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Aug
11
Published: August 11, 2010 01:08 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
There were two things that earlier have put me off from buying a Kindle.
One was that the only way to buy one was from the Amazon US store which just about doubled the price as they then (as it was an electronic device) insisted on sending it via courier.
The other was that the price included "free wireless downloads" and yet wireless downloads weren't available for Finland, so the cost of the Kindle that I was still paying included a fee to local Internet providers in countries where this function was available. (They didn't of course have a lwer price for Finland because they weren't paying such charges).
Now things seemed to have improved.
It is now possible to get a Kindle from Amazon UK. The price is lower and in fact now much lower as there is also an option of getting one that doesn't include free wireless access cutting off another £30 off the price.
So I ordered one for delivery to my mother's address in the UK as we are visting there in a month or so.
But then the snags started to appear.
Go to the new Kindle store at Amazon UK and they tell you that if you don't live in the UK then you can only order Kindle content from Amazon US.
Amazon US in the meantime has introduced a two-tier pricing system. If you live in the US there is one price. If you don't the price is doubled (or more).
The claim is that tax is liable for orders outside the US. While this may be true it doesn't jsutifiy a $0.00 becoming $2.49 or indeed the doubling of other prices. No, what we have here is an attempt to increase prices for people outside the US for goods which they no longer have a need to pay postage costs for (*)
(*) The other claim is that the prices include "free wireless delivery". Double nonsense in my case because I have ordered a Kindle without the wireless delivery option (need to download via the PC) and in any case as above Amazon don't provide a wireless delivery option for Finland.
Finally for those of you who want some meat.
A subscription to the US Magazine Foreign Affairs (bi-monthly with lots of text and little else so perfect for a Kindle) costs *monthly* (a joke because you pay two months before you get a copy).
US: $ 1.99
UK: £ 1.49 (not much more)
Finland (via Amazon US): $ 3.99
You can also buy individual issues. For Finland that's $ 9.99. The UK site won't show people who don't live in the UK the UK prices for individual items (the sub price came from an overview page) and the US site too quickly changes from the (low) US prices to Finnish prices if an individual item is selected.
If Amazon are trying with the new models to fight off the IPad, this kind of pricing unfairness (and zoning systems like there are with DVDs) is not the way to go about it.
I'm thinking about deleting my own Kindle order. There's not much point in buying one if they make me pay double the going rate for any magazines/newspapers/books I access that way. I might just as well go and buy an overpriced copy of a foreign newspaper (in print form) here.
Jul
16
Published: July 16, 2010 00:07 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I saw an article in a local Finnish paper yesterday that started me wondering if the world (and especially the world of computer gamers) has gone mad.
A Finnish company had spent several years creating a new game for the XBox.
I first wondered how they could spend more years creating this game than the XBox had been out (*) but then I moved on to the main point of the article. Apparently the company had expected sales of 2 million copies of this game but they had only sold a bit over 500,000 copies since May.
Are they mad ? That's two months. In those two months they have sold half a million copies.
If that is failure and something to be worried about then there is surely something wrong with their business model.
(*) The answer to the first riddle is almost certainly that they had spent n *man-years* writing the game while the journalists had corrupted that to n years.
Jul
14
Published: July 14, 2010 00:07 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The Outlook 2010 team have an extremely good Team Blog with lots of good pieces about Outlook 2010 functionality.
Unfortunately they too become unnecesarily arrogant on occasion.
They had yesterday an informative (if short) piece about the Outlook Social Connector with which you can send data to Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live directly from Outlook 2010.
But why did they need to ruin it with that first sentence:
"Outlook is the premier communications tool to stay connected with colleagues, friends, and family."
Who says it's the premier tool? The Outlook team?
Don't be so arrogant.
Even I would accept "Outlook is a very good communications tool for staying connected with colleagues, friends, and family." because even though "very good" is praising the product, it at least is not drawing any comparisons with other products and can be regarded as a matter of opinion.
-----------------------
The RSS feed for the Outlook (these days, 2010) Team Blog is here:
That particular blog is here:
May
07
Published: May 07, 2010 06:05 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The sim card finally arrived, to it was time to put it into the internal 3G card.
I discovered by lots of web searches that you only needed to take the battery out and then the sim slot was available to you. This was naturally something that wasn't included in the Acer user guide on their support page from my portable; something that wasn't included in their FAQ and all the references I found to where it was were for models in the Aspire range not in the more expensive TravelMate range which mine was in.
Once the battery was taken out, there was the slot with a picture of a sim card next to it pointing at the slot. This picture clearly didn't give any indication of how to insert the card so it was a case of trial and error.
There are four possible ways to insert a sim card. I was close to the right way the first time, but upside down (no way to tell whether the connection was above or below the card) but then I of course went for turn the card round (left to right not up to down) and only after several false attempts got a card that was actually recognized by the Acer Connection Manager.
So the answer to the question in the Title (which my wife immediately guessed correctly when I asked her (just the question in the Title, nothing else) is FIVE.
Not four which would be logical because clearly I'd forgotten half way through what I'd tried and what not.
Anyway even then the Acer 3D Connection Manager didn't work (and although lots of different options were listed - with configuration details - on the Internet supplier's site including a HP Connection Manager, the Acer Connection Manager wasn't and looked completely different) and required quite a lot of adjustments (and a "let's start with a new definition, I've messed up the old one too much") and I finally got connection via 3G.
Not that I'll be using it again while at home because Wifi is considerably faster even though the theoretical limits are the same, and anyway it's it bit depressing when you see the connection shown as very poor (1 1/2 bars) whereas my own Wifi connection has all five bars lit up.
May
01
Published: May 01, 2010 04:05 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I while back I reported that I had bought a lightweight portable with an SSD drive. I don't remember if I mentioned that it also came with a built-in 3G card.
I didn't really see the need for this as the few times I might need 3G service I could always sign a contract for it and the Finnish company would give me a free small device to stick in my computer. (Theoretically these devices cost real money but there's always at least one of the companies offering you a free one for a 1 or 2 year contract).
But now however I had an internal one so naturally I forgot that I didn't actually need the service and went looking for an add-on to my existing phoneline-based Internet connection. It was then I realised I was being over charged for what I had as that company wanted even more money for 3G in addition to my normal service and another provided both for much less than my existing phoneline-only service cost.
So I switched and when they suggested the switchover date should be at the end of the following month so that they could arrange everything for that date, I agreed.
The deal included a free Internet connector which I didn't need; and a free device for 3G connection which I didn't need either so it didn't particularly matter when neither had arrived by the time the switchover day came.
Coupling in via Wifi (i.e. the phone-line) went fine so I connected a second computer to the Internet; turned off the Wifi connection in the portable with 3G and tried to get the 3G to work.
Several hours later I had read lots of documents and web pages and installed and uninstalled lots of relevant software and had two alternative ways installed in the portable to connect 3G one of which said that my 3G card wasn't active (it was) and the other one tried to connect but then failed.
In other words I'd done all I could so I decided to wait until the small external device for 3G arrived so I could see if that would work.
Maybe an hour later - and with no charging through the Internet in the meantime - it suddenly occurred to me that the reason that external device might work better would be that in the package along with the Internet connector and the external device there'd be a SIM card.
I didn't of course have a Sim card in the built-in 3G card ...
Oops and to think that once in one of those many documents I had glanced through looking for problems when connecting to 3G there'd been a mention of a Sim card. (In passing, you understand) and not as a reason for a connection failing, but still).
It seems that everyone in the world except me knows that you need a SIM card. Either that or the rest of them are too ashamed to admit it.
So there you have it the equivalent of "Is it plugged in" for people trying to access 3G is "Do you have a Sim card?" (and not, as was said many times in those forums/documents etc, "do you have a valid contract?"
.
P.S. A final thought. Perhaps in other countries they actually ship the Sim card to the customer so that it arrives by the time he needs it. Here in Finland they make you pay for a service to be switched on and it seems don't care much that you can't access it for several days. (Several posts said that the package was posted on the day of the switchover).
.
P.P.S. There is of course a problem remaining. I have several portables. If I put the Sim car in the built-in 3G card then I can't just grab the external device every time I carry a different portable around with me. But if I don't put it in the in-built 3G card then there is no point at all in having an in-built 3G card. (How lucky I paid the extra for the SSD drive and not for the internal 3G card).
Mar
28
Published: March 28, 2010 08:03 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
(continued from previous post)
In order to be able to use the bootable USB stick, I needed to change the Boot order. F2 got me to the Setup function and I could move the (listed) USB drive up the order.
64-bit Windows setup started and I specified the replacement of the original operating system.
The usual process started (after specifying locale and keyboard) of files copying; files expanding etc. and so I left the computer alone and went off to do something else.
When I came back it had booted again - naturally from the USB drive - and was at the start of the installation again. Oops.
Promising this time to monitor the installation process better I kept on going only this time when the installation announced it was going to re-boot in 10 seconds I kept my finger hovering over the F2 button and so was able to move down the USB to position 2 in the boot order so that this time the boot was as intended and the Windows 7 installation continued to the end.
This was all straightforward and normal with the only odd thing being that I had tried to out-trick the installation routine by specifying United States; United States punctuation; and only Finnish keyboard because I am so fed up of - when I specify Finnish punctation (i.e. locale) - that things like msdn (etc.) always assume that I want to see Finnish language pages.
[Even worse being when a default software download - Firefox say - is the Finnish language version.I've been caught out by that many times.]
Earlier that trick worked fine and you could amend the punctation etc. with no bad effects, but this time the MSDN page that IE8 opens was in Finnish.
<rude words with stars in them about here>
Clearly MS have been "helpful" again and now give you the page based on your keyboard. Sighs. Why can't they leave me to say what I want rather than decide for me.
However mutters aside, the installation went well and the machine is brutally fast when starting. Whether that is only because there is nothing much there yet is something I'll find out later.
(The next post will be about putting an end to the myths about the hardware needed to install SharePoint Server 2010).
P.S. I orginally forget another key feature of the installation.
If you have, as I did, two drives available for the installation of the operating system, even though one of them is hidden from Windows Explorer (etc.), it is not hidden from the Windows 7 installation routine and it is offered as an alternative to C:.
This means that you can delete it before going on the specify that you want the installation to use C:.
Once the installation of the OS has finished and you have re-booted, you can *then* use Partition Wizard to change that 12GB of space into the D: drive and format it.
Hence I got my space back after all.
(What I didn't do was to once again try to use that space as part of a big C:. I was afraid that Partition Wizard would't work again and anyway it is sometimes quite handy to have a separate drive (I'm putting the downloaded .exe and .iso files there).)
Mar
28
Published: March 28, 2010 07:03 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
(continuing on from the previous post)
So, I had a portable running 32-bit Vista Business and because it had an SSD drive I wanted to upgrade it to 64-bit Windows 7 because even though the graphics card (typical for "Business" protables) was an on-board (Intel) one that used internal memory, I still wanted to have all the memory available in case I upgraded to 6 or even 8 GB (at present it has 2x2GB of course).
Because it was an SSD drive the Operating system needed to be Windows 7 because some basic "research" (= Google search) quickly showed me that Windows 7 unlike Vista was aware of SSD drives and so included various things for speeding them up.
One of these things (faster reads) came about by different partitioning so upgrading the operating system to 32-bit Windows 7 wasn't going to be enough and so I really did need to go to 64-bit (and completely replace the existing installation) to speed up the SSD drive as much as possible.
My first test however - purely out of curiousity - was to see if an upgrade from 32-bit Vista Business to 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate would go smoothly, which it did.
The next test was to try to recover the 12GB recovery partition that the (sarcasm on) kind (sarcasm off) people at Acer had grabbed from my already meagre 160GB for their recovery data (and naturally hidden so that only partition tools could do anything with it).
Hence I needed some partition software. As this was the first time in years (I don't mind losing 12Gb in a 500GB drive) I'd needed any the one I had wouldn't work any more so I needed something newer that knew about Windows 7.
The usual search found me Partition Wizard ( http://www.mt-solution.ca) and an offer of a free license code (in return for registration) for a copy of the Business edition. So I used that instead of the free edition.
The problem however was that after I'd told it to cancel the recovery partition and enlarge C: it needed to do a re-boot and the re-boot then changed nothing.
This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I was running Partition Wizard from the USB port but for now I gave up that idea and started thinking about 64-bit Windows 7 installation.
What I first did was to find some software that expanded and iso file so that I could have a copy of 64-bit Windows 7 on a USB stick.
In fact I'd done this earlier in order to install the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on top of Windows Vista and everything had worked fine.
Unfortunately you can't just run a 64-bit setup routine when using a 32-bit OS, so I needed to find a way to create a bootable USB drive.
I found a Microsoft software called the Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool which not only creates a bootable USB stick but also does it (only) directly from a iso file (thus saving one step).
As this erases completely the USB drive I needed to find an empty 4GB one or in my case move the stuff off an existing one.
I then tried (in the 32-bit Windows 7 system) to use that utility and all went well until right at the end when it refused to create a boot drive. Checking the download page for the utility gave the information that this was caused by trying to create a 64-bit system while on a 32-bit system.
I tried the suggested fix of moving a file (bootsec.exe) to the same directory as the utility, but that too failed.
There was nothing for it but to go to my HP portable running 64-bit Windows 7 and to create the bootable USB version of 64-bit Windows 7 there.
There it was finally successful.
The next post will tell about the problems (and positive surprise) found while using it.
Mar
28
Published: March 28, 2010 07:03 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
When Windows 7 came out and started being available in portables I kept my eye open for bargains in those portables that were still being deivered with Vista.
There weren't any. It seemed that the people buying these things were quite content to be told there would be a "free" upgrade to Windows 7 provided by the manufacturer even though that would mean paying a 29.95 Euro fee to the manufacturer in "processing fees"; waiting until such a version was available and then having the hassle of having to upgrade.
Maybe the word spread here in Finland that that really wasn't such a great idea because last week I did find - by chance - such a bargain.
It was a 13.3. 1.7 kg Acer with 4GB running a SL9400 processor and in the 320 GB version it cost two-thirds of the identical model running Windows 7 (with a 500GB hard disk but otherwise identical).
In very rough figures it cost 720 instead of 1080. (Euros but if you live in the US regard that as being in dollars because portable prices tend to have a 1:1 ratio even the dollar is 1:35 or so to the Euro).
I probably would have just noted this in passing as having finally proved my theory of bargains in Vista machines because I was really looking for something both small enough and cheap enough to leave in a hotel room (and this was the same size as my Mac Book at least in terms of screen size even though it was a quarter lighter) except that in addition to the hard disk model they also had one with an SSD drive.
What's more an Intel 160GB SSD drive - price sold alone in Finland ca 450 Euros and that model also had built-in G3 support (less interesting because if you sign new contracts for G3 here you get a "free" USB thing to provide that).
Add to that the fact that the model supports 8GB of memory and that it was the better-built (Acer) TravelMate line rather than the Aspire line and I was severely tempted.
A few days later the price of both models went down yet again by 100 (to 825 in the case of the SSD model making the SSD drive more than half the value of the portable) and I jumped.
How I then upgraded the OS from 32-bit Vista (why do they almost always put 32-bit OSs on machines that can have much more memory than 3GB?) to 64-bit Windows 7 is the subject of the next post here.
Sep
22
Published: September 22, 2009 01:09 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
As reported earlier I hadn't wanted to replace any of my notebooks but I couldn't upgrade the memory of them to 4GB (let alone 8GB) so - as I needed at least 4GB - I bought an additional cheap HP 15.6 inch Pavillion which had 4GB; was upgradeable to 8GB and had a reasonable fast processor and a 500 GB hard disk.
I quickly installed Windows 7 on it in place of the installed Vista (thus losing all the HP freebies ...) and also installed VM Workstation running Windows Server 2008 R2 and some pre-release application software and was happy enough (apart from an over active mouse pad which reacts if your finger moves over it at a height of several cms).
But then I decided to connect it to my 22-inch monitor.
Can you believe it ? In 2009 they are selling notebooks with VGA ports only. The d*** thing has an HDMI port but no DVD-I, how crazy can you get ?
Needless to say my 22-inch monitor comes with an attached DVD-I cable so now I'm going to have to hunt for a conversion cable.
These don't seem easy to find these days as of course most notebooks and desktops DO come with DVD-I connections. Just not the cheap HP ones.
It's my fault of course. I just assumed that HP knew what they were doing. Obviously not.
P.S. It's even got Firewire. Now nice as that is, how many people these days not running Macs have Firewire stuff (that doesn't also have USB 2.0) they want to connect ? (and how many have DVD-I monitors ...). So why spend the money for a Firewire port and save it on not including a DVD-I port?
Aug
22
Published: August 22, 2009 06:08 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I've not been syncing a OneNote notebook using a USB stick for long so I can't be sure that the function I am now seeing is OneNote 2010 only (but I didn't see this when using the same (USB stick-based) OneNote Notebook in OneNote 2007).
It's one of those things that are easy to explain, which tends to mean that they are going to turn out to be not only logical but also very useful.
OK. The explanation.
I had amended the Notebook in another PC's OneNote 2007 and synced it there with the USB main copy and now had also opened the Notebook in this machines OneNote 2010 and then synced that copy from the USB copy.
What I then saw was that some of the sections of the Notebook were in Bold and some not.
Or very simply those sections contained items that hadn't been opened in this machine's copy of OneNote. (There was a similar indication when such a section was opened of which items had not been opened here.)
In other words they've made it possible to quickly shove new information into OneNote on some machines (maybe at work) and then have a single (home?) machine that can be used when you have more time to actually read (and test?) the information that you earlier saved.
Nice.
P.S. For those who on reading the above thought (just as I did when writing it) that maybe I want a quick way to remove the Bold markings on those PCs where I don't want to re-visit all the posts I've made elsewhere, then I can reassure you that the usual method of right-clicking on the Section name and then clicking on "Mark all as Read" works fine.
(As does right-clicking on the Notebook name to get rid of all the bold markings as you'll find the "Mark All as Read" option there too.)
Aug
21
Published: August 21, 2009 05:08 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
It would be great if I could remember how I did this (and could say so here), but I added a Spanish Dictionary to Office 2010.
Now if I have an idle moment I can just move the cursor to a word in a document in OneNote 2010 (where the sync using a Notebook stored on a USB stick continues to work perfectly) and with no click or any other action a pop-up appears with my "Bilingual Dictionary" and a translation of that word in Spanish.
Well that's nice but what is really great is that for some words (such as "start") there's not only several optional translations (3) but also some sample English phrases (both with and without translations - mostly with) to explain the usage.
("deployment" on the other hand had just two straight translations - "deploy: verbo transitivo (use) utilizar; (position) despeglar")
Aug
19
Published: August 19, 2009 06:08 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Some MVPs delight in telling you about their very expensive computers set-ups and I too would delight in telling you about it if it weren't for the fact I don't have a very expensive computer set-up ...
Recently however the chance was there. Both my (upper mid-price; and lower mid-price) portables can only support a maximum of 2GB of memory and in order to test some server software with Office 2010 I needed more. (I have more memory on the desktop but that - at least until I feel the urge to write a new book - is being used by my wife who is making up for the time lost when I *was* writing a book and blocked that machine almost completely.)
There's limited space in the house so a new portable was needed and at first that 8GB requirement (4GB now but a possibility of 8GB later) seemed to mean rather expensive portables. However I discovered that even the HP "popular" Pavilion series also support up to 8GB so I started doing a few comparisons.
For simplicity I compared with the HP Elite Workbook line mainly because they were at least cheaper than the better machines from other manufacturers.
The Elite Workbooks would have cost about 3 times a reasonable Pavilion package. In return they had a three year warranty compared to one year; were built better and used lighter, better materials.
They also had faster processors but - as I found out when I finally found a processor comparison site - only maybe 50% faster and the Pavilion processors weren't slouches either.
The Pavilion had more memory to start with (4GB as opposed to 2GB) which would have led to me in the case of the Elite either buying a later unnecessary 2GB memory card to get me up to 4GB or buying the expensive 4GB now to get me up to 6GB [and the models were expensive enough anyway].
The Pavilions also had bigger hard disks (320 to 500) with the typical Elite 160 to 250.
The Pavilions also had much better graphics cards with own memory.
So, based on the fact that I will probably continue to travel with the MacBook, I reckoned that for my present needs of an alternative 4GB machine at home (alternative that is to the desktop which also has 4GB but could easily have more) I reckoned there was no point in paying the sort of money I might spend if I were replacing one of the existing portables and went for the Pavilion.
It's worked out very well so far with a couple of exceptions.
One is that I thought I'd be using it with a different keyboard and mouse and no doubt for real work that (and an external monitor) is what I'll be doing. But for now I'm using the portable's keyboard - which is taking a bit of getting used to even to hit the right keys -and its mouse pad is just as irritating as the one on the Acer Ferrari. In both you just have to be typing with your hands inches above the mousepad and - woosh - that mouse pad has interpreted your typing to mean delete or Home or in fact anything.
This may have to do with the OS (the Acer is using Vista Ultimate and the HP Windows 7 Ultimate) because I *never* have that problem with the mouse pad on the MacBook (OxS Tiger). But whatever is causing it, it's a major pain and in fact is the reason why i've been using the Acer virtually only with a wireless keyboard and mouse both of which also work fine with the HP.
Of course if I drop it off the edge of my desk after 12 and a half months I might well regret the decision but for now the extra money is in the bank and I can quickly and easily test both Office 2010 and those server products.
Aug
19
Published: August 19, 2009 01:08 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I've been having problems getting Windows Server 2008 R2 (from MSDN) to access the Internet. The Internet connection is there but nothing I do can make simple URLs like http://www.ibm.com (my standard quick test site because it is short and works all the time) work.
This is only a quick post so I won't go into all the attempts to get this to work but note the OS was saying I had Internet connection and firewalls were off.
The solution was that I was using VM Workstation and its easy install which used NAT networking. Switching to Bridged networking and closing and restarting IE and I was OK for internet access without any firewall changes.
May
27
Published: May 27, 2009 23:05 PM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Sales of my book have been gradually picking up after a very slow start (which I blame on the one star Amazon review of it by someone well known to hate MVPs - thus "proving" I should have said "No" when the publishers said they wanted to include an MVP logo on the cover) and so one of my Chrome tabs is set to the Amazon US page for the book so I can do a daily check on how it's doing (with a small cheer on the few days it is below the 100,000 mark in the "best-selling list").
From that page I can (and do) follow the Kindle link to see how Kindle sales are doing and those sales are seemingly steady as the number there doesn't vary at all as much as the number for real book sales.
Anyway, this morning, before I went to the Kindle pages I said out aloud that today's figure would be 33,620. I then went to the page and it was 33,636!
Not that that makes any real difference to my state of mind. What did make a small difference was the fact that yesterday someone bought a book via a link on my Book list page AND that the book they bought was mine. That one known sale of the paper version of the book gave me much more of a boost than guessing Kindle sales.
May
14
Published: May 14, 2009 05:05 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I don't know about you, but I get extremely annoyed when I'm running a *Server* system and suddenly the latest version of IE is decreed by Microsoft to be an important upgrade that if your settings are set to automatic gets automatically installed.
Guys, it's a server (SERVER) system and if I use a browser on it more than once in a blue moon, then I'm doing something wrong. So why force me to upgrade from something that works and which came with the OS I installed and force me to install something else?
OK. That's mutter number one.
The next mutter is about what happens if you don't have automatic upgrades set.
Well, naturally you do run Windows Upgrade once in a while and when you do you find that if you just use the Express upgrade then you get IE8.
Luckily you don't use Express Upgrade but always check what is included in the upgrade package and there you discover that while IE8 is Important, a couple of Windows Server 2008 upgrades aren't.
What's more there's no "once you turn it off you won't be asked again" button that MS have used before, so every time you run Windows Upgrade, there it is listed as Important again (and again).
!?*!*!
But then you think that Microsoft have usually provided people with a tool to block such upgrades from being shown.
You hunt for it and find it here
You then discover that the reason you didn't install it when you saw it was that it is dated the 5th of January 2009 long before anyone had the mad idea of making IE8 "Important" for Servers.
Is Microsoft being very sneaky here or just far-sighted.
I'm tending towards the former because that's not the only sneakiness.
When you download this you have as part of the download routine to say which directory it goes to (cut to creating one, because the routine won't) and you get four files one of which is a cmd file.
The sneakiness comes from the fact that running that command file by double-click gets you nowhere.
What you have to do is read all the way through the .hlp file until you reach the bit that says you have to run this cmd file in the command box.
You then need to read a bit more to see that their sample command line isn't as it contains both /B and /U or the mad Block and Unblock ...
So finally you go to the command box and write the cmd file with /B and you won't see IE8 in your Windows upgrade again.
But, oh, what hoops they make us go through.
Surely it would have been possible to write the cmd so that a double click assumed the /B ?
After all that is what 99% of the people download a blocking tool want to do - BLOCK.
Apr
08
Published: April 08, 2009 07:04 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The following is the entire text of a post to a SharePoint forum.
-----------------
Hi,
I am having the exact same issue. We are not using forms authentication.
Any further ideas?
Thanks.
------------
I've never really seen much point in writing posts saying that you are having the same problem, but a Microsoft contact thought such posts were very useful as they give an indication of the frequency of the problem. (If, that is, Microsoft read every forum thread, which I doubt).
However that's not the point here, the point is that the next poster marked the above post as a possible answer by marking it with "Propose as Answer".
How any post saying "we are having the same problem" can be regarded as a possible answer to the problem is completely beyond me, yet this is not the first time (and won't be the last, I'm sure) that such a post has been marked as "Propose as Answer".
So not only does the poor Moderator have to deal with the ever-present self-proposers (who propose that their own post is an answer) but also has to deal with "answers" which aren't - by any stretch of the imagination - answers.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother but then comes along a post with a very clear and solid answer and someone whose judgement I trust has proposed it as an answer. Then I can see the point again as I rush to mark it up to Answer status.
No doubt you are saying to yourself that this happens once every couple of weeks so why the fuss. Well the above was today and this next one is also one that was seen today.
Hi XXXX!
Were you able to figure out how to resolve the problem?
Thanks,
YYYY
...and that too was proposed (by the poster in this case - Mr YYYY) as an Answer.
Mar
27
Published: March 27, 2009 07:03 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Parallels 4.0 for the Mac came out in January claiming lots of advantages over 3.0 some of which blog posts said didn't affect most people (I don't for instance have an eight-way machine with 8GB memory and aren't likely to have one any day soon).
So I didn't bother with an upgrade.
I was in any way getting used to the fact that I these days actually had a company-paid copy of VM Workstation on my PC (along with the copy I already owned on my home PC) and I had also added VM Fusion to my Mac and finally - after using VMs in Parallel when writing my book - had started using it in a small way.
(Somehow I always seem to use the Mac for forums and e-mail (and watching German TV shows from www.zdf.de) and use the Desktop with the still-going-strong 20inch Pro HP screen for real work involving the VMs - if that is I can shift my wife off it)
Anyway the fact that I was using VM Fusion most of the time, didn't push me in the direction of upgrading the Parallels.
However I was still curious about 4.0 so when I was offered the upgrade for EUR 31.89, it was time to get out the credit card.
The install is naturally over the existing 3.0 version but it still required the new code just as you were thinking it wouldn't.
Then the upgrade was going on it required you to change the state of your 3.0 VMs from suspended to shut down, which of course meant opening them all in 3.0 and then shutting them all down. Having done all that, the installation seemed to be needed to be started again (as one of them was still listed and thus Next wasn't available) and this time it required that all the VMs that had already been shut down (not the ones that had just been shut down but all the other ones that had been shut down rather than suspended). So those all needed to be started again and then shut down.
There followed yet another new installation run and this time it actually installed 4.0.
Then you have to upgrade your existing Parallel VMs to 4.0. Here you are offered Backup and Convert or just Convert.
Lazy as always (and I had two USB drives with copies on in any case) I just did Convert and this was OK for the first couple (it's a two stage process - the first stage is automatic but then you have to run setup for the virtual CD drive to get the Parallel Tools 4.0 installed) but then the next one stuck with the bar on step 4 of 4 showing completed (graphically) but the Next button still not available.
So I waited and waited and started a second conversion and that stuck at exactly the same place.
Nothing for it. A forced shutdown of the entire MacBook and re-start. Needless to say, perhaps, both those converted VMs worked fine. They had completed but just not informed their little installation routine mate that they had completed.
Anyway there you have it. I now have both Parallels 4.0 and VMFusion VMs on the MacBook. However since I replaced the hard drive with a 500GB one I can afford to have two different versions.
The only pity is that as this is a MacBook with a 2GB memory limitation, I can't have too many of the VMs open at any one time.
P.S. When doing the final conversion (a 15GB MOSS VM) I had a new variation on the theme. It stopped registering any change in ho far it had gone about half way through the blue bar showing progress in step 3 (of 4). This time when I restarted the MacBook after the forced close down, it first didn't boot but gave me the hard disk symbol only. Clicking that, though, booted the machine and clicking the MOSS image then took me right back to the same screen I'd had before (showing halfway through the third step) only this time it kept going and very very quickly jumped to step 4 and ready. Perhaps if I'd waited a bit longer before turning it off it would have completed by itself, but most probably it wouldn't have shown this and I would have still been forced to do a forced shutdown.
So the conversion works but the routine controlling it could be better. It could for instance let you close it down when it is stuck instead of forcing you to crash the entire system.
Feb
14
Published: February 14, 2009 07:02 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I bought a 2TB external USB drive system from Western Digital - the MyBook Mirror Edition - which is quite a large external box with USB 2.0 access to what are two 1TB drives which use RAID-1. You can also use the included WD RAID Manager software to set this as RAID-0 but I didn't need the space (or the speed increase) and prefered the security of a second copy so I left it as it was.
I was pretty happy at the price which for Finnish standards (don't convert this to dollars, folks!) was a very reasonable 235 Euros. When you consider that an "equivalent" 1TB device from Buffalo cost almost as much and that a special offer in the local shop for a single (of all things) Fujitsu-Siemens external 1TB was 100 Euros, 235 for a RAID-1 2x1TB device was pretty good.
Then it came to installing the included software. The user guide which I'd checked on the web before I bought the device said it included WD Anywhere Backup and "Google Software". The latter seemed both a waste of time installing and also was free software in any case, but I decided I might as well install the backup software so that backups were automatic.
So that's what I did. I installed only the "included" WD Anywhere software and didn't install two different pieces of WD software that were clearly labelled as 30-day trial (which WD Anywhere wasn't) and didn't install the Google software - which turned out to be Google Desktop Search; Google Toolbar (both of which I didn't want on this machine) and Picasa (which I already had installed on it).
I then connected up the MyBook Mirror (OK) and ran the "included" WD Anywhere software - which told me it was a 30-day trial edition !
Needless to say no code was included on the CD or where they usually are on a sticky at the back of the CD envelope, so I couldn't convert this to the full version.
So would I have to pay to use this "included software" past the 30 days? It certainly looked like it.
So I went looking for the Western Digital site (not of course at www.westerndigital.com that would be too easy but at www.wdc.com) to see where I could complain about this. I didn't find an e-mail address (all suppliers these days seem to make finding an e-mail address as difficult as possible) but I did find a download link for a copy of WD Anywhere Backup "free if you have registered your WD product".
So that's it. I'm forced to register my product (which as the product number on serial number is on the bottom I can't do until the initial backup has finished) and then I can download a (probably newer version) copy of the software that was supposedly included with my device in order to upgrade the supplied copy into a full version.
Now I wonder how many computer amateurs thought "Oh, they only supply a trial edition, I'll have to upgrade it on-line with my credit card."
Not a few, I'll bet. Sneaky, Western Digital.
P.S. The backup of almost the whole drive finally finished and I was able to turn the device upside down to get at the serial number.
First my normal glasses weren't enough to read it so I had to get out my reading glasses. With them I got a version of the serial number that was rejected. I tired a few likely variations. Rejected too.
So time for glasses plus a magnifying glass. A couple more "certain" letters now became uncertain and so I had to try a few more serial numbers before at approximately the tenth attempt all told I finally got one that was accepted.
It will perhaps not surprise you that the WD installation etc. didn't get a perfect score in their questionnaire that they force (yes, force - I left an answer out and wasn't allowed to proceed) you to fill in when you register. I also made good use of the space for additional comments on the documentation (which you'll remember said the box included a free version of the Backup software) and on the experience as a whole (too small serial number!!).
How a couple of things that have nothing at all to do with the quality of the product itself can screw up its ratings !
P.P.S. It didn't even end there. When I registered I didn't get a code for the software ! Instead I got a link to download the software - the same version of the software that I already had installed.
So I had to install software I already had installed and during this installation I wasn't asked for a code (thank goodness, as they hadn't given me one) but only for my E-mail address. This then they obviously match up with the e-mail address in the registration. Having done that the software "upgrade" went through and my copy of WD Anywhere Backup no longer stated that it was a trial version.
They then sent me an e-mail to confirm that I had installed the software and THAT (!!) included a code for the software ...
Feb
06
Published: February 06, 2009 07:02 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
It's possible to mark any forum post as "Propose as Answer". The idea is that this helps the Moderator by letting him/her quickly know which threads possibly contain a solution. He/She can then access the threads that include such a post and then decide whether the post is worthy of being changed from merely "Propose as Answer" to being marked as an Answer.
It's a good idea, but unfortunately there are many people who don't seem to get the idea behind it and who post a reply in a thread and then immediately mark their own reply as "Propose as Answer".
Well this post is to tell you that in all but one of the SharePoint forums, you are wasting your time if you do that because this is what I do when I do a sweep of the threads that include "Propose as Answer".
Firstly I of course find the "Propose as Answer" post.
a) If the person who has marked it is the person who posted it I remove the mark.
b) If the person who marked it is someone whose name I recognize (and can thus trust their judgement) I very very quickly scan the post and then 99% of the time Up it to Answer status.
c) If I don't recognize the name of the person who marked it, I spend more time looking at the post before deciding whether to "Up" it or not (in which case I remove the "Propose as Answer").
d) Posts which aren't answers at all (and it's always a surprise to see post marked "Propose as Answer" that include questions rather than answers - but it does happen) get the Propose as Answer removed of course.
-----------------
So you see, don't mark your own posts with "Propose as Answer" and you have a chance that they will - at some later date - be marked as an answer. Mark your own posts and they won't be.
Note too that I also on occasion move posts directly to Answer status. But only when I read them the first time. So this (usually) won't apply to a post that has in the meantime been marked "Propose as Answer" by the poster.
Jan
09
Published: January 09, 2009 05:01 AM by
Mike Walsh
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The sublime hard disk story is that I am now running a MacBook with a 500GB disk.
When I bought the MacBook eighteen months ago it was a risk, as although I had always wanted a Mac I wasn't sure whether I wanted to use anything other than Microsoft software. But the possibility of booting into a MS OS was there with the new intel chips and so I took the plunge. The choice was made less difficult by the fact that the 13.3" MacBook cost less than equivalent 12" PC portables at the time.
But still I went for the cheapest MacBook and immediately upgraded it's memory and it's hard disk. That was from 60GB to 160GB and cost something like 140 Euros at the time (for the hard disk upgrade - the memory upgrade cost about the same again).
As alway with hard disk space, it was used up (Virtual machines take up a lot of space and I had both Parallels VMs and also VM Fusion VMs) quickly and I had occasional minor problems caused by there not being enough spare disk space (typically a 50 minute streamed video would die halfway through) but nothing serious.
But I was for some reason glancing through the web site of the local best (= best selection by far and reasonably competitive prices) supplier of computers and related items and noticed, what I think was a 250GB drive, portable drive at a reasonable price.
Well there's no way I'm going to pay money and go through the upgrading hassle to go from 160GB to 250GB but it got me interested enough to check the site for more drives from the same company (Western Digital) and I found first 320GB drives and then a 500GB drive. The money was peanuts (ca 100 Euros) and going from 160GB to 500GB was a very attractive idea so I went for it (after having checked some Apple forum posts - found via Google - to see if it would work in my MacBook.)
Now a couple of evenings later (one backup off my small form-factor portable USB drive to a larger USB drive; one use of SuperDuper! to copy my MacBook's 160GB drive to the portable USB drive and make it bootable; and then on evening 2 changing the MacBook drive (took even me less than half an hour and most of that was finding the right screwdriver to transfer the hard drive cover); booting from the portable drive and running SuperDuper! to this time copy the portable drive's contents to the 500GB drive and make IT bootable), it's working and working well.
So now - for a no doubt brief moment - I have 340 GB free on my MacBook's hard disk. This by the way is 20GB more than the largest hard disk that Apple supply for the MacBook Pro (where changing hard disks is not for the faint-hearted and takes the portable out of warranty)!
(The SuperDuper! web page is here http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html It's free for what I did and costs i think 29.95 for advanced functions)
So much for sublime - what's the ridiculous ?
I was idly glancing through the December issue of Windows ITPro and there was a Review of the "Toshiba 320GB USB 2.0 Portable 2.5" External Hard Drive" (long name but that's the name they used at the top of the column).
What was ridiculous was that every hard disk manufacturer under the sun has their own completely equivalent 320GB USB 2.0 2.5 portable external drive (I have one from Buffalo for instance and the Western Digital one looks really nice too) and very probably the Toshiba one actually uses a drive from one of those manufactures.
Yet the article was written as if such a drive was kind of new and revolutionary and that you could only get one from Toshiba.
Now it's well known to people from England (where the magazines often say that they don't like the product they are testing) that US magazines always like to put a positive slant on things they are testing, but ignoring the fact here that there are many alternatives (in slightly different physical sizes and in a wide range of disk sizes) if you want a portable USB drive is just criminal - or to put it in another way to match the title of this piece, ridiculous.
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