RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

The Help Desk by Richard Frisch

Apple gets in Microsoft’s face
Apple began the “Get a Mac” advertising campaign in 2006. The US versions of Apples ads begin with the hip looking guy saying, “Hello, I’m a Mac.” The frumpy looking John Hodgman responds, “And I’m a PC.” The campaign continues today. The ads are entertaining. They have helped improve the public perception of Macs as an alternative to Windows PCs.

The ads distort reality, as most advertising does. Apple overstates their products’ advantages. They ignore their own deficiencies. Apple misstates or exaggerates Windows failings. Apple says that Macs are simpler and easier to use. Apple states that Windows is both buggy and insecure.

Microsoft ignored these attacks until 2008. I suspect they thought since Windows represents over 90% of the personal computer market that they would not benefit by endorsing Macs as the competition. Macs market share increased markedly during this period. US sales for Mac notebooks approached a 20% share in the second half of 2008.

Microsoft responds
Microsoft responded first with two strange ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. These were followed with the “I’m a PC” campaign featuring very young kids using PCs for photography and videos. The UK versions are particularly appealing. Recently, Microsoft has turned up the heat with their “Laptop Hunters” ad series and a separate “Apple Tax” campaign. Microsoft suggests that Macs are over-priced and only for “cool” non-productive people.

Apple counters (or more lies and half-truths)
Apple responded with four commercials about how buggy and insecure Windows is. This is a case of the pot calling the kettle buggy and insecure. Macs freeze, “blue screen”, act oddly, and break just like Windows PCs. The term “the spinning beach ball of death” was invented to describe a frozen Mac application. Many Windows PCs can be bought with biometric security devices like built-in fingerprint readers. These devices are not available on Macs. Furthermore, the Mac OS X operating system is less secure than Vista or Windows 7, much less secure. I can break into a password protected Mac within about 10 minutes without need for any special tools. I need a lot more time and cracking tools to break into a Vista or Windows 7 machine. Yes, malware infects Windows machines. That is due to its 90%+ market share, a much more attractive pot of money to the bad guys. Macs are not immune to malware. They just are not of interest yet to the crooks who write today’s malware.

Why this advertising doesn’t matter
There are things to like about both Windows and Macs. There are things to dislike about both Macs and Windows PCs. Mostly, we can ignore these items and use the machines regardless of their operating system.

Humans are tool users, more so than any other species in the animal kingdom. A carpenter doesn’t use a saw to hammer in a nail because the saw is shiny and new. He uses a hammer because it is the correct tool for pounding in nails. Sometimes, we can use a flat-head screwdriver to screw in a Phillips-head screw. The appropriate size Phillips-head screwdriver always works better.

This same dictum, “The right tool for the job,” should be applied to computing tasks. If you primarily use your computer for financial tasks, get a Windows PC. Windows financial software is far superior to what runs on OS X. If you want to play games, you also want a Windows PC. If you are a photographer or a videographer a Mac may be a better choice. If you only want to surf the web and write email it does not matter. A Linux computer will work just as well as Windows or Mac computers.

As more and more of our computing becomes browser-centric and Internet-cloud dependent the operating system we use will become less important. I’m not a Mac. And I’m not a PC. I am a human, no operating system necessary.

Okay, the application’s name could be better, but the application is a neat drawing and image editing tool.

It works with all modern versions of Windows (2000 to 7). RealWorld Paint.COM can use most Adobe Photoshop plug-ins. And its free.

Get your copy here.

Microsoft has released an updated version of the Office Compatibility Pack. The Pack allows users of Office versions 2003 or XP (AKA 2002) to open, edit and save files in the Office 2007 file formats. This applies to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 

You can download and install the software here.

RHFtech is a Microsoft Partner.

We live in our browsers today. Well, I do. Sometimes we close a tab and wish we hadn’t.

Here are keyboard and mouse shortcuts to reopen a closed tab for popular browsers. Sorry Safari fans, no shortcuts.

Notes:
1. Macs change Ctrl key to the Command   key.
2. Right click action should be with mouse positioned over the browser’s tab bar area.

Technology changes, always.
Frisch’s third law

Cable and satellite TV began to replace broadcast television over 30 years ago. Internet video will replace cable and satellite TV, soon and in much less time.

What is a cable company president to do?
If I ran the cable company, I would make a lot more money than I do. I would also be thinking, “How do I shift from the historical value-added content model to the utility-pipe model of the future, without having my revenue and profits sharply decline?”

Cable has two advantages that are not eroded by changes in content distribution. They have very fat pipes and typically only one or two competitors for their customers.

Cable companies make money from subscriber fees for TV, equipment rental fees, Internet service and telephone service. They may be paid carriage fees by some cable channels. They also sell advertising on some cable channels. The latter two revenue streams are under attack as content rapidly moves to the Internet.

Have you ever watched a show like CSI or The Office on the Internet? You can if you have broadband. Cable gets no income from this type of content. Advertising dollars go directly to the content producers and there is no way for the cable company to insert their own advertising. Pay-video on the Internet will happen, just as HBO came to cable in the 1970s. Viewers will shift their video dollars from premium cable channels to premium video websites. Traditional TV viewers will decline as Internet video-on-demand (VOD) increases. Cable networks, like TNT, Fox News, and A&E, are likely to wither and die as viewers move elsewhere. The current economic climate accelerates this trend.

This leaves subscriber fees as the primary revenue, perhaps the sole source in the future. Most cable companies offer three services for which they charge: cable TV, Internet hosting, and telephone service. Historically, the majority of their subscriber revenue is from cable TV. Over the last decade, Internet hosting and telephone services have grown to be perhaps half the monthly bill. Yet landline telephones, whether old-style or VoIP are in decline.

Is TV programming in the toilet?
The value of traditional TV series content is eroding. Programs on cable TV seem to be reruns of reruns and old movies, except for sports and reality shows. In 1956, a free broadcast television series had 39 original episodes. Today most TV series produce about half that number. A premium channel, like HBO, often airs shows with as little as six episodes per year, and the show may only last one or two seasons. Further devaluing the series content are lengthy hiatuses, such as Lost or 24 recently had. The cost for less-and-less new content on cable keeps going up.

Why do we keep paying or has the future arrived?
There is a lot of chatter on blogs and forums about people canceling their cable TV subscriptions, going Internet-only. They watch sites such as CBS.com or Hulu.com. They subscribe to Netflix and use its streaming VOD service. They buy shows from Amazon’s VOD or Apple’s iTunes stores. And they save money.

I have a computer hooked to my HDTV specifically for these things. I use it more and more frequently. I really do not need my cable box or the service. What I do need is unlimited broadband.

Money talks, or is it greed?
Cable companies have figured this out and many are now capping your monthly bandwidth in order to forestall this shift. Time Warner Cable has been the most aggressive. They announced that they would provide unlimited Internet service for $150/month. Their CEO is not crazy but his rollout is ham-handed at best. Congress is considering legislation to outlaw caps. Someday soon, the cable companies may have no other revenue source.

We do not need cable companies for TV or telephone. We can employ our internet connection for telephone, using services such as Skype, Vonage or MagicJack, augmented by a cell phone. Google Voice, a reconfigured and rebranded GrandCentral, points the way toward future communications services. It does not require your cable company.

Figuring out how to transition from cable’s multi-service, premium-pricing model to being a utility provider, like an electric company, is a difficult thing. They will have to change their revenue model. They have little competition or regulation so their solution will be to gouge their customers, us. And they will get away with it.

My very first blog post, The Curse of the New Computer, written four years ago, recounts my experience replacing a failed computer. I cursed Gates to an eternity of installing Microsoft software. Surely, no one who had experienced the frustrations of what Microsoft wrought and ran the company would allow it to continue. I was wrong.

Gates knew firsthand how bad the end user experience was when dealing with Microsoft products. (Smoking gun memo below.) Apparently, he did nothing to fix it.

Can you imagine Steve Jobs putting up with this? Why do we?

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM

To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)

Subject: Windows Usability degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!)

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download. In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker? So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff. This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg. So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished. Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state. So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is. At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing. So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess. Moviemaker is just not there at all. So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself. I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed. I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my pro­grams list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experi­ences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

This memorandum was reproduced from the book After The Software Wars by Keith Curtis.

Gmail added a new feature, Inserting images, to its Labs, a place for testing out ideas. You can now place images into your email rather than attaching them. You first need to enable this feature in your Gmail or Google for Apps mail settings..

1. Click on the Settings link in the Gmail menu, along the upper right of the web page.
2. Next click on the Labs link.
3. Scroll down close to the bottom of the web page to locate the Inserting Images feature.
4. Click on the Enable radio button.
5. Click on the Save Changes button.

You can now embed images in your emails.

A new control for images has been added to your Compose Mail toolbar.

You can click on the control to add images from your computer or from a web address (URL).

DropBox is a file service that lets you keep files synchronized effortlessly on multiple computers, locally or remotely.

It works extremely well. It works with Windows, Macs and Linux operating systems. You can even access your files from a remote computer by signing into your account via a web browser, such as Internet Explorer, and downloading the files.

DropBox offers a free account with 2GB of storage and a paid account, $99/year or $9.99/month, with 50GB of storage.

I highly recommend it. If you want to check it out click here.

Full disclosure: I will get additional space added to my free account for referrals.

• Windows versions – XP, 2002, 2003, 2007
• Mac versions – 2004, 2008

Word can display both horizontal and vertical rulers that let you set indents, margins and tabs. They help you visualize where you are on the page. Did you know there is hidden method to precisely change indents, margins and tabs with your mouse?

Hold down the Alt key and select and drag the ruler element  with your mouse. The ruler will now show information in hundredths-of-an-inch increments as you drag the control left or right on the horizontal ruler, and up or down on the vertical ruler.

Note: You need to be in the Print Layout view to see the rulers. Furthermore, you need to have rulers turned on to use this tip.

Ever increasing mobility is a consistent trend in technology. Mobile devices all rely on rechargeable batteries for their wireless/cordless use. Cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, and camcorders are some of the more popular electronic devices we carry around today. At home and in the office, we use remote controls, wireless keyboards, wireless mice, wireless game controllers and cordless phones. The Achilles heel of all these devices is their power systems. Today’s batteries have many issues. What if there were better ways of storing electrical energy? Would that positively affect Homo sapiens technologis?

Rechargeable batteries seem to take almost as long to charge as to discharge. Over time, these batteries lose their capacity to store energy. Eventually they have to be replaced. Many batteries contain toxic chemicals and should not be thrown out at the end of their lives but properly recycled. 

Some of these devices have sealed batteries that are not user-replaceable. This idea is championed by Apple with its iPhones, iPods and with some of its portable computers. Might Apple seal their batteries into the devices in order to increase profits by incenting buyers to replace the entire device when the battery fails? Apple makes more money from selling a new iPhone then from selling a replacement battery.

Further compounding this inconvenience is the plethora of chargers and cables that come with these devices. It is the electrical version of the Tower of Babel. Why is this necessary? Why must every generation of mobile device and each model require a different charger and cable? Fortunately, many of the gadget manufactures are focusing on mini-USB connectors, but not Apple.

Help is on the way on the battery front. Two MIT researchers have developed an enhanced form of the lithium ion battery. It charges in about 1/20th of the time for existing batteries. The revised form of the lithium ion also has a much longer life span than existing batteries. This allows for somewhat smaller and lighter batteries than are used today. Predictions are that these batteries will be incorporated into new devices as soon as two years from today.

Ultracapacitors also hold promise for the near future. These are capacitors that exhibit the positive characteristics of both batteries and capacitors. They can charge almost instantaneously, hold their charge for exceptionally long periods, and last through a much greater number of charge/discharge cycles than rechargeable batteries. The best rechargeable battery has at most 1,000 charge cycles. Most portable device and computer batteries last 300 cycles or less. My MacBook Pro’s original battery lasted only 93 cycles. An ultracapacitor can go through millions of cycles. They can also store incredible amounts of energy when charged. Many think that they will replace the batteries in electric vehicles cars in the near future. This could create a revolution in the transportation business. However, first we will need charging stations to substitute for gasoline stations.

Hybrid cars use a combination of internal combustion engines and electric motors to power the vehicles. An alternative method would be to combine a micro-turbine engine with either the above-mentioned new lithium ion batteries or ultracapacitors. The micro-turbine would not be used to power the vehicle but rather to recharge the battery or ultracapacitor. Micro-turbines are small engines, with few moving parts that are more energy efficient than internal combustion motors. They can be powered by a variety of fuels, such as propane, natural gas, diesel, kerosene or biogas. They are generally more pollution-free than internal combustion engines. These vehicles would have a tank for carrying fuel, perhaps diesel. The micro-turbine would run automatically when needed to recharge the battery. I hope someone brings this to market as it has the promise of revolutionizing transportation.