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.
Microsoft on Thursday re-released a security patch from earlier this month that was supposed to fix a Bluetooth stack problem that could allow an attacker to take complete control of a computer running Windows XP.
Security patch MS08-030 was originally released June 10. The new version of the update is now available for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 customers.
"After we released MS08-030 we learned that the security updates for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 might not have been fully protecting against the issues discussed in that bulletin," Christopher Budd, security response communications lead for Microsoft, explained in a blog entry. "As soon as we learned of that possibility, we mobilized our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP) to investigate the issue."
"Our investigation found that while the other security updates were providing protections for the issues discussed in the bulletin, the Windows XP SP2 and SP3 updates were not," he added.
The company is investigating the situation and believes there may have been two separate "human issues" involved," Budd wrote, without elaborating.
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.
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.
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.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says sales of Windows Vista have been "rapid", with more than 140 million copies sold worldwide.
Gates, speaking in Tokyo, said the figure represented "a very rapid sales rate," according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.
Despite the sales figures, Microsoft has admitted to struggling with the public's perception of Vista. Windows XP, Vista's 7-year-old predecessor, is still popular among both businesses and consumers.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates speaks at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Microsoft already extended the deadline for ending XP sales to large computer makers one time, allowing sales through June 30, as opposed to ending them this past January. The software maker also granted a more narrow extension, allowing XP to be used on ultra-low-cost computers through 2010.
More recently, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company might reconsider its decision to stop selling XP next month.
While Microsoft ponders yet another stay of execution for Windows XP, it's readying a new version of Windows, being developed under the ."
Gates, speaking in Miami last month, seemed to indicate that Windows 7 could come earlier than expected, perhaps within the next year, putting far ahead of the anticipated development schedule.
It seems that Michael Dell is breathing new life into his company.
A year ago, Dell was brave enough to backtrack on its Vista-only policy for consumer machines (Dell brings back XP on home systems). It also showed some independence from Microsoft by offering Linux to consumers. And again, Dell is innovating.
Fact 1: As of June 30, large computer manufacturers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard can no longer offer Windows XP preinstalled on new computers, though Microsoft has said it would consider re-evaluating the deadline if there's enough customer demand.
Fact 2: Anyone who buys a copy of either the Business or Ultimate versions of Vista is entitled to also get Windows XP Professional.* Each computer manufacturer decides whether, or how, to implement this.
Until now, consumers who exercised their right to get XP Professional when they purchased Vista got a computer with Vista preinstalled and an XP image CD in the box (an image CD is very different from a retail Windows CD).
Dell's innovation? It will do the XP image installation for you. It may not sound like much, but the net result is that the computer leaves the factory with Windows XP Professional on it, rather than Vista.
Deadline? We don't need no stinkin' deadline.
Microsoft can't be happy about this, though a cynic would note that even though Dell computers leave the factory with XP on them, Microsoft can tally it as a sale for Vista.
It's an interesting power play between the two companies. Will other companies follow Dell or toe the Microsoft line?
According to Randy Copeland, president and CEO of Velocity Micro, after the June 30 deadline, all of its computers will ship with Vista preinstalled. The company will offer the XP Professional "downgrade" in the traditional way, by including an XP image CD in the box. Interestingly, each XP image CD will be mated to one, and only one, computer.
Dell has a Web page devoted to its new policy, Windows XP Availability, which notes that the last day to buy a computer with Windows XP preinstalled under the current rules is June 18. Afterward:
When selecting your operating system, you will see an option called "Genuine Windows® Vista Business BONUS" and "Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate BONUS." With these options, you may...have Dell factory install Windows XP Professional. You will also receive a backup media disc for Windows XP Professional, as well as the media for Windows Vista.
In other words, Dell provides optical discs for both XP and Vista, so you can change over at any time. This is not like Apple's Boot Camp, however; the computer can have only one operating installed on the hard disk at a time. But Dell provides technical support for both XP and Vista. Whether its tech support is worthwhile is another matter.
According to Infoworld, Dell will offer this new "buy Vista, get XP Pro preinstalled" service on some Latitude, OptiPlex, and Precision systems for free. It will also offer it on some Vostro and XPS systems for a small fee.
For more about getting Windows XP after the June 30 deadline, see my previous posting, Who's selling Windows XP in July?
*NOTE: Microsoft allows a "downgrade" only to XP Professional, not to the Home or Media Center editions. According to InfoWorld, large organizations with site licenses can "downgrade" from any version of Vista.
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
The death of Windows XP may have been greatly exaggerated.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the company could re-evaluate its plans to phase out Windows XP by June 30, if customers demand that it stick around. So far, they have not.
"XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," Ballmer said during a Thursday news conference in Belgium, according to Reuters.
Big-name computer makers are still scheduled to have to stop selling models with Windows XP installed by the end of June. Mainstream technical support will continue to be available for Windows XP through April 2009, and more limited support will continue through April 2014.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Windows XP's impending demise: "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter."
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)Microsoft does plan to continue selling Windows XP for a limited class of PCs it calls "ultralow-cost PCs." It's a category that covers machines with slower processors, smaller screens and, in many cases, flash memory, rather than a traditional hard drive, for storage.
Ballmer said most consumers are choosing to buy the current version of Windows, Vista. Many acquire Vista by default, however, since most new PCs ship with the operating system. Businesses have been slower to catch on, as many have clung to Windows XP and older versions of Windows.
While Microsoft ponders yet another stay of execution for Windows XP, it's readying a new version of Windows, being developed under the code name "Windows 7."
Earlier this month, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates indicated that Windows 7 could come within the next year--in some form, possibly a developer-oriented version--far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.
Ballmer on Thursday also reiterated Microsoft's intention of appealing directly to Yahoo shareholders, if the company rejects Microsoft's offer of $43.6 billion for the company.
"We've sent them a letter that says, 'it's a good price; please let us know. If you don't let us know, maybe your shareholders will think it's a good price,'" Reuters reported.
The chairman and founder of the One Laptop Per Child initiative said in an interview Tuesday that the XO laptop may switch from using Linux to eventually running Windows XP, according to several reports.
Windows XP could soon be available on the XO.
(Credit: OLPC)In an interview with the Associated Press following the departure of the OLPC project's president, Nicholas Negroponte said the open-source Sugar software, developed expressly for the XO, could run on top of XP. Negroponte cited weaknesses in the XO's current open-source operating system (right now the XO can't support the latest versions of Flash animation) as well as the Linux community itself (for being too "fundamentalist") as the reasons for a possible future shift.
He said the laptop's open-source software had actually scared away potential adopters.
An XP-only version of the XO could come soon enough. In December Microsoft said it would begin running limited tests in January to see if the operating system would be a good fit for the low-cost device. At the time, Microsoft said it could have XP running on the XO by the second half of the year.
