Windows Tips and Tricks

This time it’s an article in today’s New York Times by David Pogue. Pogue, who has written a number of computer books, says that Vista has a beautiful look. In fact, very much like a Mac, so he suggests that maybe Microsoft did a lot of “borrowing”. He gives a good survey of features and lists some good and some bad points. I think his conclusion is worth keeping in mind. He says:

In other words, it doesn’t matter what you (or tech reviewers) think of Windows Vista; sooner or later, it’s what most people will have on their PCs.

There have been numerous articles on Vista but a recent survey at ExtremeTech is one of the best. It is very helpful in answering the question, “Which Vista edition is right for you?” It has one of the best charts showing what features come with each edition and some good discussion. The article concludes:

For most users, Home Premium is going to be the way to go. It offers all the nice UI and media stuff, and while a couple of things in the office versions (like Volume Shadow Copy) would be nice to have, you’re not missing out on much.

That jibes with my own conclusion. After reading all the Web articles and playing with a copy of the RC1 version, I think Home Premium is a pretty clear-cut choice for home users. Of course, if you don’t mind spending several hundred extra dollars just for an operating system, you can go with Ultimate.

As readers of these posts know, one of the big selling points for Vista is supposed to be its better security. Mary Jo Foley says maybe not. She quotes an AP story over at Yahoo:

But is Vista’s security really so much better than that provided by Windows XP Service Pack 2? The short answer to that question, according to the Associated Press, is not a whole heck of a lot.

As I posted earlier, Roger Grimes doesn’t agree. It looks like the real answer about whether Vista is more than marginally more secure in actual practice is going to require some months of seeing Vista in service.

A growing type of Internet crime is a form of extortion where you have to ransom your data. Crooks either erase data on your computer and demand payment to restore it or encrypt the data and ask money for the key to unencrypt it. Information Week reports a Hotmail incident:

Some Hotmail accounts have been compromised, with all mail and contacts erased. The only remaining message: a ransom note demanding payment for the return of the deleted data.

I like USB flash drives and own several. I’ve posted about their uses a number of times but a $5000 version has got to be a good thing taken too far. Anyway, if you have more money than you can count, here’s something for your Christmas stocking. There’s a 64 GB flash drive being offered at this site for $4999.99.

While the students mentioned in the previous post are beavering away on learning how to make a career of cybercrime, Windows is becoming more secure according to an InfoWorld article by Roger Grimes, who says:

I will go out on a limb and say that I believe Windows Vista, and the forthcoming Longhorn server, will be tough to hack. Outside of client-side attacks and Internet Explorer, the fully-patched Windows XP Pro SP2 is already pretty hard to hack externally. Vista will never be as secure as OpenBSD, but I believe it will be secure enough to ensure that Microsoft becomes known as a vendor of choice for a secure operating system. And that’s a far cry from where it was five years ago.

The computer operating system may be harder to hack but it’s the computer operator that’s the problem. Those students aren’t just learning to hack, they’re learning how to phish and run scams and steal identities. As long as people click where they shouldn’t and fall for con games, operating system security is only a piece of the solution to the security problem. I am also not convinced that the inconveniences of the new Vista security measures aren’t just going to irritate a lot of people, who will then disable these supposedly nifty new features.

Many college students want part-time jobs to earn some extra money and one of the latest possibilties seems to be cybercrime. In fact they can even get training to make a career of it. ZDNet reports:

Organized gangs have adopted “KGB-style” tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime, a report said on Friday.

Criminals are targeting universities, computer clubs and online forums to find undergraduates, according to Internet security firm McAfee.

Some gangs have sponsored promising students from other disciplines to attend computer courses before planting them in businesses as “sleepers.”

McAfee said the students write computer viruses, commit identity theft and launder money in a multibillion-dollar industry that is more lucrative than the drug trade.

I’m not even going to comment. What can you say?

For years I used WinZip as my primary program for opening archived files. I paid for a license back in the days of Windows 95. The company had the policy that once you paid, future updates were free so I went through a number of versions. Then WinZip got taken over and updates were no longer free. Also, Windows XP came with a built-in zip function that worked pretty well so I abandoned WinZip. However, formats such as RAR and GZIP that XP doesn’t recognize would show up sometimes so I needed a supplementary program. I have been using the free open source program 7-Zip to open some of the formats that Windows XP can’t handle. 7-Zip also has its own format that compresses better than the XP zip function. Another worthwhile free program is IZArc. IZArc handles more formats than 7-Zip if that is an important consideration. Both programs are on Tech Support Alert’s list of The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities where they are reviewed.

Keyboard shortcuts can be very useful and periodically I post something on the subject (see the Shortcuts archive). However, there are a large number of such shortcuts for a variety of software programs and most PC users will remember and use only a few. Still, it’s interesting to go over a compilation of shortcuts and see what might be applicable to your own particular pattern of computer usage. Microsoft has a resource where you can look up shortcuts for Microsoft products including Vista and IE 7. The site even includes references for Windows 95 and Office 97. There is also a compendium for Microsoft applications at ComputerHope.com that may be easier to use.

You may not have it yet but already Microsoft has downloaded IE 7 to many systems as an update. Most PC users are going to end up with it on their system so unless you use Firefox or other alternate browser, you are going to need to learn the new interface. I’ll be posting some tips on using IE 7 and I’ll begin with the tabs. As far as I’m concerned, tabs are one of the best new features of IE 7. Of course, Firefox and other browsers have had tabs for quite a while already so Microsoft is playing catch up. If you are new to tabbed browsing, it’s a very convenient way for switching among different Web pages without having to open an entirely new window.

A quick way to open a link in a tab instead of a new window is to hold down the Ctrl key when you click the link. You can also right-click a link and choose the entry “Open in New Tab”. A curious omission in IE 7 is that you cannot open a Favorite in a new tab with the right-click menu from the Links toolbar with the right-click menu.