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July 10, 2007

Microsoft Guided Help

I came across a Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to set performance options in Windows XP which had a little surprise in it with a link for Windows XP users to install Guided Help. The help system in Window XP has never really been that helpful as if was, all these blogs and forums with Windows Tips & Tricks and help fix the broken things would not exist. Windows Vista at this stage the standard 'Help & Support' has some useful items to show you how to set or change a setting, though how long before all those help holes are found just that exist in the Windows XP help system now and you are searching and asking questions here on the Bleeding Edge forum?

With the Windows Vista 'Help & Support' you get the additional option to keep your 'Help & Support' up to date searching the online 'Help & Support' content from Microsoft instead of the 'old out of date local help file'. In time the 'Help & Support' offering may become a useful 'Help & Support' tool rather than the thing we simply don't look at as it is far to complex or out of date and useless. Add in support for 'Guided Help' for Windows XP users and things get rather helpful indeed. If Windows XP & Windows Vista users get lots more of these 'Guided Help' goodness updated in our help files that is helpful.

Due to the way 'Guided Help' interacts with your desktop screen shots and recordings are tricky, thus the shameless MSFT demo of 'Guided Help' is all I could muster up. If you do give it a try let me know if you think it actually is helpful.

Posted by Stephen at 04:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 09, 2007

Windows Live Writer beta 2

I've blogged before about using Windows Live Writer. It's still my blog client of choice, and recently the second beta version was released. This new version includes:

It's got a fancy new GUI too.

Posted by Jeremy at 06:07 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 05, 2007

Linux ... a genuine advantage?

Hardly a week passes in the Bleeding Edge cave without us marveling at the runaway success of Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage and Office Genuine Advantage authentication processes in achieving the company’s apparent goal of alienating its users.
Last week, for instance, we were forced on at least three occasions to allow Microsoft to rummage through our files and establish yet again – haven’t we proved this already? - that we are not criminal masterminds, intent on robbing Bill Gates of his licence fees.
Both these “Genuine Advantage” programs offend us, on several grounds. It isn’t just that they waste our time and bandwidth – so often the initial attempt to validate via an ActiveX control failed, and we are forced to download yet another program to frisk us – and threaten us with a significant risk of inconvenience through a false positive.
It isn’t just because, in Microsoft’s eyes, we’re never really clean. The fact that the software checks in with head office every two weeks to report on our activities means that instead we’re on some form of long-term parole.

Nor is it just the fact that Microsoft treats us like mugs. Nobody surely, believes that this program is tailored to the user’s genuine advantage. Microsoft’s claims that it is protecting users from malicious software sometimes associated with pirate software downloads are completely transparent. Can anyone doubt that its real motivation is its own enrichment?
Nor is it the sheer over-kill. We doubt that the extent of piracy in Australia is any more than a fraction of 1 per cent, and these measures are unlikely to stop determined law-breakers.
What offends us mostly is the fact that Microsoft is already making far too much money out of its software, and because it wants still more, is prepared to appoint itself as Big Brother to its customers. As we’ve said before, the prices it is charging Australians for Windows Vista are ludicrously high, and we are reminded of that every time its software cops pull us over for a random test.
We couldn’t help but wonder to what extent that simmering resentment influenced our decision, which we foreshadowed last week, to buy a Linux-based media centre – the Australian Dragon assembled and supported at better-access.com, rather than any Microsoft alternative.
We’d have had to pay a premium of at least $170 or so on our hardware investment if we’d chosen to buy Windows Vista Home Premium. And we’d have been giving Microsoft permission not just to keep track of its own software, but also to oversee the digital rights to whatever content we acquired.
A report by New Zealand academic Peter Gutman on Vista’s content protection mechanism (tinyurl.com/3mftby) suggests that Vista could seriously limit our future enjoyment of “premium content” like High Definition video and digital audio.
That prospect not only pushed us down the Linux path, it also re-kindled our interest in Linux as a desktop operating system.
It’s been more than a year since we wrote about the open source world, and in the interim we’d somewhat despairingly relegated it to also-ran status: the preserve of knowledgeable enthusiasts.
Over the past couple of weeks, as we’ve been playing not only with KnoppMyth, which is the Linux distribution tailored for media centres, but also with the latest distribution of Ubuntu, we’ve begun to revise our opinion.
Linux has become far more approachable to the average user, and may now represent a cheap and viable alternative to Windows, Microsoft Office, and many of the popular commercial offerings.
We suspect that it would save our schools millions of dollars in Microsoft licence fees, and could also cut the costs of many small to medium businesses.
The most compelling evidence for this is the fact that you can now buy a good office PC for around $550, if not less. Equipping it with a Microsoft operating system and software, however, will cost double, if not triple that amount. Linux could deliver the same functionality, free.
The irony is that Linux has actually become more attractive with the release of Windows Vista, and the eventual retirement of Windows XP. We’ve found Microsoft’s latest operating system requires a significant additional financial cost and some re-learning, but is less stable, and lacks many of the refinements of the most recent Linux distributions.
Our mission, over the next few weeks, will be to explore just how viable the open source alternative has become. We suspect that it could deliver a genuine advantage over Microsoft.

Posted by cw at 03:15 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

From Allofmp3 to NoneofMP3

You might have heard that the cheap Russian music site Allofmp3.com, which we helped bring to world prominence, has been shut down by Russian authorities. It didn't trouble us much, because the credit card companies had already made it impossible to make payments, so our account was running on empty, and we'd been able to switch over to MP3Sparks.com.

For the past couple of days, however, we weren't able to log in to MP3Sparks. And this morning the site seems to have disappeared. It seems the vile music industry and their lickspittle politician cronies have won. For now.

UPDATE (Friday): As Ozzypod notes in the comments, AllTunes, that truly remarkable program, is accepting the old log-ins, and is handling orders and downloads.

ANOTHER UPDATE (Saturday morning): Now AllTunes isn't accepting orders. Either Allofmp3 is heading further underground, or their servers have buckled under the weight of additional traffic. When my column on the topic went international, back in 2004, they were off the air for a week or so, but Allofmp3 go back up, as they've done every time they've seemed defeated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Posted by cw at 01:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 04, 2007

We don't Type or Word Process here...

I'm working for a longer time on Microsoft Word 2007. Been meaning to write some mid year reviews of what Vista and Office 2007 has meant to us but that's another day.

Several things with Word 2007:

  1. For the first time ever, since Word 1.0 for Windows, I've succumbed to the Page Layout view for writing. My previous pedantic insistence (in all previous versions of Word) that I want to see control codes, paragraph marks (hangover of Wordstar 3.3 for CP/M-80)
  2. The outline numbering, (so buggy in previous Word versions) with mixed paragraphs, is much improved. However, it still gets confused when a normal, numbered paragraph comes after a heading. I could not overcome one instance without stopping my train of thought and again cheated by copying a previous numbered sentence into where the new numbered point would be, then editing the words.
  3. I don't know whether it is the dual monitors, but at certain times, pressing Enter doesn't move the cursor / editing point. Again, I would know what is blocking it by turning on "Show Paragraph Marks" but for the time being, a few re-tries seems to work enough.

For some time now, working with this market dominant word processor is like issuing commands to a willful delegate of yours. You no longer focus on fast typing or transliteration like people used to do with type writers or dumber word processors (like the MS-DOS word processors - Wordstar, WordPerfect, Word for DOS, Multimate, IBM DisplayWriter, XyWrite). Must upset the serious typist no end.

One reason why WordPerfect for Windows or Open Office Writer might be more attractive for typists is that they don't second guess you. A point not so far used to market these products.

And so, back to work.

Posted by Anandasim at 02:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack