Windows

When I first read the headline, I was shocked. I thought, "Wow! Skype runs on Windows servers???"

But no. Skype blamed its outage over the weekend on a different kind of Windows problem. It turns out that when you have millions of Windows machines restarting at the same time (getting their weekly doses of patches because, um, the system is rock-solid), it can cause all sorts of problems for others.

Like Skype. As reports The Register:… Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--It must be a bit irksome being an antitrust regulator in the United States when your European counterparts are (a) more likely to interfere with the private sector and (b) look disdainfully at federal agencies as wishy-washy.

Which is probably why William Kovacic, one of the Federal Trade Commission's five members, spent nearly an hour on Monday defending the American approach as reasoned and no less thorough than that of its cross-Atlantic counterparts. There is a "tendency on the part of our European colleagues to dismiss the U.S. experience," he said.

(It should be … Read more

The first posting of this three part series on DropMyRights explained what the program is and why, I think, everyone running Windows XP should use it. The second part covered the somewhat unusual procedure for installing and configuring DropMyRights. This final posting describes using Windows XP after DropMyRights has been installed, and responds to some reader comments.

Although I have only discussed using DropMyRights with Windows XP, it also works with Windows Server 2003. It does not work with Windows 2000. On a technical level, it should work with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, however there isn't the … Read more

This is a follow-up to my previous posting about DropMyRights, where I tried to make the case that every Windows XP user should use it.

You can download DropMyRights either from Microsoft or from CNET's Download.com.

What is downloaded is an MSI file rather than the usual EXE. Double-click on the MSI file to start the DropMyRights setup wizard. The wizard is pretty standard--you agree to the license, then select an installation folder. Interestingly, it defaults to installing DropMyRights in a subdirectory of My Documents (MSDN\DropMyRights) rather than the usual C:\Program Files.

After final … Read more

If you are running Windows XP, you should install the free DropMyRights program. Hopefully this posting will convince you of this.

DropMyRights is a free program that greatly increases the security of Windows XP and has not gotten the attention that I think it deserves. Everyone running Windows XP should use it. Yes, everyone.

Windows, Macs and Linux all support the concept of restricted and unrestricted users. Restricted users are limited in the changes they can make to the system, perhaps the biggest restriction being on installing software. Windows unrestricted users are called Administrators, with Macs and Linux the sole … Read more

In Windows XP, Task Manager is like the dashboard of a car. It's your interface into what's going on under the hood. It can tell you things such as: what programs are running in the background that you can't see, how busy the processor (CPU) is, which programs are making the greatest demands on the processor, how much ram is free, the number of hard disk reads/writes by each program, etc. etc. When your computer is running slow, or seemingly frozen, Task Manager should be the first thing you turn to.

For whatever reason, Microsoft has … Read more

Mac users must wait until next year for fresh versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint: Microsoft has moved its intended launch of Office for Mac 2008 to January from the second half of this year.

"We had hoped to hit the Christmas selling season, but now we hope to target Macworld" in January, said Craig Eisler, who became general manager of the Mac business unit at Microsoft six weeks ago. "We, as a group, were not satisfied with product quality."

Details about any software development snags, as well as final pricing, were unavailable. Office for Mac … Read more

Speaking in front of a group of financial analysts Thursday, Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft, explained that his company needs to stay focused on moving away from the desktop and focus on Web services and consumer devices. But what Ballmer did not come out and finally admit is the very products keeping Microsoft afloat are quickly becoming its albatross.

Windows and Office are the sole reasons why Microsoft has enjoyed such success over the past decade. Without Windows, the company could not have moved into all of the markets it currently maintains products in. Without Office, the company would … Read more

Most of us have personal computer questions and it's not too hard to get answers. What is hard though, is getting an answer from someone qualified, thoughtful and reasoned. And a constant stream of good answers, for free, is too much to hope for.

Unless you know about Leo.

At his ask-leo.com web site, Leo Notenboom answers computer questions from anyone. Each week he answers a handful of questions, and, if you subscribe to his free newsletter, you get a weekly email with the current weeks questions. He can't answer every one, but he tries his best. … Read more