Windows Tips and Tricks

Got some spare cash lying around and you want to perk up your desk a little? I have just the thing for you- a nice diamond-studded PC.

PC World gives the details:

Jupiter from Japanese manufacturer Zeus, features a solid platinum case studded with diamonds which, the company claims, replicate astrological constellations. The PC runs on an Intel 3GHz E6850 Core 2 Duo CPU and features 2GB of DDR 2 memory and a 1TB hard drive. The only downside is its price tag - a cool £375,000 (US$746,000).

Well, maybe that’s just a little over the top. How about a more modest selection:

Zeus has also launched a cheaper, gold alternative. It still has diamonds in its case and the same tech spec, but will only set you back a mere £280,000.

Here’s some more unpleasant news about Internet security. If you use Web-based email programs such as Gmail on a wireless connection, even encoding by SSL isn’t as secure as once thought. George Ou writes about the problem at ZDNet:

What’s really sad is the fact that Google Gmail is one of the “better” Web 2.0 applications out there and it still can’t get security right even when a user actually chooses to use SSL mode. Other applications like Microsoft’s MSN/Hotmail and Yahoo don’t even have SSL modes. The fact that they use SSL mode for first time authentication and sign-in is irrelevant because they all drop down to unencrypted mode right after the user authenticates.

In other words, if you use an email program at a public wireless hot spot, assume that everything can be read by someone else in the neighborhood. Actually, I assume that any email that I send, wired or wireless, is subject to being read by strangers. If something is really confidential, don’t use email to send it.

Two months ago I posted about hackers putting malware sites into the top rankings for some common searches. This form of malware attack is a very serious concern since using search engines is a major part of Internet activity. The hackers have used some pretty sophisticated methods and a new article at PC World discusses the problem. It begins:

If last November you googled one of thousands of innocuous and common search terms, such as “Microsoft excel to access” or “how to teach your dogs to fetch,” you were in line for an Internet attack that infects PCs with spam senders, password stealers, and other kinds of nasty malware.

Beginning on November 24 and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. They then employed an automated network of malware-infected computers–known as a botnet–to link to those sites in blog-comment spam and other places. The mentions elevated the position of the poisoned sites in search results, often to the first page.

There was a huge wave of attacks but Google apparently manged to clean it up:

None of the sites from this wave, or a smaller follow-up group, appear now on Google, and Eckelberry and other experts believe the search giant has blocked those specific domains. But Google isn’t saying what it did to stop this attack, or whether measures are in place to halt a recurrence.

The article discusses ways to search safely and notes:

Though this attack was crafty and effective, security experts say there’s no need to stop using Google, as long as you take some precautions. Most important: Keep your software patched and up-to-date.

The article mentions various software defenses but points out that social-engineering is also involved. As always, common sense is a vital part of staying safe on the Internet.

End User License Agreements (EULAs) and Terms of Service (TOS) are generally long, turgid legalese that nobody wants to read. To save you the trouble of having to wade through such mind-numbing prose, I offer you the generic form as translated by John Dvorak:

Generally speaking, a software license and various terms-of-service and terms-of-use agreements say the following:

• Whatever you think we said, or whatever we said, about the product may have nothing to do with reality, and you agree not to expect that it does.
• No matter what happens, including damage to your equipment or even someone’s death, you agree not to blame us even if it is our fault.
• If we are a Web site and you use it, no matter what bad things happen, it is not our fault.
• If you contribute anything at all to a site or system, we own it.
• You will never sue us for anything, ever.

Now you know what you agreed to.

Microsoft marketing has long been known for using a lot of words to say nothing. A lot of marketing is like that but Microsoft developed the art of saying nothing in many paragraphs to a high level. Even the technical writing is often devoid of actual information. There is also a part of Microsoft marketing that implies that its customers are not too bright. That assumption may contain an element of truth but Microsoft takes it too far by really insulting our intelligence with nonsense like “Windows Genuine Advantage”. Now Microsoft corporate communication seems to have gone to the stage of being incomprehensible. I have mentioned two examples in a previous post and also here.

A nice parody by Phil Factor called Microsoft Boy announces his School Homework illustrates what I am talking about. And Joel Sporkin writes Microsoft can’t speak straight any more

Have you ever been in a hotel somewhere and wanted directions to some restaurant you had heard about? Generally, getting directions on a map service means entering the address for the starting point and for the destination. Google maps has made things easier by allowing you to enter a name or even just a category for the destination.

Mozilla says there is a severe security issue in Firefox that will be patched soon:

An attacker can use this vulnerability to collect session information, including session cookies and session history. Firefox is not vulnerable by default. Only users that have installed “flat” packed add-ons are at risk.

Here is a list of Firefox add-ons that are affected. Be sure to install the Firefox update that is expected shortly.

Via ZDnet Zero Day.

That’s the contention of Ed Bott. He makes a good case that Windows 7 will not be a complete overhaul but more like an upgraded Vista. He argues for something like Windows 98 compared with Windows 95. Bott gives some statistics to make a case that Microsoft tends to take around 1000 days after the release of a new operating system before it finally gets it right. He concludes:

I certainly don’t expect any big changes in Windows 7. In fact, I’m willing to bet that one of its key design goals is that any driver or app written for Windows Vista must work perfectly on Windows 7. All of the compatibility and reliability fixes that have already gone into Windows Vista will be part of Windows 7 from day 1, making it much less likely that users will experience the sorts of headaches that early adopters experienced in the first six months after Vista’s release.

I expect to see Internet Explorer 8, a bunch of new digital media features, and some tweaking of User Account Control to make it less obtrusive. Mary Jo is right to call this “a smaller, more finite release,” not a big bang like Vista. Those who are predicting that Windows 7 will include some radically stripped-down kernel (the so-called MinWin project) or a new file system are missing the point completely.

Not only can the taskbar be moved around but also it can be made taller. If you want to have a whole lot of icons kept there and have the screen real estate to spare, you can enlarge the (unlocked) taskbar by placing your mouse on the top border of the taskbar until you see a double-headed arrow. Then hold down the left button and drag to make the taskbar as big as you like. These instructions apply to a taskbar at the bottom of the screen; change the instructions accordingly if your taskbar is in a different position. To make sure the size isn’t accidentally changed, lock the taskbar.

More than once a frustrated PC user has asked me why the computer desktop’s taskbar suddenly appeared on the side or even the top of the screen. Many PC users are unaware that the taskbar is in fact movable. The taskbar can be dragged from its usual place at the bottom and docked on the side or top of the screen. Sometimes the taskbar pops up in a different place due to one of those inexplicable Windows hiccups. It can also happen when someone is trying to click on an icon and accidentally drags the taskbar far enough that it snaps to the side of the screen. The roving can be avoided if the taskbar is kept locked. Right-click in an empty spot in the taskbar and put a check by the menu entry “Lock the taskbar”.

If you need to move the taskbar from one location to another, unlock it, left-click on a blank spot in the taskbar, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the taskbar toward the desired location. It will snap into place. With the wide screens that are now common, some people prefer the taskbar to be on the side.