Windows Tips and Tricks

My SeniorNet colleague, Joel May, is the webmaster for the Ewing SeniorNet Computer Literacy Center and he has put together a very nice site. Information relevant to SeniorNet functions is not all that the site contains, however, since Joel has collected a large number of useful references on many topics. Click on “Related links” on the home page or go to http://www.ewingsnet.com/links.html and you will find a host of references for information on many subjects.

Molly Wood at cNet has an interesting piece Is the end of the Internet upon us? She says that, to begin with, there are technical problems:

From a purely technical standpoint, the current Internet architecture has some problems. Many people, including the folks who originally helped build the sucker, think it’s just about tapped out in terms of spam, viruses, DoS attacks, increasing numbers of users, and new types of bandwidth-hogging devices (cell phones, DVRs, Xboxes, cars, Wi-Fi-enabled everything).

She also points to political and commercial problems

Meanwhile, a whole mess of political and commercial troubles face the Net. The telcos, who see the Internet as a delivery medium that they control, want to try to charge content providers a second time for that delivery–first, for using the bandwidth in the first place (the current pay structure), then again for “prioritized delivery” of that content.

She worries that the Internet is going to splinter into a bunch of different networks

Basically, I’m starting to wonder if the one-Internet-for-all paradigm we’ve enjoyed so far is about to break and if we can expect a future where we all use smaller, private, for-profit or nonprofit, corporate, and/or political Internets according to our various locations and interests.

Personally, I think she is right to wonder. It looks almost inevitable that different networks will arise. It remains to be seen, of course, how this will affect the average user.

Microsoft just announced that it will be delaying the consumer version of Vista until after the Christmas season. Yahoo news says

The world’s largest software maker pushed back the consumer version of Vista until January 2007 from an earlier target for the second half of 2006 and pledged to ship the next version of its operating system to business customers in November.

That’s going to put a crimp in the sales for PC manufacturers and others in the industry but it’s better not to release a half-baked version.

When I get my cell phone bill, there are always a number of entries like “Universal service charge” whose origin has been a little murky. An article at cNet explains the mysteries of cell phone bills.

It has been clear that the existence of AMD as a viable competitor for Intel has meant that the consumer gets better prices and more innovation in the area of CPUs. It is very likely that if Intel had the same sort of monopoly that Microsoft has, PCs would be slower and more expensive.

I think the lack of competion shows in Windows. For one thing the cost of a full version of Windows XP is a big fraction of the total cost of many PCs. There is no way to know exactly how much better and cheaper Windows would be if there were any real competition but clearly there would have been an effect. A hint about what some real competition for Windows might do is given by Bill Gate’s recent announcement that Internet Explorer would get updated much more often. After letting Internet Explorer 6 languish for years without any update except security patches, Microsoft is feeling the heat from Firefox and we are going to get better browsers as a result. That is what competition does for you.

Not everybody will use them but there are a number of useful utilities available in the several different Windows resource kits and support tool packages that are offered by Microsoft. If you have a full Windows XP installation CD, it should have a folder \Support\Tools. If these tools have been previously installed, they are normally in the folder \Program Files\Support Tools. Otherwise, you can install them from the Windows CD. Insert the CD and when the Autorun screen appears, click “Perform Additional Tasks” and then click “Browse this CD”. You will then get an Explorer window showing the contents of the CD. Click “Support’ and then “Tools”. In the list of files, find Suptools.msi and click it to start the wizard for the installation of the Support Tools. After installation most of the tools can be run directly from the command prompt window. Information about the tools will be in the Start|Help and Support function.

If you have Windows XP SP2, there is also a package Service Pack 2 support tools that is a free download from Microsoft. Another package is the Windows Server 2003 kit. It is also suitable for Windows XP and can be downloaded from this Microsoft site. As the name suggests, most of the tools in the server kit are for systems administrators but some can be useful in normal practice. For example, robocopy.exe is a useful utility for copying files.

Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash is a common format on Web pages. Most PC users have a Flash player on their system. A new security hole has been found in the player that could subject systems to malware downloads. The patch should be downloaded and installed.

I will be traveling for a few days and will be giving the blog a rest.

The total ineptitude of the US Patent Ofice in assessing software continues to create turmoil. Now it’s eBay’s turn to have its business disrupted. Ed Burnette at ZDNet writes about it in eBay faces partial shutdown in patent dispute. He also comments on the Blackberry fiasco at Patent terrorists ruin an industry.

As I commented before, the whole idea of what is patentable needs to be examined and the patent system has to be brought out of the cogs and wheels era. PC World has an article Patent Overload Hampers Tech Innovation with the sub-heading “Application backlog and continuing patent disputes add up to a mounting crisis” and a lead paragraph

Much has been made of recent patent applications–such as one involving emoticons on cell phones–that seem a far cry from real breakthroughs like the lightbulb. And while many of the weakest patent applications are eventually rejected, some experts believe that an overworked and underfunded U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is issuing more and more patents that never should have passed their first review.

Adding a new hard drive to a system is not something the average PC user is likely to consider as a do-it-yourself project. But it’s really not that difficult. Fred Langa tells you all about it in this Desktop Pipeline article.