's Favorites list can be made into your best friend, a customized list for one-click access to the folders you use most often. It's so easy to customize that it would be a shame not to use it.

"Breadcrumbs" give you an easy, intuitive way to move through folders and subfolders, a huge improvement over the folder navigation in Windows XP.

The snipping tool is a built-in utility for quick screen shots that can be dropped into an email or document or photo.

Shadow copy is a feature in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate that automatically makes extra copies of your folders twice a day and tucks them in a safe place. You can restore files as they existed in the past, regardless of whether they've been edited or deleted in the meantime.

Don't hunt for programs - search for them! When you click the Start button, your cursor is immediately blinking in a search bar. Start to type in the name of a program! You'll see it immediately appear at the top of the Start menu. It's far faster than looking for a program by combing through the "All Programs" list.

Have fun!

Labels: software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 10/10/2008 12:42:00 AM | permalink

Apple's software for Windows has been causing problems on more and more of my clients' computers. I've been wrestling with bluescreens caused by iTunes, file extensions hijacked by Quicktime, and now I'm suspicious that an uninvited service has been causing problems in Outlook.

An iTunes installation includes far more than a music library that syncs to your iPod. There are multiple services and kernel mode drivers and program addins, with very little of it included in any disclosure or presented with any options. Apple also installs its "software update" framework, which it has used to install additional unrelated software without adequate disclosure, notably when it used the update service to install its insecure Safari web browser a few months ago.

The last few releases of iTunes install "Bonjour," a service that's only used if you share iTunes libraries across a network or use AppleTV. You don't do that. Why is that running on your computer without your knowledge?

You've also got "Apple Mobile Device Support," which syncs with iPhones and iPod Touch. If you don't have one of those devices, you don't need that software.

And if you're running Outlook and iTunes, you're probably running an Outlook addin named "iTunes Outlook Addin" or "Outlook iTunes Sync Addin." Take a look! In Outlook 2003, click on Tools / Options / Other / Advanced Options / COM Addins. In Outlook 2007, click on Tools / Trust Center / Addins, and click on "Manage COM Addins / Go" at the bottom. Now how did that get there! Make it go away. I suspect it of causing Outlook problems for several clients in the last few months.

There is a way to install iTunes without most of that unnecessary bloatware but be warned - it's not for the faint of heart. If you have to install iTunes, this guide will lead you through the process of locating the installation files for its individual pieces, so you can install only iTunes (and Bonjour if you need it), and leave the rest of it behind.

It doesn't help that the latest version of iTunes breaks the connection between J River Media Center and iPods. You're now forced to install iTunes if you get one of those devices, because Apple creates closed, unfriendly platforms and fiercely locks out potential competitors. Here's more info about that.

I hope my iPod Classic doesn't break - it connects to J River Media Center and I will never install iTunes or Quicktime on my computers. Apple is moving way up on the list of vendors helping send my kids to college.

Labels: Apple, audio, mobile, Outlook, phone, software

posted by bruceb at 10/07/2008 12:13:00 AM | permalink

I set up a new Dell Inspiron 518 desktop computer today - a nice home computer, a lovely case bristling with USB ports and shiny black plastic that will attract dust like nobody's business, fast and well-equipped, shipped with the correct configuration and working out of the box, as usual with Dell.

Dell ships computers with less preinstalled software than most other manufacturers, even from the Home & Home Office division, so setup is easy. There were a handful of third party apps to take off - Google's cluttered "Google Desktop" widget/search program and the rarely used Google Toolbar, one or two others. Dell is starting to load on more of its own homebrewed applications, though, so new Dell computers still have too many helpful startup screens and popup windows and balloons and taskbar icons. I remove most of them right away - in my experience, more people are annoyed than helped by the incessant notices from the "support center" and the well-meaning advertisements for services like Dell's online backup and the rest.

Maybe it's just me but I don't like the "Browser Address Error Redirector," licensed by Dell from Google. If you try to go to a nonexistent web page - a typo in the address, say - this redirects your web browser to keep you from seeing a "page not found" message. Instead, you'll get suggestions for what you might have been looking for, along with lots and lots and lots of advertisements (sample on the right).

I'd rather see a "page not found" message. I uninstall it.

The latest Dell software was introduced a few months ago - a dock that parks itself at the top of the screen to fool you into thinking you bought a Mac by mistake.

Programs are grouped, so a click on the applications icon might provide access to Word, Excel and Powerpoint. (Umm - which one of those icons would that be again?) The dock is intended to scoop up the normal desktop icons so the rest of the desktop is pristine. Here's a writeup with a few more details about the Dell dock. If you have a Dell computer running Vista and a dock would make your life complete, you can reportedly download and install it from this page.

Who uses things like this? Is there such a demand for an enhancement to Vista's desktop and menus that this is a great addition to every home computer shipped by Dell? I don't get it. I'm an old fogey. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insensitive to how personal some of these choices are. You can use the Dell dock and I'll be happy for you. Lots of people love their Macs and feed them special treats at dinner and put them to sleep on a little pillow and apparently nobody feels the same way I do - when I look at a Mac screen, I see a stupid, juvenile design that makes me so happy that I work in a PC world.

Labels: Apple, computers, Google, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 10/03/2008 01:11:00 AM | permalink

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the "MediaSmart" name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP's Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up - getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn't very good at finding media stored on a different computer. It worked for several years but it always ran hot, which eventually doomed it - the proprietary video card died once from overheating and was almost impossible to replace, and the fans have lately been getting louder and louder until they became an unbearable distraction.

There are several new Vista Extenders on the market which overlap in their primary purpose, to bring Vista Media Center to the TV from another computer in the home. HP has developed an HD TV with the MediaSmart technology built into the guts of the TV - an interesting idea that would make setup much more simple if you need a new TV, but it requires a firm belief that the technology running a Vista Media Center Extender will last as long as the TV. I don't know if I would make that bet.

The HP MediaSmart Connect stood out for me, though, when I read some favorable reviews. It's a small box, 8 1/2 inches square and less than two inches tall, and completely silent. It has the right outputs to connect to my TV and audio receiver - HDMI, component video, and analog and digital audio. It has built-in wireless networking but I have a network cable running to the living room so I never had to find out if the wireless connection would be jerky or slow, a frequent complaint. HP is reportedly going to lower the price in the next week, giving it a list price of $299 and a likely street price of $249. (Gadgets like this require exactly the same calculation as software: if you get the wrong thing, it doesn't matter if it was cheap; if you get the right thing, the price is almost irrelevant in the long run.)

The remote control bristles with buttons, since there are just too many functions for it to be simple, but at least the remote is sturdy and solid in the hand, which is not always true of the competitors.

The Vista Media Center experience is satisfying but it would be more or less the same with any Extender. What sets the MediaSmart Connector apart is the proprietary software added by HP.

HP has built an interface that includes seamless access to Vista Media Center in its entirety - but there's also an attractive, simple interface that provides access to photos, music and videos that runs completely apart from Vista Media Center. HP provides optional software to run on the home computers that delivers the photos, music and videos to the MediaSmart Connect. Browsing photos with Vista Media Center is quite nice, for example - thumbnails, the ability to browse by tag or folder name, etc. - but some people will prefer to browse the same photos with HP's software, shown at left. Both views are available at any time.

HP then gave its box one more ability that was important to me: the HP MediaSmart Connect is able to connect to other software running on a home computer in addition to the program supplied by HP. It can display lists of media from any standard UPNP or DLNA server.

That means the HP MediaConnect can display music, photos or video sent around the network by a wide variety of programs, including some of the ones I mentioned yesterday. In my case, that means it connected immediately to the UPNP server built into J River Media Center, the program I depend on to keep my embarrassingly large music library organized. I've spent hours sorting my music by genre and creating playlists and smartlists, and in just a few minutes, there were those playlists on the TV, ready to be played at the click of a button. I started playing one ("Audio -- Recently Imported -- Two Months -- shuffle") and wiped a tear from my eye, because I had never been able to go back and forth elegantly between Windows Media Center and J River Media Center before.

That probably isn't important to you. There are a hundred reasons why this works for me and might not work for you. Maybe you'd be frustrated that the experience is not troublefree - I can't see cover art for music albums, I've wrestled with video formats (that story comes later), and the interface is sometimes a little slow, for example. You might be fiercely interested in streaming high-definition video or 5.1 surround sound, which I can't tell you about because I don't care.

The good parts far outweigh any negatives in our living room. Vista Media Center has a tremendous program guide for live and recorded television that I can reach with a single click of a button. I can browse through thumbnails and start a slide show of last month's family photos. I can play my video and music collection. All of those things are handled by an interface that's easy to navigate from the couch with a single remote control. That's good stuff!

All of this requires a computer in the house doing the work, and some hard experience to discover which formats work and which don't work. I'll tell you more later about how I'm handling those things.

Labels: audio, hardware, network, photos, software, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 9/19/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on "extenders," a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An "extender" is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. It works exclusively with a remote control - no keyboard or mouse! - and looks great from across the room. Here are some cute animations from Microsoft about how it works.

Extenders are not a new concept, and Microsoft is not the only company offering products that work this way. Apple TV is a box that streams music and video from your computer's copy of iTunes to the living room, hemmed in by Apple's fairly restrictive selection of supported formats and features. There is a rich selection of third party software and hardware that will send streams out onto a home network - Twonky, Tversity, music devices from Roku Soundbridge and Sonos, and much more. Tivo supplies software to send photos and music to the Tivo in the living room. Do-it-yourselfers and gadget freaks and technical types are having a wonderful time squabbling about the pros and cons of various setups.

Microsoft gets more attention in the mainstream because the technology it has chosen is elegant and because, well, because it's Microsoft, I guess. Media Center Extenders are based on a simple concept. The small living room box connects to the computer over the home network and displays the Vista Media Center interface, exactly as if it was running directly on the computer. Under the hood is a specialized version of Remote Desktop, which many businesspeople use to connect to their office computers from home.

All the work is done on the computer, but the computer can stay in the room suited for it. Multiple extenders can be connected to the same computer, and the computer can be used normally while it's sending media to the other rooms. The physical connections to the television for audio and video can be difficult but mating the computer with the extender is pretty straightforward.

Some people already have this technology without knowing it, because an XBox 360 can be a Media Center Extender. Chances are the XBox 360 is already on the home network to get updates and play online, so the only setup involves a bit of fumbling to bring a new blade to life in the XBox dashboard, full of photos and music. Microsoft recently announced that the XBox 360 dashboard would be completely overhauled to make it look like Media Center.

In addition to the XBox 360, there was a first generation of extenders from Linksys and others for Windows XP Media Center Edition, but they were slow and cranky and became obsolete when Microsoft rewrote everything for Vista. A new generation of extenders are now being introduced with some attractive features.

I don't have an XBox 360 - noisy things that fail a lot. (If you're interested, a good article appeared a few days ago about the XBox 360's sad history of hardware problems.) Instead, I'll tell you tomorrow about HP's MediaSmart Connect, which is the best of the extenders on the market now.

Labels: Apple, audio, hardware, Microsoft, network, photos, software, video, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/18/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Here's a tip for getting around in Outlook: it's possible to switch between mail, contacts, and calendar using hotkeys on the keyboard instead of reaching for the mouse to click the navigation pane. Who knew?

Don't overlook an even better Outlook tip from a few months ago - opening multiple Outlook windows simultaneously.

Labels: mail, Outlook, software

posted by bruceb at 9/12/2008 03:24:00 PM | permalink

Apple reacted quickly to the reports that the latest iTunes update has caused some Windows systems to crash badly. Last night Apple posted another version of iTunes that rolls back the offending hardware driver to an older version. If your system is blue screening, all you have to do is uninstall iTunes, uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, and then reinstall iTunes from last night's release.

That's absurd, of course. As one person commented:

"A kernel level device driver (like the USB driver that Apple installs rather than using the one built in to the OS) will always have the ability to take down the OS.

"This is true for any OS since a kernel level driver is the interface between the OS and hardware.

"That's why it requires Administrator level permission to install (it did), why it needs to be very well written and tested before it gets sent to users (it wasn't) and why the installer should notifiy users that a device driver is being installed (they weren't) and only be installed if absolutely needed to support new hardware (it wasn't)."

You might want to take my suggestion: uninstall iTunes, uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, uninstall Apple Software Update, uninstall Quicktime, install J River Media Center for your iPod, and return your iPhone.

Incidentally, are you aware of what a disaster the new iPhone has been? iPhone users are screaming bloody murder about absurdly short battery life, dropped calls, AT&T's terrible coverage with its much-vaunted 3G network, and much more. New software was released for the iPhone last night but there is little confidence that it will actually fix the list of problems it purports to address. Apple promises that this update will deliver all of the following improvements, each one of which has been a source of anguish for iPhone users for the last couple of months:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

Labels: Apple, audio, mobile, phone, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/12/2008 10:43:00 AM | permalink

New slogan for Apple: iTunes ain't done till Windows won't run!

After its iPod conference this week - more of a non-event than usual for Apple - a new version of iTunes started to roll out to Windows users. For some people, it's causing crashes and even causing blue screens after it installs broken drivers without any disclosure or warning.

The problems don't affect everybody - like so many computer problems, these are likely to be caused by unfortunate conflicts with other programs if they're installed on the same computer. It's still being investigated but one writer suggests that any of these factors might cause the iTunes upgrade to crash the computer:

• Roxio disc burning software
• An HP USB printer
• Logitech software/hardware

This writer thoroughly investigated the 80Mb (!) download delivered by the iTunes installer and discovered that it was installing two hardware drivers, including one that has a long history of causing blue screens (fatal crashes) on Windows systems. Apple is also delivering the MobileMe software and a program set to automatically load the MobileMe software when your computer starts up, whether you're using the service or not. That's the service that was a disastrous failure for the first few weeks after it was released a couple of months ago, and is still barely limping along. It's irrelevant to most people.

Apple was roundly criticized a few months ago when it used its "software update" service to distribute its buggy and insecure browser, Safari, without adequately warning people. This time it's taking the approach of not giving any warning at all that this upgrade includes anything other than a facelift for iTunes and Quicktime.

If you use iTunes, you can't really avoid this update - about all you can do is hope for the best. Personally, I'm happy to stick to my longstanding conviction not to install any Apple software on my Windows machines. Apple has proven over and over that they write crappy software for Windows. Ed Bott comments:

"Nice marketing strategy: Tweak Microsoft for an operating system that crashes, then ship code that crashes Windows. Thank goodness I'm not a cynic or I'd think this was a deliberate marketing strategy."

Labels: Apple, audio, computers, mobile, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 9/11/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

Adobe is taking orders for its annual upgrade to Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, the photo and video programs for consumers. Over the years I've found it hard to know what to suggest to people for working with photos. Photoshop Elements 7 might be a perfect fit for you but don't take it casually - if you're not prepared to enter into a significant long-term relationship, then it will go unused.

Photoshop Elements has an organizer for browsing through photos that works fairly naturally. If you are obsessive and tag the photos (assign keywords or categories to each photo - "Mom," "Our house," "vacation," "Obama"), then it's easy to display just the photos that match certain tags. It takes some discipline to get in the habit of tagging photos, so many people use the organizer to do nothing more than look through thumbnails.

When it's time to edit photos or use them in projects, Photoshop Elements is tremendously powerful but frankly, it's almost as unintuitive as its older sibling, the full version of Adobe Photoshop. There are several different ways in the program to begin photo editing that expose or conceal various editing tools - "Quick Fix" and "Guided" in addition to a full-blown set of complex tools, plus different panes to begin different kinds of projects and ways to share photos. I used Photoshop Elements 6 to put together a photo book this summer; the result was glorious but "learning curve" doesn't begin to express how long I spent figuring out dozens of unintuitive quirks of the program.

The new version, Photoshop Elements 7, apparently does not change the interface significantly. Instead it adds an additional layer of complexity built around an upgraded set of online services, Photoshop.com. The new program insistently presents advertising about the service until you pony up fifty bucks for a year's subscription, guaranteeing a flow of income to Acrobat even if you decide not to buy next year's upgrade. There is a free connection to a limited set of online services but you can bet that there will be an unending series of advertisements and popups and blinking headlines about the joy of upgrading to the paid service.

The online service includes online storage for photos, syncing with the collection on your computer, making photos accessible from anywhere, which is nice. Photoshop.com also backs up your photos and gives you many options to share them, including connections to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa. It does not reassure me that most of the online features are built around the "albums" that can be created in Photoshop Elements, since I've never used "albums" in the last five years of running the program consistently. Using an online service is similar to installing a new piece of software - it does nothing for you unless you understand it, learn its quirks, and use it regularly. The link to Photoshop.com might become a critical part of your relationship with your photos, but if you're not dedicated and diligent, it will be just one more bit of clutter in your technology landscape. If you're already feeling overloaded by the annoyances of computing in 2008, this won't help.

Photoshop Elements 6 has bugs (I've had to recover the "catalog" - the database that drives the program - from backups on numerous occasions after the program has crashed and the database has been corrupted), and its performance is glacially slow. So I'm disheartened by the online reports from people testing the beta releases of the new programs that performance is slow and the betas are unstable. Maybe they'll get better.

If you're just getting started with photo organizers and editors, install Microsoft's free program Windows Live Photo Gallery. The organizer for thumbnails is quite nice, there are simple tools for cropping and removing red eye and adjusting lighting, and you can easily upload a photo gallery for sharing online.

On the other hand, if you're a veteran or good with technology (i.e., young), Photoshop Elements 7 is still the leader and this is a lot of power for a hundred bucks. Put it to good use!

Labels: file_sharing, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 9/10/2008 04:19:00 PM | permalink

There are new Internet browsers available in the news - Microsoft made a beta release of Internet Explorer 8 available last week for testing, and Google caused a fuss when it released a beta version of Chrome today, possibly as a hasty response to Microsoft's release.

Google envisions a future where all of our work is done in an Internet browser. You'll work on online files using online applications, powered by rich web-based programming languages. The underlying operating system fades in importance in that world - it might be Windows but it doesn't have to be because it's not doing anything interesting. Imagine this pitch:

Now available at WalMart, the ChromePC 3000, powered by Google! It starts instantly, like any other appliance; it runs your online programs faster than any PC or Mac; it's almost invulnerable to viruses and malware. You can watch movies from Netflix, watch Internet TV, play streaming music, and watch YouTube videos; you can work on your documents stored in Google Docs or Acrobat.com, check your GMail or Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, and you can edit your photos in Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Online. It's yours for $299!

That's pretty tempting! It might not matter that it's manufactured by an unknown Korean company and runs Ubuntu Linux, eh?

Now I just made that up with no regard for reality. But Microsoft is going nuts because it's increasingly easy to imagine some variation on that  - an emerging market that bypasses Windows. There are a lot of people who might be perfectly content to use a simple device that only runs an Internet browser although it's not going to be everyone's world; even if we use more online services and move files online, businesses will still use rich applications installed on Windows for a long time to come.

Google's vision is interesting. At the moment, the reality is something else. Google may have rushed its announcement of Chrome because it was embarrassed that after years of development its "new" features are not special at all - they're very, very similar to the features in Internet Explorer 8. The new features in either one are modest improvements at best - architectural changes to make the browers more crash-resistant, faster Java, better security, and a way to surf online without collecting any history (immediately and obviously dubbed "Porn Mode"). Neato! Not exactly riveting stuff.

Early reports suggest that Chrome is a work in progress, with some bugs, no support for add-ins, and an interface that is so stripped-down that I personally find it a bit odd. IE8 has some nice new ways to customize things and a few things moved around. I'm not sure I have time to test either one.

Let me return to something I said about Firefox when its new version was released. (This is addressed to the business users trying to get work done and the home users who don't want technical glitches. If you're a technically proficient computer user, go about your business with my best wishes.)

All of you have Internet Explorer 7 installed on your Windows computers. It is stable, full-featured, and secure.

Don't install duplicative software unnecessarily! You should not install a new Internet browser because a well-meaning friend tells you that it's cool, or a newspaper article speaks highly of it. You should install software if and only if you can articulate something that the new software will allow you to do that you cannot currently do. And you must be ready to take on the burden of giving the new software the care and attention it will require for security and stability.

Labels: Google, IE, Internet, Microsoft, software

posted by bruceb at 9/03/2008 01:24:00 AM | permalink

Windows Live ID is a single sign-on service from Microsoft that allows people to log into many websites and services with one account. A Windows Live ID is an email address and a password stored in Microsoft's servers. It's free.

Most people will have a single Windows Live ID. I'm setting them up routinely for each employee in my clients' offices.

More services are being added all the time. Almost all of them are free. They are increasingly tied together so that access to them is easy. This includes instant messaging (Windows Live Messenger), file syncing and sharing (Live Mesh), online file storage and sharing (Windows Live Skydrive), online photo sharing (Windows Live Photo Gallery), and more.

If you don't yet have a Windows Live ID, follow this process. I'm including a couple of extra steps that will save you time later.

Go to this site and click on Sign up on the left.

Use your regular email address.

Choose a safe password. Put it somewhere secure. Remember it.

• (If you're already got a Windows Live ID for the email address, you'll find that out when you leave the signup screen. If so, you'll have to figure out what the password is, or reset it.)

You'll get an email asking you to verify the email address. Follow the instructions - you'll click the link in the message, then go through a couple of very short screens online.

Go to http://account.live.com

Click on "Registered information"

Enter first and last name

Enter birth date (apparently required, but you don't have to tell the truth as long as you make yourself an adult)

Change home and work country to NONE

Change home and work country back to United States. Each one should now have extra lines for addresses. They can be left blank.

The page for "Registered Information" will look like this - on the left when you arrive, on the right when you're done.

Click SAVE

You should now see your name and Country/Region: United States on the front page.

You're done!

When you're prompted for your Windows Live ID and you're sitting at your primary computer, watch for the checkboxes to save your login name and password - the Windows Live services can almost always open automatically with no password prompt after the first time.

Read about the Windows Live services on my news page or online. There are links to many of the services here on my Favorites page. You may find something that you can use right away!

Labels: file_sharing, Internet, Microsoft, OneCare, photos, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/27/2008 12:56:00 AM | permalink

If you're sending a student off to college with a new laptop, Microsoft has a pretty good deal. A student with an email address at an educational institution (typically the email addresses end in .EDU) can buy a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95 through this web site.

This suite includes far more software than the Home & Student Edition in the stores for $100-140. This is the suite with all the Office programs, including Outlook, Powerpoint, Publisher, OneNote, Access, and more.  Most students will only use Word and Powerpoint, of course, but it's still a great price.

There's also an upgrade to Vista Ultimate for $64.95, much cheaper than the normal upgrade price. Most student laptops come with Vista Home edition, with all the multimedia programs; upgrading to Ultimate adds shadow copies for some extra protection, an improved backup program that a student would never use, and mildly amusing eye candy in the form of animated desktops. (Here's a comparison of the Vista versions.) The discounted price is nice but the upgrade is anything but essential.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 8/24/2008 12:37:00 AM | permalink

Tough week! Here are the kind of things that fill my days. And bear in mind, these are all stories about software and services that I love dearly - this is the good stuff, these are what I recommend because they're better than the rest!

Client with hosted Exchange mailbox at 1and1.com. Mailbox doesn't connect this morning, so no incoming or outgoing mail. Try it from a different computer, try Outlook Web Access - nothing works. Call tech support in India and get through without delay. "Very sorry! That server is down. The experts are working on it." Any idea when it will come back? "No, I'm sorry. But the experts are working on it." It's been down a day and a half now, still no word.

Putting Jungle Disk on a Windows Home Server for online backups. The process to sign up for Amazon's online storage system is not completely straightforward but I've done it before, I know about the "Access Key ID" and the "Secret Access Key," so I'm in business in short order, except the Jungle Disk software delivers an error message, error 403, "NotSignedUp." There are a few dozen lines of gibberish in the detailed error message but it's clear that Amazon doesn't think the service is set up correctly yet. Log in to the Amazon Web Services portal and there's a message about problems with payment for the account - payment that was set up on an Amazon credit card. Hmm. Spent half an hour wrestling with payment options, putting in one good credit card after another and getting more error messages about payment problems, and just about gave up - I was actually drafting the note to the client about the failure when Amazon showed the service was working just fine, thanks, even though I hadn't actually changed anything for a while. Jungle Disk started doing a backup. What was that about?

Setting up Live Mesh to transfer large files between people working in several locations. Installed it on the client's desktop and laptop, created a folder, it started syncing all over the place, everything was automatic and swell, great stuff! Set up Windows Live IDs for three employees, shared a Live Mesh folder with employee number 1, went to that employee's computer and clicked on the invitation to Live Mesh that appeared promptly in the mailbox. Web site pops up inviting me to "Connect," then "Sign In," then displays a message that Live Mesh is only available in the US and they're happy to put me on a waiting list when it's offered in my country. I looked around. It looked a lot like the US where I was standing. I poked around in the Live Mesh forums and found a suggestion that the Windows Live ID account information needed to be updated with the correct country information so I went over there and found it was completely hosed - no matter how many times I picked "United States" and clicked Apply, the front page would stubbornly complain that no country had been chosen. I could change it to the Virgin Islands - that worked fine! It was only the US that it ignored. I dropped it, wrote off the hour that had been spent fussing with it, went back a couple of hours later, and everything worked right away, Live Mesh installed immediately, no issues at all.

Client with a SonicWall firewall/router and a Small Business Server that hadn't been set up to use Remote Web Workplace or the other features that make SBS so lovable. There were a few odd networking settings on the SonicWall but nothing alarming. I set up port forwarding on the ports that make SBS do its tricks (80, 443, 4125) and bang! the network went down, all Internet traffic stopped, the workstations couldn't connect to the server, couldn't browse or ping anywhere. Spent an hour and a half backing out of anything that I might conceivably have touched, nearly gave a credit card number to SonicWall tech support, when it came back up. Two days later I set up port forwarding in what I swear was exactly the same way and it works like a charm. I still don't have any idea what that was about, but it scared the hell out of me.

Tried to buy licenses online for StorageCraft's remarkable backup program, ShadowProtect. Everything went perfectly, right up until the final "Finish" button when I was told that the billing address for the credit card didn't match the information on file at the bank. Just for fun, I tried three different credit cards at two different addresses - all of them plausible choices, not trying to pull anything. Same message each time. (Just for fun, I logged in to my bank's web site and confirmed that there were six or eight "pending" charges showing on the various cards. They went away eventually.) Couple of days later, went back and the transaction went through immediately. (And this story doesn't really count, because after I dropped them a note that night, the company immediately put me in touch with a reseller who would have sold me the licenses, then had one of the company's business manager follow up with a phone call to make sure the problem was resolved. Nice folks, great software, great support.)

Set up Netgear Rangemax USB wireless adapters on three workstations. Windows XP doesn't have any builtin drivers so the CD is required, and the CD doesn't have the drivers stored separately - the Netgear software has to be installed, which of course demands to take over control of the wireless settings from the perfectly adequate Windows XP wireless controls. The next morning, no one can get online, all the networking is mucked up, I have to travel onsite and get the stupid Netgear software to stop popping up with its incomprehensible dials and control panels and graphs. I couldn't find any way to get the Netgear software to hand control back to Windows - that required removing and reinstalling the software to get the startup dialog to appear again so I could check the box telling the Netgear software to get out of the way. Once I did that, the connections were immediately rock solid.

And so it goes. This is the good guys, the cream of the crop - I've also had battles with spyware and rootkits and the rest. Some weeks are more tiring than others. Back to the news soon, I promise!

Labels: backup, computers, file_sharing, hardware, Home_Server, mail, network, SBS, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 8/21/2008 01:15:00 AM | permalink

I have a Verizon mobile wireless adapter built into my Dell Latitude D630. I pay sixty bucks a month so I can connect to a reasonably fast EVDO broadband connection from just about anywhere. It's becoming a standard accessory for business travellers who don't want to hassle with conventional wireless.

A few days ago, there was a lengthy delay when I clicked the Connect button - "wait while your equipment is updated," something like that.

It stopped working after that, although I didn't recognize the coincidence for a while. I just knew that this error message came up when I tried to connect.

Here we go again!

• I logged onto the Verizon Wireless web site and confirmed that the account was active and unchanged. The wireless modems have phone numbers associated with them for billing - in the Dell "Mobile Broadband Card Utility" software, click on File / Device Properties to see the phone number.
• Dell distributes the software on the Drivers page for its notebooks, under Communications. I downloaded an updated version and tried to install it. Nope - "the version on your computer is newer." Nuh uh! <sigh> Uninstall the existing software, restart, install the downloaded software, restart. No change.
• Could another change have killed things? I was testing some VPN software that made me suspicious. I had used System Restore to create a restore point just before I put on that VPN software, so let's roll back to that restore point, when the Verizon card was still working. Hmm. Now the Dell Mobile Broadband software is stuck thinking it's partially installed. Okay, one more time - uninstall the Dell software, restart, reinstall, restart.
• No change.
• Big sigh.

Finally, too late, I google "RAS Error 691" and "Error QA920." There are a few frustrated souls out there, with the longest discussion on this page, describing people's miserable experiences with Verizon technical support. It looks like Verizon needs to reset the account, which takes only a couple of minutes after a tech support rep becomes convinced it's necessary.

It's midnight, so tech support isn't answering, and frankly I'm none too excited by the prospect of that conversation.

One of the tips on that page catches my eye - a way to force the device to be re-activated in Verizon's system.

• Log back in to Verizon Wireless web site, go to the page for the device, and find "Activate Phone."
• On the next screen, click on "Activate Equipment."
• On the next screen, pick the phone number assigned to the line and type in a new ESN, one digit different than the correct one. (The ESN is the unique number assigned to the device. In the Dell software, it's also under File / Device Properties.)
• Wait ten minutes.
• Go back and put in the correct ESN. Wait ten minutes.

Push the Connect button and, Voila! Simple as that, the modem connects again.

If the guesses are right in the forum posts, the firmware upgrade kills the device for some people. I'm not aware of any way to avoid the "upgrades" - they seem to happen randomly when I try to connect.

What a pain!

Labels: broadband, computers, hardware, mobile, software, wireless

posted by bruceb at 8/15/2008 12:19:00 AM | permalink

There are frequent updates for Java, the technology used by many web sites to make interesting things happen in your browser. You've probably seen the Java update bubble popping up far too often down in the lower right corner of the screen.

The updates are issued to fix security problems, problems that are being exploited by the bad guys. If you're fooled into visiting a malicious web site, there's a chance that your computer might load some malware through a security hole in an old version of Java, even after you've installed a more recent version. Here's an article from the Washington Post about the security hole caused by these leftover versions.

That's why it's so frustrating that the updates do not uninstall the older versions of Java, resulting in a complete mess of Java versions on almost everyone's computer. Take a look in Add/Remove Programs and see if you have a list that looks something like this:

That's just dumb.

Each of those can be removed individually, which is a pain in the neck. An annoyed blogger created a script to remove all versions of Java from a computer in one operation. He sounds like a reasonable person so I ran it on my computer; it appeared to do what it promised. I can't vouch for it - we should never run software from an unknown source - but if you run it and wind up being sold as a slave by the Russian mafia, at least you know I'll be there too.

After running the script, you'll have to reinstall the latest version of Java from here.

Remember, as Windows becomes more secure, the bad guys are increasingly using programs like Flash, Java and Quicktime to deliver malware to our computers. The free Secunia Online Software Inspector is a very helpful tool to identify updates that might be needed on your computer. Here's more information about the Secunia Inspector. Upgrades are a pain but keep your computer up to date!

Labels: IE, security, software

posted by bruceb at 8/08/2008 01:18:00 AM | permalink

On the assumption that my choices are endlessly fascinating to an ever-growing number of people - really, really bored people - I've added a page with details about the hardware and software that I use here at the high-tech headquarters of bruceb consulting. I'll try to keep it up to date. Heck, my computers are happy - you could do worse than follow my example in precise detail.

Click here for all the prurient details!

Labels: audio, backup, broadband, bruceb, computers, file_sharing, hardware, mobile, phone, photos, printers, SBS, security, software, video, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/30/2008 01:02:00 AM | permalink

Windows Search 4 was released last month as an upgrade to Windows Search 3.01 (Windows XP) and the built-in search capability in Windows Vista. It is an important upgrade for every Windows user; it will be pushed through the Windows Update system soon. Here's more information about Windows Search 4.

For the first time, Windows Search 4 can be installed on servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Home Server. This gives businesses an important new tool for finding information but there is one new trick to learn.

Many offices with Small Business Server have almost all important business files in a shared folder on the server, which is mapped to a drive letter and is universally referred to by its letter - "The file is stored on the N: drive." Normal people in small businesses don't have to be aware that the file is really in something like \\sbsserver\Company.

When the server is running Windows Search 4, it compiles an index of the business files. When a user with Windows Search 4 searches for something in the shared folder on the server, the server does the work of searching its index and providing the results. The search is completed nearly instantly and it is consistent for all users.

(The underlying technology is referred to as "remote query" or "remote index discovery." A computer with Windows Search 4 responds to a search query from a remote computer by consulting its own index and sending the search results. This works between any computers with Windows Search 4, not just searches on a server - a Vista computer can do a remote query on a shared folder on another Vista computer, etc.)

This is a significant improvement over Windows Search 3.01, which required each individual computer to compile an index of the files on the server. That created a lot of network traffic and search results were uneven - there was always a question of whether an individual computer's index was up to date or complete.

Note the requirement for this to work: Windows Search 4 must be installed on the server and on the workstations. As far as I know, the only way to tell if it has been installed is to look in Add/Remove Programs.

Putting this to use requires a simple technique for searches.

HOW TO USE WINDOWS SEARCH

SEARCHING OUTLOOK AND FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER

Use the toolbar by the clock (Windows XP) or the search bar above the Start button (Vista) to search files stored on your own computer and everything in Outlook.

SEARCHING FILES ON THE SERVER - WINDOWS XP

Open the folder with the business files. (Example: open My Computer and click on the N: drive.)

Click the Search button and do the search from Windows Search on the left.

SEARCHING FILES ON THE SERVER - VISTA

Open the folder with the business files. (Example: open Computer and click on the N: drive.)

Use the Search bar in the upper right corner of the window.

As far as I know, there is no way to do a single search that covers Outlook and files in a shared folder.

Now go find something interesting!

Labels: network, Outlook, SBS, search, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 7/28/2008 01:43:00 AM | permalink

From a column today by Ed Bott:

"Sony is finally taking on its crapware problem. For the past two months, I've been using an astonishingly light and agile Sony VAIO notebook and loving every minute of it. The best part of all was that this machine was absolutely, completely, unequivocally crapware-free, which meant I was able to be productive within a few minutes of unboxing.

"That's a huge switch for Sony, which has taken a beating as 'the poster child for negative experiences' with new PCs running Windows Vista. And it was a happy surprise for me. When I wrote about my hands-on experiences with two older VAIO notebooks earlier this year, I called it a 'truly miserable experience.' It took a crapware-cleansing clean install to fix a 2007-vintage Sony notebook, and I spent hours replacing outdated drivers and removing unwanted software from a 2008 model (if you haven't read that installment, see Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time).

"In a March interview, Sony Vice President Mike Abary assured me that Sony was 'listening and taking action.' The first phase, he said, was a new program called Fresh Start, in which Sony promised to remove all trialware and unnecessary software for customers who chose the Fresh Start option as part of a custom-configured VAIO. Sony announced initially that it would charge $49.99 for the privilege of ordering a crapware-free PC and then quickly reversed its decision.

"In early May, I ordered an ultraportable notebook from Sony's website, configuring it to order and choosing the Fresh Start option (no extra charge).

"The notebook arrived a few days later, and I've been using it since then for a variety of real-world tasks. The bottom line? Sony's Fresh Start delivers exactly what it promises: a crapware-free PC. It runs Windows Vista remarkably well, and the hardware has been a sheer delight to use."

Details further on in the article about performance, battery life, drivers, and where to buy a Vaio with the Fresh Start option (online only - a Vaio purchased in a local store will come loaded with crap).

Labels: computers, hardware, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 7/21/2008 02:13:00 PM | permalink

Microsoft Exchange and Outlook dominate the market for corporate email. Small businesses running Exchange Server use Outlook almost exclusively. Until recently, even individuals and businesses without a server would use Outlook with their POP3 mail accounts.

But in the last couple of years, almost everyone has started to chafe at a singular disadvantage of an individual copy of Outlook: it can't be used easily anywhere except by sitting at the computer where it's installed.

We want to read our mail from any computer, anywhere. We want to use more than one computer - a desktop in the office, another one at home, or perhaps a notebook for the road - and we want our email on all of them. We want our mail on a Blackberry or iPhone or Windows Mobile device. All of those things can be done with Outlook but not easily and not without compromises.

It's driving people to set up their mail online with Google Gmail or Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. There are some compromises there, too, but the convenience is starting to outweigh everything else. The webmail providers are adding features right and left, so it's possible now to use the online services without regret.

Google Gmail has devoted followers who love its presentation of messages in organized threads and unparalleled search options. Google is constantly tweaking it to offer more storage space, more options for displaying mail on more devices, and more features.

Here's a lengthy comparison of Outlook and Gmail. It's worth reading - your attention will be drawn to things you might not have considered, and you may find yourself nodding unexpectedly at one choice or the other. I think the author undersells Outlook a bit. (One point he doesn't mention, for example: people are very upset when they click "Send by email" in Internet Explorer or Word and nothing useful happens - the webmail services don't integrate with Windows that way.) And in the end, personal taste may outweigh any of these features; some people hate Outlook; personally, I can't use Gmail - I find it unintuitive and clumsy and unattractive.

The next few years will be a blur. Outlook's profile is dropping for home users; Microsoft does not even include Outlook with the Home and Student Edition of Office 2007, presumably because more people are using the online services instead (and perhaps because Vista's Windows Mail is a really nice mail program, better suited for many people who don't need Outlook's complexity).

On the other hand, Microsoft just announced a new program that may change the game completely for small businesses and keep them with Outlook. I'll tell you about that on Wednesday.

Labels: Google, mail, Microsoft, Outlook, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/21/2008 01:45:00 AM | permalink

On July 15, Microsoft will begin selling a product that many of you should consider for your next computer.

Microsoft Equipt includes Office 2007 Home and Student, Windows Live OneCare, and some Windows Live programs and services (Office Live Workspace for online storage of files, plus Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail). It will be sold as a seventy dollar per year subscription for up to three computers, and theoretically cannot be used on an office computer.

I wrote some extensive notes about this bundle when it entered beta testing. It's cheaper than the earlier rumors suggested. Some people object to the subscription pricing but Microsoft has picked a good price point; this is only a couple of hundred dollars worth of software at best, but seventy bucks makes it really cheap to get started and you wouldn't even arguably come out ahead for almost three years if you bought and installed everything separately.

It's worth noting that the subscription will include free upgrades if new versions of programs are released - and Office is scheduled for a new version in the next year or two. Theoretically that gives this bundle a price advantage.

But the more significant reason to buy this is because it's the right software for most home users and students setting up a new computer, delivered in a reasonably simple way. If your next computer had Vista and this bundle, you'd be able to do just about everything most people do with a computer!

There are two problems.

• "Equipt" is a terrible name. What is it with Microsoft and names? It's meaningless and silly sounding and fails to gain any leverage from the "Microsoft Office" brand name.
• At first it will only be sold at Circuit City.
• At first it will only be sold at Circuit City. I had to repeat that to be sure you got it. What? I'm supposed to tell people Microsoft has a great new package for their new home computer and they have to schlep to Circuit City to get it? What, nobody else would sell it? Circuit City is falling apart, for gods sake! Who in the world made that decision and why do they hate us?

Really, the marketing people at Microsoft need a long holiday.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, OneCare, software

posted by bruceb at 7/08/2008 02:21:00 AM | permalink

Adobe has released Acrobat Reader 9, the new version of its PDF reader; the full version of Acrobat 9 will follow shortly. We'll be pressured to install the new version by reminders popping up from our toolbar, by notices when an earlier version of Acrobat is opened, by ads and news items and blogs.

Part of the difficulty with our computer experiences comes from updates like this - well-meaning manufacturers adding complexity that will not be useful to the vast majority of users.

Acrobat 8 was a significant improvement and I encouraged people to upgrade to the Reader and the full Acrobat program. Acrobat Reader was much faster than previous versions; Acrobat Professional 8 offered genuinely exciting new features that would be used by many people.

Acrobat 9 - well, I haven't seen anything compelling yet. The new features in the full program are:

• Improved launch speeds. Great, but I haven't found that to be a big problem recently.
• "PDF Portfolios," a new way to create a single PDF file that contains drawings, e-mails, spreadsheets, and videos. I haven't been in any offices likely to use PDFs for this purpose and I sense compatibility problems, just as the new formats for Microsoft Office 2007 caused confusion and grief.
• Support for embedding Shockwave and Flash movies in PDFs. Are there a lot of people waiting to do this?
• Integrated access to Acrobat.com, the uncompelling online portal for storing and collaborating on files. Again, I expect that to be ignored by most people.

Here's what I'm reading about Acrobat Reader 9. (Blog examples: vicious brief writeup, vicious longer writeup, another unhappy user, screenshots of a Mac installation leading to a program crash.)

• The installation file is huge! It's a 33Mb download that unpacks into 200Mb of installation files.
• The installation process is glacially slow, even worse than Adobe's notoriously slow installations from the last few years.
• The installation includes Adobe Air, which is wholly irrelevant to using Acrobat Reader. Adobe Air is technology that can be used to build interactive web services. Bundling it with Acrobat Reader is ostensibly done to assist the integration with Acrobat.com, but in fact it's a stealth installation so Adobe can tell potential licensees that Adobe Air has a big installed base.
• The default installation includes the eBay desktop program, a demonstration of Adobe Air that will be superswell for the twelve people who will use it and just more useless crap for the rest of us.
• It scatters links on desktop and Start menu for Acrobat.com.

I'm going to delay installing Acrobat 9 for as long as possible. I don't think it's harmful or evil but it sure doesn't look necessary.

Labels: Acrobat, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 7/06/2008 03:15:00 PM | permalink

[Originally posted October 30, 2007]

I wish we could count on the software and hardware vendors to play fair and treat us well, but it's not happening. We have to take responsibility for our computers.

When Windows XP and Vista are installed on freshly formatted hard drives, they are secure, rock-solid, and fast. Both operating systems are loaded with features. Vista has a mail program, an address book, a calendar, voice recognition, rich support for multimedia, built-in CD/DVD burning, several backup options (including automatic retention of previous versions of files), and much more.

Mac OS 10.5 offers a virtually identical list of features and a similar secure, stable, fast environment.

Yet Macs have a reputation of being easy to use and "just working" while Windows computers have a reputation of being slow and unstable. The reason has little to do with the merits of the operating systems.

Other than hooking up a printer, many Mac users add almost nothing to their computers. They use the applications supplied with the computer, which work well.

If you installed Windows Vista on a freshly formatted hard drive, installed Microsoft Office 2007, hooked up a printer, and added almost nothing else, your computer would just work - elegant and stable and fast.

It's hard to do that. It's up to you to stay as close to it as possible.

Everything conspires to interfere with your computer experience - every piece of software that adds a hundred registry entries, every startup process, every online service that installs a new ActiveX control, every printer monitor and registration reminder and duplicative function and unnecessary utility program. Software and hardware manufacturers make poor decisions about how often you want to see their logo or how much you want badly-designed free programs or how much you care about their partnerships with unrelated companies or how much you need their version of a program that duplicates a function built into Windows.
All too quickly, our Windows computers take three minutes to be usable after our desktop appears. Our programs crash. The system freezes.

Windows is rock solid out of the box. It stays that way for a remarkably long time. Whose responsibility is it when our experience starts to deteriorate?

I'm not talking about blame. There's plenty of that to go around.

The responsibility is ours. No one else is going to help us. For better or worse, Microsoft has created an environment where other manufacturers can contribute. Few of them are doing it well. Few of them are looking only for your best interests and smooth computing experience.

• Our computers arrive with too much preinstalled software. Look at the list in Add/Remove Programs, find out what the unfamiliar names are, and remove the ones that won't be used.
• Don't install programs unless you are confident that you know what they are and that you will use them to accomplish something you couldn't do before with another program already installed.
• Always do a "custom" installation. Watch every checkbox and don't install anything that isn't necessary to use the program to do what you're going to do.
• Never install a system utility or security software unless you thoroughly understand why it's necessary. Windows is able to be secure and do its own housekeeping without much help.

There are only two choices for happy computing. One is to become knowledgeable about what you install. That allows you to explore the rich world of new devices, programs and online services with a minimum of side effects, while still being conservative enough to avoid harming your computer.

The other is to buy only the simplest hardware accessories and install as little new software as possible. If your computer can't already do it, maybe you should assume it can't be done. We live in a world where too many gadgets don't work and too many programs are badly written.

The third alternative is the one that doesn't work - buy devices on a whim, avoid reading instructions or web sites or even the descriptions on a box, install whatever is presented on a setup CD, click OK whenever a website asks permission, and expect everything to just work. You already know about the bad guys, but in the long run, we can't trust the good guys either.

Labels: Apple, computers, hardware, Microsoft, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 6/30/2008 12:12:00 AM | permalink

When you open a file folder on your computer with Vista - Documents, say, or Computer - the left hand column displays a short list of "Favorite Links." That Favorites list is easy to overlook but it can be made into your best friend.

When I started using Vista, I immediately discovered the "Folders" arrow at the bottom that restored the familiar tree of drives and folders that I knew from Windows XP. I ignored the Favorites list.

Recently I took a closer look at the Favorites list. Any folder can be added to the Favorites list by finding it on the right and dragging it over to the Favorites list on the left.

There are fifteen or twenty places that I go regularly on my computer and my office network. I've added them to the list of Favorites (and dragged the list into a convenient order). As a result, I rarely have to use the folder list or drill through level after level of computers and folders and subfolders - I've got single click access to almost everywhere that matters on the network.

When you combine the Favorites list with the powerful ability to maneuver using Vista's breadcrumb display in the Explorer window, there's not much reason to use the old Folders list.

The Favorites list is actually a collection of shortcuts in a folder named Links - click on your name in the Start menu and you'll see it listed there. You can go to that folder to delete links or restore default links, or you can just right-click on the list in Explorer.

Labels: software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 6/20/2008 01:19:00 AM | permalink

Mozilla released the Firefox 3 Internet browser on Tuesday and is working on setting a Guinness record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. There are a lot of people who like Firefox a lot.

If you haven't been following along, Firefox is an Internet browser that can be installed for free on Windows XP and Vista as an alternative to Internet Explorer. It is also available for Linux and Macs, making it easier for people to go back and forth among different operating systems. It has important ties to the growing community of open source developers and is sponsored by a company that is not strictly a nonprofit but pledges to be running itself for the greater good rather than for profit. It has been gaining market share rapidly for the last few years and is currently the second most-used Internet browser; the launch of Firefox 3 has been planned to generate gobs of publicity that will increase public awareness and market share.

You may download and install Firefox 3 with my blessing, but I want you to stop for just a second before you do.

I run happy computers. I try to make your computers happy. My guiding principle to accomplish that is to install software only when it's necessary to do something useful that can't be done as well by something already on the computer.

You're running an up to date Windows XP or Vista computer with Internet Explorer 7, a browser that is fast and secure. I don't want you to install Firefox unless you have some idea of why you're installing it!

There are really only two possibilities.

• Firefox is produced by independent and enthusiastic people who are not Microsoft. For many people that is a sufficient reason to prefer it.
• Firefox has features that are not offered in Internet Explorer that you want to explore - particularly the rich world of addons that extend and change the browser's features and look.

Here's an extensive review of the new features in Firefox 3 and the things that distinguish it from Internet Explorer 7. Go read it! (There's no shortage of writeups and reviews. Here's another enthusiastic description.) If you decide to install it and use those new and distinctive features, that's great. It won't hurt your computer and you may come to love it. Many people do.

But for many of you, the only reason to install Firefox will be that a well-meaning friend told you that it's cool, or a newspaper article speaks highly of it. In that case, think about not going there! You'll be installing a lovely, duplicative piece of software that will require care and attention - security updates are inevitable and plans are already laid for version 3.1, with more super swell stuff, which will inevitably be followed by 3.2 and 3.3 and 4.0. In the long run, installing unnecessary software is a recipe for an unhappy computer.

I'm not going to be installing Firefox. I look at the reviews and see it praised for its speed, which strikes me as a complete non-issue; for the wealth of addons, which most writeups concede frequently cause Firefox to become unstable; for features and security that make it comparable to (but not particularly better than) Internet Explorer 7; and for new features that seem uninteresting. That's just me! Make your own decision, but make it deliberately, not as a passing thought.

So install Firefox if you choose, and use it in good health. If you're lucky, you'll become a Firefox convert, which I think would be great - it's fun to have something to be enthusiastic about!

Labels: IE, Internet, Microsoft, software

posted by bruceb at 6/18/2008 02:13:00 AM | permalink

I wrote a few months ago about the difficulty of dealing with the endless flood of software updates that is slowly draining our will to live. Microsoft's system of delivering automatic overnight upgrades once a month is manageable, but the bad guys are now changing their focus to other programs. Important security-related updates appear regularly for Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, Firefox, Safari, Java, and more. There are real bad guys with real exploits waiting for you to hit their web site without one of those patches, ready to compromise your computer and, I don't know, unleash beings from another dimension or something, who knows what those guys want?

It's hard to keep up.

The free Secunia Online Software Inspector appears to be a useful tool! It quickly scans your computer and reports if you have the latest updates for Windows and the programs most likely to expose you to online dangers. If you're behind, it provides a link to the site where the most recent update can be downloaded.

As near as I can tell, it's safe to run. I don't see any feedback online suggesting that it is anything other than a useful public service. The company also offers a free installable bit of software that does a more comprehensive look at your system, but that violates my guiding philosophy of installing as few extra utilities as possible.

I don't know if you ought to get all obsessive over this (keeping up with updates can be an incredible timesink), but this will be a good site to visit if you see something in the news about a new exploit, or every month or two when you're bored. It's on my Favorites page (your home page, right?) under Computers / Online Virus Scans.

Stay safe out there!

[Thanks to friend and colleague Brian Dent for pointing out Secunia!]

[Technical note: it's important to update to the latest version of Adobe Flash, version 9.0.124.0. For some people (including me), Secunia continues to report that the computer is insecure because a Flash DLL is out of date, even after version 9.0.124.0 is installed. Life is too short. Close the window and pretend you didn't see it.]

Labels: computers, security, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 6/09/2008 12:47:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft released Windows Search 4.0 today in final form. It is a free upgrade to the search features built into Windows Vista. It adds indexed searching to Windows XP; this release is an upgrade to the prior version of Windows Desktop Search that many of you are already using on Windows XP.

Programs for indexing and searching Outlook and document folders have literally revolutionized the business flow in small offices. Windows Desktop Search is the single most important and most successful new technology that I've introduced to my clients in the last three years. Businesses drowning in e-mail and files have new confidence that information can be retrieved instead of lost. People understand it, they immediately see its power, and they immediately begin using it every day.

"Instant Search" is one of the most heavily promoted features of Windows Vista. "Search" is deeply embedded in the system; it's the first place your cursor lands when you click on the Start button, it's the primary method intended by Microsoft for finding programs, it's available everywhere ? from the Start menu, from Windows Explorer, from Internet Explorer. Windows Vista is built on the same technology as Windows Desktop Search version 3.0, running in the operating system as a service and constantly keeping an up to date index of everything in Outlook and every file stored on the system.

I wrote up the features of this new version when Microsoft released the preview version a couple of months ago. Briefly, it runs more quickly and economically than prior versions, and it greatly enhances searches of files located on other network computers.

I have different advice for different groups.

• If you are one of my clients in an office run by Microsoft Small Business Server, wait for me to work with your office before you install this. Windows Search 4 will work best for you after it is also installed on your server, and that has some prerequisites that I'll be working on.
• If your computer runs Windows Vista, you already have a searchable index of your entire computer. This improves the indexing in modest ways that you likely will not notice in day to day use. Install it freely but there is no urgency.
• If your computer runs Windows XP, I have long maintained that Windows Desktop Search is one of the few essential programs that everyone can and should run. This is an important improvement to the prior version for its performance and stability, but you will not notice any significant change in the design from the previous version. Everyone with Windows XP is encouraged to install or upgrade to Windows Search 4.0.

This is not difficult to install, but you should close other programs before you install it and you will have to restart your computer when the installation is completed. After your computer restarts, the index will rebuild itself, so searches may not be complete until the system has time to do that.

There are different installation packages for Vista, Windows XP, and various servers. Click on the "32-bit" package for your version of Windows on this page - the links to download and install it are at the bottom of the page.

Here's a description of what's new in the final release.

Labels: computers, Microsoft, SBS, search, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 6/04/2008 01:04:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft is working on a package of software and online services that might be exactly right for students and home computer users.

Although Vista includes important features out of the box, it does not include Microsoft Office - Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. That's surprising to many people. (Dell will preinstall Office if you remember to check the box, but all the other manufacturers leave it off to keep the computer sale price down.) I talk to a lot of people about why they have to make an unexpected trip to Costco or Office Depot to buy a copy of Office.

The computer manufacturer may include security software but all too often it's a bloated suite from whatever vendor paid the most to be included, or it's only a trial version.

Similarly, most people have a poor experience with badly designed software for editing and sharing photos that comes preinstalled with their new computer or installed along with the driver for a new printer or camera.

These are not deep mysteries. Any technically adept person is able to jump in and clean things up! Uninstall the crap. Sign up for online services - lots of people have favorites of the hundreds available. Use Google Docs or OpenOffice for free or buy a copy of Office 2007 Home & Student Edition.

The package from Microsoft isn't aimed at those people.

Instead, Microsoft will be packaging up a collection that's good enough for people who want the choices to be made for them and presented in a neat, easy-to-use package. And Microsoft will be experimenting with selling the package as a cheap monthly subscription instead of an expensive box at Best Buy. (Microsoft sees subscriptions as an inevitable shift in the long run but it's had trouble figuring out how to jump in without cannibalizing its current license fees.)

The "software plus service" bundle is code-named "Albany" during testing. Let's fantasize and assume that Microsoft delivers a well-designed integrated experience. Here's the way it will go sometime this fall.

• If you don't have one, you'll get a free Windows Live ID.
• You'll agree to pay a monthly fee - not yet determined but probably $10-15/month.
• A single installer will download and install these programs on your new computer, and set up access to their online components:
  • Microsoft Office 2007 Home And Student - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote
  • Windows Live Office Workplace - online file storage and sharing for Office files, integrated with the Office programs, as easy as clicking a button; files can then be viewed and retrieved from any computer
  • Windows Live OneCare - easy-to-understand program for antivirus, spyware protection, firewall management, backups, printer sharing, and system maintenance
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery - the easiest and best-designed program for working with the photos on your computer and sharing them online
  • Windows Live Mail - full-featured and safe mail program, better than Outlook for home users, easy to integrate with Hotmail so mail can be viewed from anywhere
  • Windows Live Messenger

The programs would then all be updated automatically.

There's nothing new about the package except the integration and the subscription pricing. Most of those components are free; Office 2007 Home & Student is about $140 and Live OneCare is $49.99 or less, so this is under two hundred dollars of software.

But the integrated experience is everything! If I've learned anything over the last ten years, it's that many people don't want to think about their computers. They want to sit down and do stuff! If this package was installed on a nice cleaned-up computer, people would be able to do stuff with a minimum of fuss. I think it's a winner.

Here's an article about Microsoft's official acknowledgement that this package would enter beta testing soon, leading to a final release sometime this fall.

Labels: computers, mail, Microsoft, Office, OneCare, photos, security, software, Vista, web_services

posted by bruceb at 4/23/2008 01:28:00 AM | permalink

There are many visions of our online future. Google and many others envision a world of cloud computing, where our programs and our data are both hosted online. Google Docs provides a word processor and spreadsheet, and online storage of files, all accessible from any computer anywhere. At the moment these services are mostly presented in an Internet browser but the technology is already appearing to let online programs run in their own windows like any other program, giving us access to programs that look elegant and can be accessed from anywhere. Google's vision (and Microsoft's nightmare) is a world where those programs run on any operating system, so you can have the same experience regardless of whether you're running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

Not a bad vision! So far the implementation isn't very exciting but Adobe Photoshop Express is quite nice for simple photo editing and sharing, and Google has come a long way with Google Docs.

The universe of computer users includes many people and businesses who are reluctant to change their habits. The habit of running programs on our desktop computers will be hard to break, and Microsoft may do quite well with a vision that takes smaller steps - allowing us to keep our familiar programs but integrating online services to enhance them. Microsoft Office Live Workspace is one of the steps on the way to fulfilling Microsoft's vision of "software plus service."

Microsoft is betting that you're comfortable with Word, Excel and Powerpoint installed on your computer. Office Live Workspace extends the familiar Office programs so files can be easily saved online, where they can be viewed by and shared with co-workers or third parties, or retrieved from a different computer to open in the Office programs on that computer. The online files can be accessed from a web browser but they can also be opened with a click on a toolbar button in the Office programs, just like you're used to doing when you open your Documents folder.

Office Live Workspace uses your Windows Live ID and it's currently free. Microsoft is mulling over the ways to make money - possibly advertising (although there are no ads now), possibly subscription packages (I'll describe one tomorrow Wednesday), and possibly "premium" packages for increased file storage space or other extra features.

This overlaps the Windows Live Skydrive service, which also offers free online storage and file sharing. Office Live Workspace is focused on Word, Excel & Powerpoint files - they can be previewed on the web site and opened directly from the web site into your Office program for editing, with no fumbling with uploads and downloads. There are rudimentary tools for collaboration - if two people have access to a file and one is editing it, the other will be told that the file has been "checked out."

This has the potential to be extremely useful but I don't suggest diving in without reading more about what to expect. Here's a few links to help you get oriented: a comparison with Google Docs; an overview of the new service; comments from a well-informed blogger; Microsoft's announcement at the official rollout. This is very exciting stuff! Small businesses may well want to start using this right away but there are issues of file security anytime files leave your local computers; this will require care to make sure documents are protected appropriately.

Labels: file_sharing, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Office, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 4/21/2008 01:22:00 AM | permalink

Wrestling with a black screen drew my attention to the world of video cards and computer graphics.

Vista's pretty visual effects - translucent borders, 3D flipping through windows, live thumbnail previews of windows from the taskbar and the like - come with a price. Something on the computer has to work hard to deliver all those visual effects to the screen.

Microsoft originally intended the marketing for Vista to be perfectly clear that it would only be satisfying with a video card capable of displaying those effects quickly and clearly. Intel complained that some of its popular motherboards with integrated graphics were not capable of delivering a great Vista experience. Microsoft gave in to Intel, changed its marketing and delivered a hopelessly ambiguous and confusing message about Vista's hardware requirements, which played a significant role in Vista's failed marketing and poor consumer perception.

That's why it's a bit ironic that Intel is giving interviews claiming that any day now people "probably won't" need discrete video cards in their computers, because Intel's motherboards will do such a swell job on graphics. (Gamers will get a kick out of the video demo linked in the article, which is singularly unimpressive to anyone who has played a computer game in the last couple of years.)

I continue to insist that anyone buying a new computer get a 256Mb video card, typically from ATI or Nvidia. There are wide variations in video cards with 256Mb of memory but even the least of them will meet the needs of typical computer users today and for the foreseeable future. Buying anything less means the computer is starting out with a handicap that will slow things down - and these days we need to remove every bottleneck we can find.

ATI and Nvidia have been making video cards for a long time, trading places back and forth for the fastest and biggest and most macho. The latest video cards are frighteningly powerful and new models continue to be introduced at a dizzying pace. There are video cards on the market with a gigabyte of memory and so much hardware that computers need bigger power supplies and special cooling. Systems are being built with two and three and four huge video cards linked together and generating enough heat to warm small buildings.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the hardware outpaces the software drivers, which are updated constantly; each update purports to cure hundreds of bugs but seems to introduce a few more. ATI's drivers were a constant source of irritation in the early days; I can remember waiting impatiently for long-delayed releases of driver updates that invariably disappointed. Ooh, I hated ATI products!

Microsoft released a startling chart in its Vista-related litigation summarizing the causes of logged Vista crashes, grouped by company. Thirty percent of all Vista crashes were caused by Nvidia driver problems! That's remarkable, and awful. There's no additional information to put that in context - the time period, the details of driver and OS versions - so we're left with that hideous pie chart.

I'm so cynical about this imperfect industry that I don't see that as a reason not to buy Nvidia video cards. ATI drivers have their own idiosyncrasies and I'd bet things are already better for Nvidia after a few more months spent updating its drivers and working with Vista Service Pack 1. It's just another reason to sigh and grit our teeth when a system goes down.

Labels: computers, hardware, software, video, Vista

posted by bruceb at 4/07/2008 12:41:00 AM | permalink

When I set up a new computer these days, I spend almost no time describing new features in Windows Vista - people are generally able to start using it right away with a minimum of fuss. Outlook 2007 is so similar to Outlook 2003 that I don't even mention that it's a new version. The programs that get the most attention are Microsoft Word 2007 and Excel 2007, which got a complete overhaul that leaves people disoriented at first. (Most of them become big fans of the new design after a couple of weeks.)

Outlook 2007 is stable and fast but it has a few idiosyncrasies and no shortage of the kind of odd problems that promise to keep me employed for many years.

When Outlook 2007 is started for the first time, it presents a dialog box asking if you'd like to combine and synchronize the lists of RSS feeds in Outlook and Internet Explorer. Say what? For most people, this dialog box might as well be written in Sanskrit. Virtually everyone should choose "No" and move on. Choosing "Yes" without consciously following up to configure Outlook's support for RSS feeds can lead to slow performance, oversized mailboxes, crashes, sweating, drowsiness, and headaches.

(Although Outlook 2007 is not a very good RSS reader, it's worth knowing about RSS feeds, a useful way to keep up with blogs and other frequently updated web sites! Here's some basic information.)

Today I set up a new computer, installed all security updates and Vista Service Pack 1, then started Outlook for the first time. It refused to close, ignoring clicks on File / Exit and the upper right corner. It froze completely when I clicked on Tools / Trust Center - not just once, but repeatedly. After repeating the same steps five or six times, hoping that magic fairies would fix the problem if I just believed real hard, I finally convinced it to display a message that a dialog box was open. No box was anywhere in sight, but each time Outlook had started I had seen the dialog box appear and disappear in a flash that's intended to collect the user name and initials. It was acting exactly like a program with a hidden dialog box.

A little Googling led to a bug introduced by a recent security update that prevents the name/initials window from displaying correctly if Outlook is started for the first time after it's installed. Although it's possible to uninstall the KB946983 update, all it took was opening another Office program and filling out the same window. Outlook then opened and behaved normally.

This made me grouchy.

After restarting a computer, many people see Outlook's message that it must "check the data file for consistency because it was not closed down properly." Outlook 2007 does its check in the background but the computer slows down and Outlook is not very usable until the check is complete. I take it personally, since I'm very fastidious about closing programs before I shut down or restart.

It happens when a program keeps some portion of Outlook running even after the main window closes - a search program, a security program, or some other addin. This blogger found it happened less if he did not close Outlook before restarting Windows - somehow that gave Windows a better opportunity to close the entire program gracefully. Heck, it might work - I'm going to try it.

Some people found that Google Desktop was the culprit. I've been uninstalling Google Desktop pretty freely and so far no one has missed it. Most people don't even know it's installed. Dell has been shipping it on new systems for quite a while and it sometimes turns up riding along when other programs are installed.

There's a long list of suggestions on Slipstick Systems that might help troubleshoot the problem. It's another reason to go prune the list of addins that run in Outlook, removing any third party addins that are clearly unnecessary.

One more thing. Did you know you can have multiple Outlook windows open? Try right-clicking on "Calendar" or "Contacts," then clicking on "Open in new window." Typically I'll have Outlook running in three or four separate windows.

Labels: Microsoft, Office, Outlook, software

posted by bruceb at 4/02/2008 12:35:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft released a preview of Windows Search 4 today, an update to the Windows Desktop Search program that is built into Windows Vista and can be installed separately on Windows XP. The search programs index everything on your computer that matters - the full text of your documents, the tags on your photos and music files, every word of every item in Outlook - and do lightning fast searches for anything, as fast as you can type in the letters of a search term. I've written frequently about Windows Desktop Search - here are some posts with more information and links.

This is the first public release of Windows Search 4. Microsoft's Knowledge Base article has detailed information and download links with no indication that this is anything other than a finished product. (04/01: The KB article was quickly edited to describe this as a preview.) The Vista team blog, on the other hand, describes this as a "preview," suggesting that we should all watch for a while until it is polished into a finished product. I'm going to begin testing right away.

Let's assume it does what they claim. As always, we may come back to that later.

It is designed to upgrade prior versions automatically. Theoretically Windows Search 4 can be installed freely on Windows XP or Vista computers and it will deal appropriately with earlier versions of WDS. Windows Search 4 includes the ability to search network shares, which previously required a confusing addin.

Most of the claims for Windows Search 4 are unexciting. They fixed bugs, improved performance, and it will handle things gracefully if there are errors in the index. Swell.

But there is one new feature that has the potential to make my small business clients laugh and sing. If this works as promised, it is a huge leap forward in the technology available to small businesses.

Currently Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is installed on my clients' PCs. Each copy of WDS 3.01 is installed and configured separately. When documents are stored on a server or in a central location on one of the PCs, each workstation has to be set up to search that network share and each workstation maintains its own index of each network share. That has an impact on network traffic and it introduces individual points of failure - each computer might have its index become corrupted or have missing files or a host of other problems.

Now imagine that Windows Search 4 is running on all your business desktop computers - and it's running on your Small Business Server, which is now one of the supported platforms. That means the server has an index of all of your business documents and PDFs and images.

Remote Index Discovery allows the search indexes to talk to each other. When you search a network computer, the network computer consults its own index and hands over the search results. That's quicker and requires less resources, it improves consistency in searching for everyone in the office, and it significantly reduces the chance of error.

I'll be experimenting and watching reports closely. I may want to roll this out in some of my clients' offices soon.

Labels: Microsoft, network, Outlook, SBS, search, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/28/2008 03:44:00 AM | permalink

Windows XP will stop being sold by computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, and the rest) on June 30, 2008.

Too many people have been writing too much nonsense about Windows Vista, creating the perception that it should be avoided. The approaching deadline will cause a flurry of articles and much handwringing about Microsoft's evil motives in forcing people to move to the terrible horrible no good very bad Vista. It's a struggle to maintain perspective.

This article lays out the timeline for Windows XP sales and support, along with some historical background. Take a deep breath and take the time to understand that Microsoft is following a timeline that has been in place for many years; it has already extended the time for Windows XP to remain on the market, but it is following its longstanding practice to stop distributing it. Windows XP will be difficult to obtain after June 30, and effectively impossible to obtain after January 31, 2009. Mainstream support - free and paid live support - is scheduled to end in April 2009.

It's not impossible that the Windows XP sale date will be extended one more time, but it seems unlikely. The bloggers are going to stir the pot once again with negative Vista stories. It's not reality, it's too many commentators trying to generate attention for their web sites so they can earn some ad revenue. Don't get excited. But if you really, really can't imagine using anything except Windows XP, you'd better start shopping soon.

Labels: computers, Microsoft, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 3/26/2008 03:05:00 AM | permalink

Here's a short article from the ABA's Law Practice magazine noting the many ways that Microsoft OneNote 2007 can be used by lawyers for everything from trial notebooks to business transaction notes. There are law-specific templates available for OneNote (as well as templates for the other Microsoft Office programs) on Microsoft's Office Templates page.

I've written about OneNote before. It was just picked as the number one favorite Windows program by readers of a popular blog. ("The word love kept reappearing in the recommendations for this hard-to-describe program.") There are video demos, as well as a brand new 40-minute introduction to the program - a free online training course that will give you a tour of the program, basic instructions, and some ideas about how to get started. If you're the kind of person who might use a program for note-taking, you really owe it to yourself to try it!

Labels: law, Office, software

posted by bruceb at 3/25/2008 03:51:00 AM | permalink

A client asked me about an update window that had popped up so I sat down in front of "Apple Updates" and stared at the three programs listed - "updates" to iTunes, QuickTime, and Safari. I'm as burned out as anybody on the unending stream of updates but okay, iTunes and QuickTime might plausibly have updated versions available.

But - Safari? That's Apple's Internet browser. It runs on PCs but nobody uses it, since it's got no discernible advantages over any of the other browsers. Firefox is the only alternative browser I run into - it also has no discernible advantages over Internet Explorer, but Firefox has some religious believers and it isn't worth quarreling about.

I confirmed that Safari wasn't installed on that computer. Why was an "update" being offered?

It wasn't an update. Apple is using its "update" program as a Trojan horse carrying software that is not already installed on your computer. This is a new version of Safari and its most significant selling point is that it's allegedly "faster" than IE and Firefox. I'm sure all 14 of its current PC users are happy and vocal but Safari is a completely superfluous piece of software for XP and Vista computers.

I have my own religious belief. I want as little superfluous software as possible on your computers. Each duplicative program increases the chance that your computer will slow down or crash; increases the chance that unfamiliar programs will start when you click on a file or shortcut; increases the chance that you will be frustrated instead of productive.

I don't like stealth installations. It makes me irritable when an update to Acrobat Reader tries to put on the useless "starter edition" of an obsolete version of Photoshop Elements. I get cranky when Java tries to sneak the Google Toolbar along with one of its updates. And don't get me started on the "HP Memories Disc"! There are many, many more; it's one of the important reasons I suggest always doing a "custom" installation instead of accepting the defaults on a new program or update.

Here are more details about Apple's rogue installation. I don't suggest installing Safari unless you're motivated to deal with whatever problems it introduces and willing to stay on top of the stream of updates that it will require. Apple's update to Safari version 3.1 is fixing thirteen serious security vulnerabilities in both the Mac and PC versions of the browser; it will be followed by version 3.1.0.0.1 and version 3.1.7 and version 3.14152 and on and on and on. As Joe Wilcox notes, "Safari is fairly new to Windows and has yet to really show that it has can muster the security to withstand the associated attacks. Mac OS X is a quaint neighborhood where little Safari was safe. By comparison, Windows is a gang-ridden ghetto: life is survival, and it's tough going."

On the client's computer today, in addition to declining the Safari installation, I found that Apple Updates could be separately uninstalled from Add/Remove Programs, which was precisely the right way to solve the problem.

Labels: Apple, computers, IE, software

posted by bruceb at 3/20/2008 12:42:00 AM | permalink

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is available today through Windows Update.

Here's the announcement of the general release of SP1, and here's a technical note about a handful of reasons that might account for SP1 not being displayed to you on the Windows Update page. Generally that's because another update has to be installed first.

If you're running Windows Vista, you should install Service Pack 1 at a convenient time. In about a month, it will be offered through the Automatic Updates system and your computer will become more insistent about it. Here are a few more details about what to expect from SP1.

A couple of things to know about the installation.

• As always, make sure you have a current backup of your files.
• You will probably download less than 70Mb of files for the service pack - a relatively small download.
• It will likely take an hour or more for your computer to install Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Close all programs before you start installing Service Pack 1 and be prepared to walk away for an hour! Your computer will restart several times automatically. Do not be impatient or interrupt the installation once it starts!

Labels: Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/18/2008 12:50:00 PM | permalink

My office computer is a powerful Dell tower, with an Nvidia video card and too much software.  I choose software carefully, but I use a lot of programs and there is an alarming number of icons down by the clock.  I am constantly installing new software, upgrading programs or installing security updates, and removing things that don't pass muster.  It doesn't surprise me when things get a little messy and I have to troubleshoot problems that develop.  Lately, though, it feels like everyone is in the same position and we're all seeing strange conflicts and crashes and unresolvable problems.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 was running slowly.  That's where the problems began. 

I started in the Adobe support forums, learning about tools in the program to optimize the database and reading about problems that other people had reported that were not quite the same but left open the possibility that the problem was in the program itself.  Since my photos and the Adobe catalog were on a network server, I turned on offline files to see if a locally stored copy would speed things up.  (Not really.) But programs were crashing and the system was freezing more often than I could explain just with problems in Photoshop Elements.

I started seeing symptoms that pointed to video problems so I focused for a while on the drivers for the video card. Nvidia updates its drivers every couple of months, although that's usually only important for gamers or to solve specific problems.  I had the most recent drivers but I was a little suspicious of them because I started getting an odd horizontal line smeared across the screen every so often after I installed them.  They had cured a couple of other problems, though, and I have been running them for a couple of months without any problems.  It seemed odd that they would start to cause a fuss but I downgraded to the previous WHQL certified version just to be safe. Problems continued unabated and crashes came more frequently until finally I got two blue screens in an hour, with the display driver identified as the culprit each time.  Worse, there were odd sparkling artifacts on the Dell logo displayed by the bios when the system restarted, suggesting that the video card was overheating or failing.

Yuck.  Time to spend a few minutes looking at the offer for discounted video cards from Microsoft through its new Vista Ultimate website, carrying on the tradition of unsatisfying Vista Ultimate promotions.  After only a half hour or so, I felt confident that I had no idea what kind of connector my existing video card uses, or for that matter what the choices are or how to find out.  I also was pretty sure I had no clue how much power a new video card would demand, what kind of power connector was required to support a new video card, whether my Dell computer had a big enough power supply for a new video card, or why I cared.

Something didn't feel right.  What might be causing grief with the video drivers? I turned off GForce, the program that creates incredible visual displays in Media Center, but it's been running happily for a long time - it didn't seem likely to be causing problems all of a sudden. I uninstalled the the CCCP audio and video codecs, which had been updated shortly before this all began.

But it wasn't until I uninstalled the Google Toolbar from Internet Explorer that thing seemed to go back to normal.  I had been running the beta of a new version of the toolbar, which allows auto fill settings and bookmarks to be synced among multiple computers. Other people had reported problems with the new version, although nothing remotely like what I had been seeing.

I can't be sure which change fixed the problems I was having.  My system has gone back to being silky smooth, fast, and happy.  It makes no sense whatsoever for the Google Toolbar to have any interaction with the display driver or to cause system crashes.  But I can't escape the feeling that it was the removal of that toolbar that made my computer settle down. Something did, anyway.

When you call and describe the problem you're having, forgive me if I sigh gently to myself, or possibly start weeping, before we launch into troubleshooting.

Labels: computers, Google, IE, Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/13/2008 01:04:00 PM | permalink

FolderShare, Microsoft's invaluable free utility for syncing and sharing folders among multiple computers, has gotten a long overdue upgrade.

Foldershare starts with a free account - just a login name and a password. It is not yet tied in to the "Windows Live ID" that Microsoft uses for other services; that will likely happen at some point. A small bit of software runs on your computer while you're logged in.

The software can then sync a folder or a group of folders with another computer - your own or someone you know. Whenever a file is added or changed on either computer, FolderShare updates the file on the other computers.

That's surprisingly powerful! It's a simple concept but it gets more interesting as you think about it. Here are some notes about FolderShare with more details about how the program works.

Most of the setup is done at the FolderShare web site, which has been completely redesigned. It's got the same layout now as the Windows Live Skydrive service for online storage of files (which also might be integrated with FolderShare in the future).

An interesting additional feature of FolderShare - from the web site you can connect to any of your computers running the software and download any file from that computer, including files from mapped network drives.

Current FolderShare users can get updated software by going to the web site and clicking in the upper right corner on "Install FolderShare." I don't see any huge changes in the updated software but the menus are reorganized and clarified. Reportedly performance on Windows Vista is improved and the back end servers have been beefed up.

The FolderShare team promises to keep a new blog running with regular updates; here's the post about this upgrade. This forum is also a good place to check for news and troubleshooting.

Labels: file_sharing, Microsoft, remote, software, web_services

posted by bruceb at 3/11/2008 09:20:00 AM | permalink

Microsoft has been researching speech recognition for more than fifteen years. It has released enterprise products like Speech Server for telephony systems, and built rudimentary voice commands into Windows Mobile so that a woman whispers "Say a command!" in my ear when I push the wrong button on my phone.  (A striking invitation but she never does anything interesting.) Bill Gates gave a speech last week where he predicted that within five years more Internet searches will be conducted using speech recognition than a keyboard.

He might have a point.  Windows Vista has a new generation of speech technology built in, waiting for you to discover it. It's drop-dead easy to set up and its accuracy is startling - reportedly as high as the latest expensive version of Dragon Naturally Speaking, the only competitor still standing after years of disappointing products.

Vista's speech recognition can take dictation in documents and e-mail, as well as switch between programs and perform almost any command in almost any program. There are a number of special commands but they're surprisingly intuitive ("Click File", "Switch to Outlook", "Scroll down").

You'll need a decent microphone or headset; a USB microphone or headset is highly recommended. Those are inexpensive - for example, Logitech's Clear Chat Comfort USB headset is typically 35 to 40 dollars.

This article has a walkthrough of the speech recognition setup and features, and Microsoft has more information and tutorials on this page.  The accuracy and flexibility is pretty remarkable.  I'm having a lovely time making the cursor fly around without touching the keyboard or mouse. Give it a try!

Labels: computers, Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/06/2008 12:53:00 AM | permalink

More evidence confirms that poor decisions by Microsoft played an important role in creating the public perception that Vista is a failed operating system. Vista may never recover from the last year of relentless criticism and the lack of support from the computing community - the partners and hardware & software vendors and consultants who should have been boosting the new OS.

Operating systems take a long time to develop. Work on Vista began before Windows XP was released, and important decisions were made more than five years ago. Developers have to guess what hardware will be used when an OS is released years later - a tough forecasting job in our fast-changing world.

Microsoft guessed wrong. It projected a certain level of hardware (especially video cards) and designed the entire OS for that platform. Vista's Aero user interface - by definition the most visible change in the new OS - was designed to be attractive, usable, and quick on the right hardware.

Two things conspired to frustrate the plan. The most important was people's reaction to the constantly falling prices on computer hardware for the last five years - which consistently has been to always buy as close to the bottom as possible, instead of taking advantage of the chance to buy better hardware at reasonable prices. That means a huge installed base of computers that do not have the horsepower to run Vista.

The second is a bit unexpected. Computer manufacturers are still competing for the bottom of the market by making computers that are underpowered and cannot run Vista well. The hardware cycle slowed down; by this time every new computer should be sold with 2Gb of RAM and a powerful video card and fast hard drives, but instead the market is still filled with five hundred dollar computers that don't measure up. People buy their cheap new computers and discover they're slow and Vista's Aero UI doesn't work. Of course they're unhappy and blame Vista!

Microsoft should have been pressuring manufacturers at every opportunity to step up hardware specs. Instead, documents produced in an ongoing lawsuit make it clear that Microsoft willingly shot itself in the foot to ensure that underpowered hardware would be on the market, guaranteeing poor Vista experiences.

In 2005, Intel pressured Microsoft for leeway to continue marketing an underpowered motherboard with weak integrated graphics because it wasn't sure its more powerful hardware would be available in quantity in time for Vista's launch. Microsoft was designing a program to identify computers as "Vista Ready," so consumers would have a quick way to be sure that Vista would run well on a new system. In response to Intel's plea, Microsoft created an entirely new designation of "Vista Capable," which turned out to mean, "Vista will run but it will suck."

The result should have been predictable. Consumers were understandably confused and the entire "Vista Ready" system instantly became meaningless. It compounded the confusion already created by too many versions of Vista on the market. It encouraged manufacturers to continue making underpowered hardware. It led, among other things, to a class-action lawsuit alleging that the "Vista Capable" program was deceptive.

Here's an article about the e-mails between Intel and Microsoft laying out the whole sorry saga. Sadly, there were smart people at Microsoft who foresaw exactly how this would unfold but they were overruled.

Labels: computers, hardware, Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 3/03/2008 11:55:00 AM | permalink

Intuit has caused more than its share of problems in the last few years. Its products were not designed correctly for security; it did a poor job of preparing for Vista; and there have been some nasty bugs and poor design decisions.

Now a new bug has been reported when an update for Quickbooks 2008 is installed. An error message is displayed that might be resolved if you click on the correct button. Reportedly other people won't have the button to click that might help get by the error - and in the worst case, Quickbooks will have to be reinstalled.

Here's a description of the issue, and here's Intuit's technical notes about it. I don't know whether this will affect a small number of people or whether it's an issue for everyone running Quickbooks 2008. Computing in 2008 really is a pain in the neck, isn't it?

Labels: software

posted by bruceb at 2/28/2008 10:38:00 AM | permalink

Here's a little something that's just perfect for those of you on prescription medication for your compulsive tendencies.

We're all running more programs simultaneously than ever before. The items on the task bar at the bottom of the screen are arranged more or less in the order that programs were started, which means they're not always consistent. That bothers some people. You know who you are.

Here's a small free utility named Taskbar Shuffle that lets taskbar buttons be rearranged freely. When Taskbar Shuffle is running, taskbar items can be dragged and dropped into order. It doesn't remember your preferred order after the computer restarts but it's easy enough to put things back into place. It's small and simple and runs on Windows XP and Vista.

No more excuses for sloppy task bars! Let's get those buttons into alphabetical order!

While you're staring at your task bar, think about whether you can benefit from one of my favorite tweaks. The task bar can be two or three rows high, which gives more room for Quick Launch buttons, more room for taskbar buttons, and a clock display that includes the day and date.

It only takes a second (but be careful, it's possible to drag the task bar into terrible positions).

• Right-click on an empty part of the task bar and uncheck Lock the taskbar.
• Drag the top border up one row.
• Drag the divider between the Quick Launch buttons and the task bar buttons into a position that uses the extra space effectively.
• Then lock the taskbar again.

(Taskbar Shuffle spotted by friend and colleague Brian Dent/CompuDent Systems!)

Labels: software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/27/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

Skype is wonderful free software for making online phone calls. With a headset and a fast Internet connection, you can be talking to another Skype user anywhere in the world for free. Here are some notes about how it works and what's involved to make calls to conventional phones.

By default, Skype loads an add-on for Internet Explorer that ought to be simple and useful. The add-on scans each web page to identify phone numbers and highlight them, so a Skype call can be placed to the number with a single click.

I've now run into several cases where Internet Explorer appeared to freeze or time out - and the Skype add-on was the culprit. Disabling it allowed the computers to resume normal operation. It doesn't always happen but I'm on the alert for it now after two or three experiences.

Remember, Internet Explorer 7 has easy tools to deal with add-ons - look under Tools / Manage Add-Ons. I'm cautious about add-ons now after too many poor experiences.

Labels: IE, phone, software

posted by bruceb at 2/25/2008 01:32:00 AM | permalink

Walt Mossberg, influential tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote this article about Windows Vista Service Pack 1. I can't make any sense out of what's in people's heads these days. Here's his overview:

"Based on my tests of Vista SP1, I believe that for most average consumers, it will likely be a nonevent, and for others it will be disappointing. Many of its benefits are aimed at corporations and power users, or are under-the-hood fixes that are hard to discern. For mainstream users, it adds no significant, visible features to Vista, and changes little or nothing about the way the operating system looks and works.

"Also, SP1 doesn't resolve some of the most annoying flaws in Vista, including slow start-ups and reboots, and a security system that nags you too much and requires add-on anti-virus software. I guess these problems will either never be fixed fully or will have to wait for SP2. . . .

"I wouldn't rush to grab it and I wouldn't expect much from it."

After that putdown, he goes on to acknowledge that Service Pack 1 includes "hundreds of small fixes and improvements, including some performance gains," he installs it without any issues on three computers, and he describes improved startup times and wildly improved file copying speeds. This is "little or nothing"?

His complaint is that Microsoft doesn't include antivirus software? Mossberg is a smart guy who probably stayed awake during the last ten years of Microsoft's antitrust battles. What is he thinking? His other complaint is that his five-year-old HP printer still doesn't work right. That's HP's fault, for god's sake! It has nothing to do with Service Pack 1.

As Susan Bradley, SBS Diva, points out, it's like seeing a movie and wondering if a critic saw a different movie, because that's the only way to explain how different your reaction is.

So let me speak up from the trenches: I've only installed Vista Service Pack 1 on two computers so far, but I see immediate, significant improvements in performance and reliability. I'm not the only one. The feedback is all positive.

Here's a more reliable overview of the changes in Vista Service Pack 1, and here's the detailed description from Microsoft.

Labels: computers, Microsoft, software, Vista

posted by bruceb at 2/22/2008 12:23:00 AM | permalink

I work with small businesses - typically with 1-25 workstations, 1-2 servers, and no onsite IT staff. The business owners know it's important to stay safe and up-to-date, but there's little desire to have me hanging around doing routine audits.

Theoretically a business with a server can manage all the workstations centrally but the reality is a little more complicated. Centrally-managed antivirus/malware products are aimed at companies with hundreds or thousands of computers and full-time IT support employees. They're complicated and demanding and quirky.

Last week I installed AVG's "Anti-Malware SBS Edition," with "reduced administrator workload and security costs" for small businesses running Small Business Server 2003. The first installation manual has 212 pages of mindbending details about how to roll out the program to clients and maintain the database showing their status. There were more manuals after that. Worse, I found questions I couldn't answer within the first couple of hours, when everything was supposed to be going well. I don't have the luxury of endless time to experiment! I can't spend dozens of unbillable hours testing programs to locate something that I might roll out once, especially when it's all too likely that each one will be quirky or buggy or difficult in unforeseen ways.

Perhaps I was soured by experiences a few years ago with Symantec Antivirus, the enterprise version of its antivirus program. It started as a complicated but usable program, but later versions turned into a nightmare of licensing bugs and increasing instability. The wasted time on the phone with tech support was intolerable for me, much less for the clients footing the bills.

I've tested other enterprise antivirus products. Avast has a nice suite for SBS that installs with a minimum of fuss to protect the server and integrate with Exchange Server, but it also requires rocket science before the workstations can be centrally managed. (And the workstation software featured not one but two stupid icons by the clock, and one of them was constantly spinning around for no reason. Think that doesn't matter? Answer my phone for a while. It matters.)

I feel stupid and slow. I can't find any centrally-managed anti-malware protection for my clients that makes me feel confident that I understand it and can support it.

It's also important to get security updates installed on workstations in small businesses. Microsoft has developed Windows Server Update Services to meet that need; it's included with recent releases of Small Business Server. I've deployed it several times - and so far I've regretted it. It's yet another big, complex service that requires enough attention to outweigh any value I've gotten from it. It adds complexity to service pack installations, it has its own demands for updates and new versions, and all things considered it's a heckuva lot easier for me to walk around to 7 or 8 computers and see if they need updates.

That's why most of my clients are set up with Windows Live OneCare on their workstations. Most people can maintain it themselves; I keep track of who is likely to overlook a yellow icon and check in on them every once in a while. I've had to fix a few failed OneCare upgrades lately, but on balance it works better than the more complicated solutions.

Today Microsoft announced "Windows Live OneCare for Server." There has been no prior notice of any such product and the information so far is sketchy. It may only run on Windows Server 2008; it may not include any workstation management. But it's possible that it will bring centralized management onto my small business servers without unnecessary complexity. I'm hoping for the best!

Labels: computers, OneCare, SBS, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/21/2008 01:05:00 AM | permalink

Windows Live OneCare is the only software that takes responsibility for all four of the important housekeeping functions. When its icon is green, I'm confident that a computer is protected against viruses and adware/spyware and all security updates are installed for Windows and for other Microsoft products. Regular disk maintenance - defragging and temporary file cleanup - is a nice bonus.

Each step away from OneCare exposes another icon down by the clock that requires attention. For example, no other vendor tries to take over the Windows Update process. It's not hard to be alert for the gold shield when updates need to be installed manually - but each additional icon demanding attention makes it easier for people to look away from all of them.

OneCare has had bugs and annoyances in the last year. Sadly, as near as I can tell, it has had fewer problems than any of its competitors. Norton 360 and McAfee Total Protection are similar products - subscription services for virus and adware/spyware protection, plus backups and miscellaneous other features. Norton 360 is praised highly in reviews - Editor's Choice!

There's an odd disconnect between the reviewers and the real world. Let me give you a screen shot that tells you everything you need to know about Norton 360 (left) and McAfee Total Protection (right), from CNet's review pages this evening:

(It's worth it to click on the pictures and go read some of the user comments - almost all contributed by viciously angry people. I wear a badge on my shirt. When I approach a computer with a Norton product installed, the badge turns black. If I had a canary, it would die as I got close. Stores can't stock Norton products because toxic waste oozes from the boxes and eats through the shelves. Norton products make computers smell bad. Look, just don't buy Norton stuff, okay?)

If you are an attentive computer user, you have a wealth of options!

• Many vendors make good antivirus programs - TrendMicro, AVG, Panda, Avast, and more. (AVG's free antivirus program is particularly highly regarded.) Watch the program icon for a change in shape or color.
• You can either get integrated adware/spyware protection with the antivirus coverage, or depend on Windows Defender (included in Windows Vista, or free for Windows XP). A little castle icon appears when Windows Defender needs attention.
• The gold shield for Windows security updates is obvious and easy to deal with.
• Backups can be done in a hundred ways. Online backup services are becoming ubiquitous. Vista's built-in backup options are top notch. Storagecraft ShadowProtect Desktop Edition does some extraordinary things. Some backup programs require manual intervention, others work automatically; some notify you when backups are missed or don't finish correctly, others make it a fun surprise.

If you cover those four tasks - virus protection, adware/spyware protection, security updates, and backups - you will be happy and my phone will not ring. I don't care how you do it!

If you want that to be done in the simplest, least intrusive way, then Windows Live OneCare is still the program that does the most with the least intervention.

Now be careful out there!

Tomorrow: some additional considerations for small businesses.

Labels: computers, OneCare, security, software, Vista, WinXP

posted by bruceb at 2/20/2008 12:44:00 AM | permalink

There are four housekeeping functions that require attention on every computer.

1. Antivirus protection

2. Adware/spyware protection

3. Installation of security-related updates

4. Backups

If those functions are performed, you can use a computer to accomplish wonderful creative things. If they are neglected, you will likely end up disgraced and humiliated, possibly bankrupt, maybe the tragic victim of a violent crime.

Some people would add other items to that list. Firewall protection - I consider the built-in firewall in Windows XP/Vista to be adequate. Spam filtering, defragging, parental controls - all potentially useful but you can keep a computer running without them.

There is no solution that fits everyone. There doesn't need to be. If you have any product from any major vendor in any of those categories and you give it whatever attention it needs, you are adequately covered in that category.

Each of you has acquired different levels of technical expertise and different abilities to maintain programs running on your computers. Each of you has a different tolerance for popup bubbles and update warnings. If there is any generalization, though, based on long experience I assume that most people do not want to pay attention to computer housekeeping chores.

My job is to help match my clients with products that will do those jobs reliably with the least need for me to intervene. Over the next couple of days, I'll tell you what that means for individuals and small businesses.

Labels: computers, OneCare, security, software, Vista