An important one this. A patch is now available for the well-publicised bug in Internet Explorer. It should appear through Windows Update automatically but it’s worth checking by going to the Windows Update web site.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (17)

Networking is impossible to avoid these days and somehow it doesn’t seem possible to use a computer without the internet. The trouble is, Vista does seem to have made this harder than with Windows XP.

This is partly due to the extra steps involved in getting to settings, although I recognise that this may not irritate less confident users as it does me. Even so, I’ve had situations where I just cannot get connected to a network. In one case I spent around half an hour trying to get a wired connection to work, until giving up and using wireless. I’d used wired because I’ve found it to be the most reliable. You plug the cable in, a little green light appears and everything works. No worries about interference or WEP/WPA codes.

It seems I’m not alone as the Windows Secrets website has an article covering some of the networking bugs in Vista, specifically those affecting DHCP. DHCP is a technology that lets the computer ask a server (normally the router at home) for all the network settings.

The most likely culprit for me is a bug when a computer has more than one network adapter built in. For the record, that’s all notebooks and, given that wired networking comes built into motherboards these days, plenty of desktop computers too.

Apparently this dual adapter problem, which manifests itself as Windows reporting only local network access without the internet, is known by Microsoft, but there is no indication of when it might be fixed. Looking back this may well be what happened to me.

So for the moment, I’m sticking with using just the one network adapter at a time. Even if that means wireless when I could use wired.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (14)

Smashing has got a wallpaper collection with a difference, they are all designed specifically to be used on widescreen or dual monitor setups. There are some very attractive designs. It just seems such a shame that you have to put windows on top of them to get anything done!

Posted by Tim Smith on December 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (29)

The Microsoft Security for Home Computer newsletter had a link to an interesting article, Retire that computer more safely. Hopefully Santa will be treating many of us to a new computer and that always presents the problem of what to do with the old one.

I'm not going to have to worry for a while as a new PC isn't on my list but disposing of old equipment can be quite a headache. Firstly you're not supposed to put any of these gadgets and PCs in the normal waste bin. It's not without reason; there are lots of nasty chemicals in them. So do batteries*. Your local tip should be able to dispose of the computers properly.

The other concern is security. All the personal information on hard disks would be of great interest to identity thieves, so don't just take the computer down to the tip. We recommend Eraser for deleting files and making sure they can't be retrieved. Be prepared for quite a wait though.

Assuming the computer isn't too old (Pentium III or later), there are charities that can donate the computer to the developing world. One such is Computer Aid. One concern is that the problem of disposing of the computers once they no longer work is left to the poorer nation, but at least the computer is used for longer.

Alternatively there are other uses for old computers, including file storage with a quick hard disk upgrade.

*There were plans to create battery recycling points, you can find your nearest at BatteryBack. Don't forget to consider your local tip, which is where I take my batteries, as they have collection points. BatteryBack didn't include this when I did a search.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (32)

There are lots of Christmas templates to be found on the Microsoft Office website. There are Christmas cards and advice for making family newsletters. The clip art will come in handy too.

Internet Explorer is best used to browse the Office website. While I normally prefer one of the alternatives (Flock) at the moment, IE can preview some of the templates. It also works with the Genuine Advantage Validation that some of the  template require

In fact I am quite impressed with the Word template for a family newsletter. Granted printing out lots in full colour could be quite expensive but it wouldn't take much to convert the template into greyscale for printing on a cheap laser.

I also like the idea of adding a Christmas theme to address labels, assuming that you are comfortable using Mail Merge.

I've been trying to sell it to my wife on the basis that you can make it far more personal than just Dear X, thank you very much for my Y.  It'll give me something to do when I'm trying to fill the void left after producing the Christmas newsletter.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (18)

Word of the day in the Computeractive office has been "counterfeit". Yesterday afternoon we first heard that UK customs had impounded hundreds of fake Nintendo DS and DS Lite consoles, and this morning an ELSPA spokesperson told us that the company was also aware of fake DSi (that's the new DS, currently only available in Japan) and Wii consoles, too.

The fake DS consoles come with unsafe power adapters, so if you've picked up a funny looking DS at a bargain price, we'd strongly advise that you contact Trading Standards before even thinking about plugging it in.

This afternoon, though, an even stranger case: counterfeit netbooks. We've seen several reports that HIS, normally known for its graphics cards, had produced a netbook computer - this afternoon we received word that it is, in fact, nothing to do with the company. In a statement, the company's Paul Yeung said that it "has no plan for netbook products" and that "unauthorized usage of the HIS name or brand will result in swift legal action".

So, how to avoid a fake this Christmas? In the case of the Nintendo DS, it's quite simple: the fakes are far too cheap (some retailing for around £40) and the packaging is a poor imitation of the real thing. In particular, the fake DS consoles have a power adapter supplied separately rather than tucked neatly in the box. As for netbooks, it's even easier: if you want a HIS netbook, you'll just have to forget about it for the time being.

Posted by Tom Royal on December 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (22)

As I mentioned the other day, the free space on offer at Windows Live SkyDrive has been upgraded to 25GB.

That's enough for my entire photo collection at the moment, and then some. Of course, the flip side of that is that someone else is storing them and they are only as safe as my password.

And, as I'm reading in the book Googling Security - How much does Google know about you? (link to PDF version at publishers), there is often a cost to using these online services. Information about my account and behaviour being used for data analysis by the service provider. I doubt that Microsoft would spend time snooping through my photos but the search terms in the comments may be interesting to data mining. For example I posted an image to Flickr a couple of nights ago I took at the Biggin Hill airshow five years ago. Adding comments and tags reveals quite a lot of information.

Still, I'm a believer in the adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So long as I don't think there is any real problem with Microsoft linking my current interests of music and lapsed interests of airshows, 25GB of online storage seems like a good offer.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Eires brought up a good comment on my post on the release of OpenOffice 3. Sending documents to people with Microsoft Office causes problems because they cannot open them. Well they can with the Sun ODF plugin, but it isn't the best of manners to expect people to install software to read your files.

The good news is that not only can OpenOffice (2 and later) save in Office 2003 formats but can be set to do so by default. I know that slightly defeats the whole open source ethos, but it's hard to preach about that when deadlines are missed due to incompatible file formats.

How to do it? I hear you cry. Here it is....

• Left-click on the Tools menu and then Options.
• Click on the small plus symbol next to Load/Save and then click on General.
• Click on the down arrow in the drop down menu and then select Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP.
• There is a warning that some information may be lost, I've never noticed anything missing.

While you're in this option page, I would recommend setting the Autorecover time to a smaller time. I haven't done it yet, but I normally have it set to something between 3 and 5 minutes.

Posted by Tim Smith on December 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5)

The Ribbon in Office 2007 is certainly the most visible change to Office, but it is not necessarily the most significant. The new document format has caused considerable comment, and just when people accidently sending over a document that can't be read in Word 2003*. I've done that myself several times.

The main goal of the OpenXML Document Viewer project is to create software tools, plus guidance, showing how documents created using Open XML Format can be translated to HTML

The site is a little hard to navigate, but hopefully the addon will be released onto the official Firefox Addon-ons site soon.

* That should read 'can't be read in Word 2003 without extra software'. To read docx files download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack 2007

Posted by Tim Smith on December 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)

I would have to admit that I'm no great chess player, but it seems that Vista makes up for any deficiencies in a different way, forcing a draw.

This was discovered by our editor. Thinking he had managed to checkmate the computer, the message above appeared saying the game was a draw.

The board appeared as below. There are two queens because he managed to get a pawn to the other side of the board. All the more convincing a win you would think.

Someone else in the office pointed out that this is not actually checkmate because the King is not actually in check, it just cannot move without going into check. I would call that a winning situation but perhaps the computer is willing to wait for the human player to leave game and default (in the manner of Rimmer in Red Dwarf when playing draughts with the ship robots - Series 2 episode 5).

Posted by Tim Smith on December 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (24)

Important: this post has been updated. See "Update 3/12/8", below.

Apple Mac users have long boasted that, unlike their Windows (sorry, sorry, "PC") counterparts, they don't need to spend time and money protecting against viruses and other online nasties. In fact, Apple even made an advert on the subject:

Well, not anymore. Apple recently posted an update on its website giving advice on installing anti-virus software on OSX - or rather, installing several anti-virus tools, just to be sure:

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent"

Once discovered this announcement has, of course, prompted an entirely predictable round of pointing and mocking on the part of Windows users. This will probably pass with time - a year or two should do, I think. And once the dust settles, maybe the announcement should be seen less as a capitulation and more as a sign of Apple's continued success.

More than anything, today's virus writers want to make money, and as such only target platforms worth attacking. Traditionally this has meant Windows: with millions of PCs out there, not all of them properly protected, a Windows virus could spread efficiently and rake in the information wanted by the malware writers. Maybe Apple has finally sold enough computers to enter the elite - if unpleasant - club of target operating systems.

UPDATE 3/12/8 - Since this report it's transpired that Apple's advice was in fact merely reiterating an older support article (available via Google's cache here). The update was erroneously reported in a blog post by Graham Cluley of Sophos (see his correction), and we - and about half a dozen other media outlets - picked it up from there. Apologies for the error.

Posted by Tom Royal on December 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20)