Archive for September, 2007
Hold off installing Office 2003 service pack
Microsoft has a new service pack for Office 2003. Office Watch says that you should not install it yet because it disables some Office features:
We strongly recommend you do NOT install Office 2003 Service Pack 3 – at least not yet. Peter is working deciphering the glyphs of Microsoft documentation and will report in a [...]
New Microsoft Office file formats redux
A while back I made a post about the new file formats in Microsoft Office 2007. I keep encountering people who are confused by the new formats so I am going to repeat what I said previously:
There are many changes in the latest release of Microsoft Office. The interface is quite different and there are [...]
Weekend reading
Here is a selection of articles that may interest you:
Internet service may soon cost more
PC users unaware that hackers control their computers
Find out if your computer is secretly connecting to the Web
A help desk that should be renamed
Windows XP alternative to Vista
Mint- an online alternative to Quicken
Microsoft insider blogs
Clean up all those hotfixes
Every month a batch of new updates, fixes, and patches descends on us from Microsoft. Most come with uninstall files (a good idea) and place an uninstall entry in the “Add/Remove Programs” section of Control Panel. After a while, there may be many dozens or even hundreds of these. If you look in your Windows [...]
Be careful with PDF files
An unpatched security problem in the Adobe reader for PDF files is being reported. Affected are Windows XP SP2 with IE7 with Adobe Reader 8.1, 8.0 and 7. Ryan Naraine reports that the exploit does not work in Vista. I have only seen references to the Adobe reader; I don’t know whether Foxit or other [...]
Google still king of search
Statistics from the research firm Hitwise show Google having 64% of US searches in August. The data look like this:
Source: Hitwise
What’s interesting is that Google seems to have picked up some market share from Microsoft since last year while Yahoo and Ask are pretty much unchanged.
Do you have the correct time?
Windows has a time synchronization function that is supposed to periodically check your system time with accurate Internet time servers. However, the default time servers don’t work very well, if at all. The default servers listed for Windows XP are time.windows.com and time.nist.gov. It is better to change the servers to something else. NIST (National [...]
What can be done about spam?
The spam problem just keeps getting worse. It’s not just the sheer volume; it’s also the ease with which phishers can fake legitimate messages. David Berlind, editor at ZDNet, has posted an article entitled: Open letter to e-mail vendors: Your spam fix doesn’t work. Time for a complete redo? He writes:
Working with e-mail is [...]
Is tech support broken?
Every year PC Magazine polls its readers about tech support and then issues a report. This year’s results are out and the magazine’s editor Lance Ulanoff says Tech Support is Broken. He reports some personal experiences and says:
In the end, I empathize with companies like Dell that are trying to support millions of users, with [...]
New York Times site now completely free
I often refer to stories from the New York Times Web site. Some areas require free registration and until today a few things required a paid subscription as well. The paper has dropped the paid subscription requirement and now everything is free. Registration is still necessary for many stories, however.
It appears that advertising income from [...]