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The Gateway notebook roll-out is official. Sony's is not. Gateway Computer announced three lines of notebook PCs on Monday with 64-bit Windows, while Circuit City prematurely posted images of upcoming Sony notebooks.

Gateway 14-inch T6836

(Credit: Gateway )

Gateway rolled out three notebooks targeted at students. The P series desktop replacement comes with a 17-inch widescreen, the M series with a 15.4-inch screen, and the T series uses a 14.1-inch screen.

All systems come with 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium and pack 4GB of memory--the minimum for acceptable performance in 64-bit Windows.

(See Gateway goes all 64-bit in back-to-school desktops.)

The 15-inch "Garnet Red" Gateway M-6848 is spec'd with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor, 4GB of memory, a 250GB hard disk drive, 802.11a/b/g,a wireless, DVD-R/RW drive, and Vista Home Premium 64-bit with SP1. It retails for $799.99.

The 14-inch "Pacific Blue" Gateway T-6836 notebook has virtually the same specifications. It also retails for $799.99.

Other features include a multimedia panel integrated into the keyboard, DVD burner with LabelFlash technology, and an integrated Webcam.

Upcoming Sony retail notebook

Meanwhile, details about upcoming Sony notebooks continue to seep out.

Circuit City prematurely posted photos of the upcoming Sony portables. (Though Circuit City has pulled the links, cached images are still accessible.)

Last week, less colorful user-manual images appeared at Notebookreview.com as well as tidbits about various models. Apparently, models will use Intel's next-generation Centrino 2 "Montevina" processor, graphics chips from Advance Micro Devices' ATI unit, and sport 13- and 16-inch screens.

You start typing only to realize 10 seconds later that the focus is on the wrong window. You see a Windows notification pop out of the taskbar only to have it fade away before you can figure out what it means. You get distracted by all of Windows' pointless animations. You miss seeing keyboard-shortcut hints on menu entries and elsewhere in Windows dialog boxes.

You could spend hours hunting for the settings that will do away with these four Windows annoyances. At least Vista collects them all in the Ease of Access Center. These usability settings are spread far and wide in XP.

Mouse over a window to make it the focus
About once or twice a week I find myself happily typing away only to discover after crafting the perfect memo opener or e-mail retort that the focus had switched to another open window. Not only have I lost the data I thought I was entering, I might inadvertently purchase a Winnebago if I press Enter while focused on the wrong page in my browser.

You can set Vista to change the focus to whichever window you mouse over via the Ease of Access Center. Press the Windows key and U to open it.

I described the top four options (all carryovers from XP's Accessibility Control Panel applet) in a previous post. To change focus by hovering, click "Make the mouse easier to use" and check "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse" near the bottom of the dialog box. Click Save or Apply to activate the change.

The simplest way I know of to change this setting in XP is to use the free Tweak UI utility. After you download and install the program, open it and double-click Mouse in the left pane. Choose X-Mouse among the entries that appear, and check "Activation follows X-Mouse" in the right window.

Bonus tip: To keep programs from stealing the focus, choose Focus under General in the left pane, click "Prevent applications from stealing focus" in the right pane, and choose the number of times you want the window to flash when this happens.

Set Vista notification pop-ups to stay on screen longer
Sometimes the little windows that pop out of the taskbar to notify you of some event, such as a USB device you just plugged in being ready to use, disappear too quickly. To extend the duration of notification windows in Vista, click "Make it easier to focus on tasks" in the Ease of Access Center, scroll to the bottom of the resulting dialog box, and change the setting under "How long should Windows notification boxes stay open?" The default setting is 7 seconds, and the available options let you change this to 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 5 minutes. When you're done, click Save or Apply.

Extend the time Vista's notification windows stay visible via this setting in the Ease of Access Center.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The only way I know of to change the duration of notification windows in XP is to tweak the Registry. This is also how you disable notifications altogether. I'll describe the procedure in a future post.

Knock off the frivolous animations
Save some CPU cycles--and maybe your tired eyeballs--by telling Windows to do without the fancy-schmancy animations. In Vista, click "Make it easier to focus on tasks" in the Ease of Access Center (the same dialog I described above for tweaking notifications), check "Turn off all unnecessary animations (when possible)" under "Adjust time limits and flashing visuals," and click Save or Apply.

To tone down the animations in XP, right-click My Computer, choose Properties > Advanced, and click Settings in the Performance section. Under the Visual Effects tab, click "Adjust for best performance," or choose Custom and select the options you do and don't want in the window below. When you're done, click OK twice.

Show shortcut keys on menu items
Microsoft doesn't always make it easy for people who prefer to navigate around Windows and their applications using keyboard shortcuts. To make the key hints visible on menus in Vista, click "Make the keyboard easier to use" in the Ease of Access Center, check "Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys" under "Make it easier to use keyboard shortcuts," and click Save or Apply.

See hints for shortcut keys on Vista menus by choosing this option in the Ease of Access Center.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Add the shortcut-key hints to XP by right-clicking the desktop (or pressing Shift-F10 while on the desktop), choosing Properties, clicking Appearance > Effects, unchecking "Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the Alt key," and clicking OK twice.

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd...

Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP.

Such appreciation for history is not likely to warm the cockles of Microsoft's heart, especially when Linux is getting lots of love from developers (13 percent writing apps for it this year and 15.5 percent in 2009). The Mac? I don't have any equivalent data via Evans Data. But the Mac OS has rocketed by 380 percent as a targeted development platform, Evans Data told Computerworld.

The numbers don't get much better for Vista in 2009: 24 percent (compared with 29 percent for XP). That's a big step up from 8 percent, but is it a sign of momentum to come or just a temporary stopgap while developers wait until Windows 7?

Nor has Microsoft made it easy to develop Vista applications, according to an article in ITJungle.com:

About a year ago I tested a Sony GPS device. The device is long gone, but a shortcut to the product's personal My Documents folder remained among the Send To options on my context (right-click) menu.

Getting rid of this useless entry was as easy as opening Windows' Send To folder and removing its shortcut. Press the Windows key and R, type Shell:sendto, and press Enter to open the Send To folder. In the right pane, right-click the shortcut associated with the item you want to remove and choose Delete > Yes.

Remove an unwanted entry from the Send To menu by deleting its shortcut.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Adding an entry to your Send To menu is just as easy. Right-click in the right pane and select New > Shortcut. Enter the path to the folder you want to create a Send To shortcut for, or click Browse, navigate to it, and click Next. Enter a name for the shortcut, and click Finish.

Enter the path to the folder you want to access from the Send To menu.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Note that just dragging a shortcut from the Start menu or elsewhere into this window and dropping it there may not work. You have to enter the exact path, particularly if you want to add a shortcut to Notepad or another application.

Tomorrow: an antivirus-software buyer's guide.

What I really want to do is add a link to Google Docs on the right-click (context) menu in Windows Explorer. That way, I could open a file in Google Docs by right-clicking it in Explorer and choosing Send To > Google Docs.

Well, I wasn't able to figure out how to do this. So instead, I created a shortcut to open Google Docs, and then I browsed to the file and opened it the old-fashioned way.

This won't save you a lot of time, but at least Google Docs makes it easy for you to transmit the file to the service as an e-mail attachment. And, of course, you can send the file to other e-mail recipients at the same time.

To create the shortcut to Google Docs, log in to the service, copy the URL in the address bar, right-click the desktop or any folder window, choose New > Shortcut, paste the URL in the Location field, click Next, type Google Docs (or the name of your choice), and press Enter (or click Finish).

Now navigate to the shortcut you just created, right-click it, and choose Properties. Click in the "Shortcut key" box, and type your preferred keyboard shortcut (I chose Ctrl-Alt-G).

Give your Google Docs shortcut a keyboard sequence to open the service in a flash.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Now you can open the service by pressing the keyboard shortcut you just entered. Once it opens, choose Upload in the top-left corner of the window, browse to and select the file, give it a name (or use the existing file name), and click Upload File.

Alternatively, you can copy the unique e-mail address Google Docs generated for you under E-mail Your Documents and Files, open your e-mail program, paste the address in the To: field, and add any other recipients you want to send the file to. The file will be attached to the message automatically.

Google Docs limits your HTML and text files (including Word's .doc and .rtf) to 500KB, presentations to 10MB from your computer, and 2MB from a Web site (500KB as e-mail attachments), and spreadsheets to 1MB (spreadsheets can't be uploaded as e-mail attachments).

I'll keep looking for a way to add Google Docs to my right-click menu (either via the Open With or Send To submenus, or directly on the context menu), and when I find it, I'll let you know.

Tomorrow: remove unwanted items from your Send To menu.

Microsoft has already made its case for consumer adoption of Vista. Now, it's aiming its PR offensive at business customers.

The company on Wednesday released a white paper paper targeted at the many businesses that have chosen to stick with Windows XP instead of moving to Vista. Microsoft argues that Vista is more secure, reliable, and can save companies money when it comes to management and deployment.

"We have tried to close gaps for consumers, and we're doing the same for enterprises," Mike Nash, vice president of Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft, told CNET News.com.

Why should businesses deploy now? Nash says the release of Vista Service Pack 1 has improved Windows security, improved driver support, and minimized application compatibility issues, for starters.

Compared with Windows XP, Vista has had fewer vulnerabilities (45 for Vista versus 56 for XP); fewer critical vulnerabilities (17 as opposed to 35); and 60 percent fewer malicious software infections than XP SP2, Nash said.

Microsoft's Mike Nash

(Credit: Microsoft)

The big bonus for companies may come in cost savings versus XP when it comes to deployment and management of Vista across multiple machines, Nash said.

Tom Norton, the worldwide Microsoft services practice lead for Hewlett-Packard, said that a majority of HP's top 500 customers globally "are looking at this (Vista) as a way to save money on support of client environments."

As for application compatibility, the move from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 was more traumatic than the Windows upgrade, said Norton.

Still, despite the statistics and reassurances, initial impressions tend to last. And the initial Vista experience for many people was less than stellar, a point which Microsoft concedes. Nash says that, yes, the company made a lot of changes with Vista that have taken time for customers to get used to, and initial driver and application support was lacking. But, "there is a huge gap between what is possible with Vista and the perception that is out there," he said.

Nash, who will soon celebrate his 17th anniversary with Microsoft, said that he has seen similar customer trepidation in the past when it comes to new Windows releases. "There has always been a version of Windows that is new that people don't know what to do with; there has always been the incumbent version; and there is always a new version on the horizon. It's not a new phenomenon," Nash said.

This time around, the X factor is Windows 7. Microsoft has said precious little about the planned Windows release, except that it will come in 2009 and will include a touch interface. Still, with companies just getting around to Vista deployment, does it make sense to wait for 7?

"I have heard that with every release (of Windows)," Nash said. "What I will say: back when I worked on security at Microsoft, a lot of customers said they would never deploy XP. Initially they were waiting for better security, then they were waiting for XP SP2. Then they were waiting for Longhorn (the code name used during Vista's development)."

Microsoft's message to customers is that Vista introduced a fair amount of new code in the operating system kernel and in device-level software. Sure, it's been a rough transition from XP to Vista. But Vista and Windows 7 will be largely compatible in those areas, according to the white paper release on Wednesday, meaning that customers will eventually need to bite the bullet and make the switch.

"There is always some level of evaluation that customers will want to go through. Five minutes for some; 12 to 18 months for others. The question is: what is the right time for you as a customer?" Nash said.

For whatever reason, the last time I booted my Vista laptop the network icon was missing from its usual spot next to the clock in the system tray.

I right-clicked the Start button, chose Properties, and clicked the Notification Area tab to recheck this option under "System icons," but it was grayed out.

I found the solution on Colin Cochrane's blog. Here are the steps in a nutshell:

Back up the Registry by creating a restore point.
Press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Navigate to and select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify.
Delete both IconStreams and PastIconStream in the right pane.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select Start Task Manager.
Select the Processes tab, choose explorer.exe, and click End Process.
Choose the Applications tab, click New Task, enter explorer.exe in the text box, and press Enter.

Your icons should reappear.

Return missing icons to Vista's system tray by editing the Registry, stopping explorer.exe, and restarting the process via Task Manager.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Another option for taskbar problems is the free Taskbar Repair Tool Plus, which I found on Kelly Theriot's Kelly's Korner.

Tomorrow: the best OpenOffice.org templates and clipart.

As has been widely reported (for example, by EDN Magazine and both Brooke Crothers and Dan Ackerman here at CNET), Intel has delayed the first customer shipments (FCS) of its "Montevina" chipsets, part of the new Centrino 2 platform.

The delays are pretty short, however... a matter of just a few weeks.

Intel attributes the delays to two independent problems: one with FCC certification of the 802.11n WiFi feature in the chips (just "paperwork," Intel says), and one with the integrated graphics engines in some models.

Intel's probably right about the WiFi certification problem. I've been through the FCC certification process (for electromagnetic interference (EMI), at least); there sure is a lot of paperwork involved.

For the graphics problem, I see a couple of possible explanations.

Intel could have discovered a design flaw in the first production units severe enough to prevent them from being shipped, which would have caused a substantial delay while a new run of production units was completed. (See my earlier blog post, "Design flaws, defects, and faults", for an explanation of how design flaws are related to product defects and faults.) This delay would have been largely hidden by the usual rounds of testing, but perhaps it just used up a little more time than the slack that was available in the schedule.

Or perhaps there was a design or manufacturing flaw that didn't require trashing the first production run, but which did require some additional testing and qualification to reject specific problematic parts. This could be caused by slower or hotter operation than expected, for example. Such a problem would cause a shorter delay-- just the extra testing time. A statement from Intel in the Crothers post referring to "re-screening" suggests this is the situation here, although potentially that statement could also describe testing a second production run to ensure the problem has been solved.

I find it interesting that this problem is related to Intel's new graphics engine, which is certainly the most important element of the new chipset. Intel's previous integrated graphics products have been criticized for not really being up to the challenges of running Windows Vista, including by Microsoft itself, but due to pressure from Intel, Microsoft certified these chips as "Vista Capable." That's technically true-- I've used integrated-graphics platforms under Vista myself-- but the resulting shortfalls in performance and features probably discouraged many new Vista users.

Graphics engines are very complicated, and getting more complicated every year. Intel started out well enough in the graphics business when it worked with Real3D (now defunct) to develop the Intel740, a discrete graphics chip, but 18 months later it found itself already 18 months behind ATI and NVIDIA, and fell back to selling only integrated-graphics chipsets, where the graphics component is worth only a few dollars in incremental revenue.

Intel plans to get back into the market for discrete graphics chips in 2009 or (more likely) 2010 with "Larrabee", a multi-core CPU in which some cores are optimized for graphics processing. I think Larrabee will turn out to be a technical disaster, but Intel has leveraged its market domination to turn previous technical disasters into financial windfalls. Think of the Pentium 4's "Hyper-Pipelined" design, for example, which was too hot and too inefficient, ultimately forcing Intel to bring its predecessor, the P6 design, back from the grave several years later. Intel's current graphics engines, however, are barely worth selling today, and they won't be worth reviving after Larrabee has run its course.

Windows XP's Documents list (a.k.a. "My Recent Documents") and Vista's Recent Items are useful Start menu shortcuts that I'm always forgetting about.

Yesterday I described how to change the number of recently opened files that appear in Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007. But it's even quicker to reopen a file you've worked on recently and its application with a single click of the file's shortcut on the Start menu.

If you don't see My Recent Documents on XP's Start menu, right-click the Start button and choose Properties. Click Customize > Advanced, select "List my most recently opened documents" under "Recent documents," and click OK twice. To show Recent Items on the Start menu in Vista, right-click the Start button, choose Properties, click the Start Menu tab, select "Store and display a list of recently opened files," and click OK.

Show Windows Vista's Recent Items on the Start menu by checking this option in Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.

(Credit: Microsoft)

To clear the list in XP, return to the Start Menu Advanced Properties dialog box, choose Clear List, and click OK twice. Do the same in Vista by right-clicking Recent Items on the Start menu and choosing Clear Recent Items List.

If you would prefer not to have Windows keep a record of your recently opened files, or you'd like to change the number of entries on this menu, you can do so by editing the Registry. Before you begin, back up the Registry by using System Restore to create a restore point.

With your Registry backup in place, press the Windows key (Vista) or click Start > Run (XP), type regedit, and press Enter. In XP, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer. In Vista, the key you want to select is HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer.

In both versions, double-click NoRecentDocsHistory. If no such key exists, right-click in the right pane, select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, and name the key NoRecentDocsHistory.

In the Value Data field, enter 1. When you restart Windows, your recent documents list will be history.

To change the number of files listed on this menu, double-click MaxRecentDocs in the same pane--or if there's no such key, right-click, select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, name the new key MaxRecentDocs, and double-click it. Enter the number of documents you want to show in the Value Data field, and click OK.

Tomorrow: customizing the history settings in Internet Explorer and Firefox.