RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

This is about Windows Explorer not Internet Explorer.

The new Windows Explorer in Windows 7 is one of my favorite things about Windows 7. Microsoft added some nice enhancements over the Vista version.  And Vista’s Windows Explorer was quite different, and better, than Windows Explorer in XP.

The two most obvious changes in Vista from XP were the changes to the left-side panel and the addition of the breadcrumb address bar. The breadcrumb address bar is a webpage-like navigation tool. It is a big improvement over the older XP address bar. The left side panel was changed in Vista into a combination of Favorites and directory trees for your computer and network. The Favorites area is shortcuts that you can easily add to using drag-and-drop. 

Windows 7 adds Libraries and Homegroup to the Vista-style left side panel. It also adds the Arrange by: feature to the Libraries view.  The View option—icons, lists, details, etc.— is now an icon called More options and is located on the right side of the Windows Explorer toolbar next to the Preview Pane   icon, which is a toggle switch for Preview pane on or off.

The Library Arrange by: choices vary with the type of library.

Documents	Music	Pictures	Videos

If you spend a few minutes playing with and learning about Windows 7 Windows Explorer you are likely to see what a nice utility it has become.

We were having a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat. Our guests mentioned that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC had a great Tim Burton show. They remarked on his wonderful drawings and figures. I mentioned that Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of my favorite movies. They said they had never seen it. I volunteered that I had the DVD and we could watch it after dinner.

I searched for the DVD while everyone else ate dessert. I could not find it. I checked the spreadsheet that I used to maintain my catalog when I bought optical media—CDs and DVDs. It turned out that although we had owned the VHS tape of The Nightmare Before Christmas, I never bought the DVD version. I had confused the soundtrack CD, which I have, with the DVD.

I thought, “No problem. We will rent it from Amazon Video on Demand and I will play it for the family and guests on the home theater PC (HTPC) hooked up to the home theater system.” Unfortunately, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Disney title and not available either to rent or buy as a download from Amazon.

My next step was to start iTunes on my main computer and see if the iTunes Store had it. The iTunes store does not rent movies. They sell them. The Nightmare Before Christmas was available for $14.99 plus tax. I thought it’s a holiday. We have guests. Why not?

Why not is because I forgot what a torture it is using iTunes and the iTunes store. I turned on the HTPC and started iTunes. As always, there was a newer version of iTunes that they wanted me to download. I had version 7 installed but iTunes 9.02 or something like that is the current version. So I thought why not update?

Why not is because it took me 20 minutes to download the 90MB file. Why not is because it took another 20 minutes to install iTunes and all the attendant crap software that Apple shoves down the Internet pipes with it. I was reasonably patient.

So after 40 minutes I finally got to launch iTunes. But lo, I couldn’t order the movie yet because iTunes had to update the iTunes library first! That took another 15 minutes. After that it wanted to update the album artwork. I had enough (I thought) and cancelled that activity, because I could.

So now iTunes was running. I went to the iTunes store and searched for the “nightmare before” and found music and the movie. I went to purchase the movie.

I could not. iTunes was not authorized on this computer and I had reached my 5 computer iTunes authorization limit. Damn Apple! I turned on my 15” Apple MacBook Pro and deauthorized it. I then went back to the HTPC and authorized it.

Now I was ready to purchase the movie. NOT! The American Express card number registered with the iTunes store was out-of-date. So I had to go get my card and update the information.

Finally, I was downloading the movie and I thought, “We’ll be watching this soon.” I was wrong. It took Apple 35 minutes to download a 898MB file. Unlike Amazon, Apple requires that the whole file be downloaded before you can begin watching and their servers run at a small fraction of the speed of Amazon’s. Amazon would have been done in a third of the time or less.

So over 2 hours later and after a lot of technology induced anger and frustration we finally got to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. Of course Apple had just treated me to their technological version of a nightmare before Christmas.

So I am sending a big bah humbug to Apple and hoping Santa puts coal in Steve Job’s Christmas stocking.

The Windows key is a special key that appears on a Windows keyboard. It has the Microsoft flag logo on it and may also have the word Start. A variation of it exists for the Mac keyboard. Here it is known as the Command key or the Apple key and sports a Saint John’s Arms symbol . Do you know what these keys do and when to use them?

Some of us are accomplished typists and use the standard keys without looking or thinking about them. Others cannot type and instead hunt and peck. Most of us are somewhere in between. You are probably familiar with the Control (AKA Ctrl or ctrl) and Alternate (AKA Alt, alt or option) keys and may know how and when to use them. The Escape key (AKA Esc or esc) sits on the upper left of the keyboard. Pressing Esc often terminates a running process or closes a window. Windows keyboards also have a Property key, located to the right of the Space bar, which when pressed usually calls up a context menu, performing a function similar to a right mouse button click.

The Alt and Ctrl keys appear on all computer keyboards. They commonly appear twice, on the left and right sides of the Space bar. They perform similar functions in Windows and Mac OSX operating systems, providing additional functionality when pressed simultaneously with other keys. For example, Ctrl+C in Windows copies highlighted content into a system buffer, while Ctrl+V pastes it. Ctrl+P calls the printer dialog in many applications. (Mac users replace the Ctrl key with the Command key to activate these features, e.g., Cmd+P calls the print dialog on a Mac.)

My first memory of using the Ctrl key was on a time-sharing system in the early 1970s. The terminals I worked on used paper rather than a monitor to display input and output. We loaded these terminals with continuous fan-folded paper that came in cartons. We would rip the top off the carton and then load the beginning of the paper into the terminal. We used a lot of paper. Sometimes we needed to kill instructions to the computer, perhaps we had typed in a wrong number or the paper was jammed. Ctrl+C would send a stop instruction across the telephone lines to the computer. A few years later when I began using WordStar on a PC Ctrl+C became copy and the kill function had become the unwieldy Ctrl+Alt+Delete. The Mac equivalent is the Command+Option+Esc shortcut.

The Windows key has many shortcuts. I frequently use Windows+E, which launches a Windows Explorer window, Windows+R, which launches a Run… dialog, and Windows+F, which launches a Find or Search dialog. A relatively complete list is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key#Shortcuts. Windows key uses differ between Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. Windows 7 introduced many new Windows key shortcuts.

The Mac Command key is different that the Windows key. It is used more like the Windows Ctrl. Thus, Cmd+C is copy and Cmd+V is paste. My favorite use is Cmd+Space to call up Spotlight, the OS X search utility. A comprehensive list of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts can be found at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343.

I find the Windows and Property keys to be quite useful. They add consistent functionality across Windows versions and applications. The Mac Cmd key seems less well implemented, perhaps because I have used Windows for 24 years but Mac OS X for less than five years. Its function varies by application. The consequent lack of consistency makes it less useful and forces me to use the mouse rather the keyboard.

I have a client, a radiologist, who needs a new home computer. Since he uses this computer when he is on-call it must meet minimum requirements for the medical imaging software and display the images in high resolution on a large monitor so that he can properly read the images.

He sent me his specifications and asked for my thoughts. Here they are:

The nicest reasonably priced, large monitor is bundled with the new 27" iMac. One of these with a 2.8GHz i7 CPU and 8GB of memory (which I believe is more than adequate) costs $2,399 plus tax at Apple. Adding a second Apple display, a 24" Cinema Display costs $899 + tax. Not certain you need the 2nd monitor as a 27" primary monitor is quite large. Also the second monitor does not have to be an Apple.

Firefox is available for all major operating systems, Windows, Mac and Linux. So if Safari doesn’t cut the mustard, I would expect that Firefox will work. As always, better to test this on a existing Mac, before buying, rather than assume.

We can run XP, Vista, Windows 7 (32-or 64-bit) on a Mac either under the built-in Boot Camp utility (which I do not like because it means rebooting the machine to switch operating system) or in a virtual machine (VM) using VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or VirtualBox. I prefer VMware Fusion over Parallels or VirtualBox. This would entail buying the VM software and a Windows OS and license, and installing the VM manager and then the operating system.

This might be the best of all worlds, great display, good hardware, and your choice of OS depending upon what you want to do. Please note that you will have to maintain two computers, the physical Mac and the virtual Windows, so updates, patches, and backups are times two.

Let me know if you have other questions or would like to discuss this. If you want to go with a desktop computer, and not an all-in-one like the iMac, we could consider the Mac Pro (which gets pricey very fast) or a higher-end Windows 7 64-bit machine with XP Mode. The Windows machine would probably cost $1,000 to $2,000 less than the Mac Pro (depending upon configuration). The advantage of a desktop is that is more serviceable and upgradeable. An iMac is more like a notebook in its construction and consequently harder to service and limited in upgrades, i.e. the video and sound cards/chips are fixed with whatever comes with the computer. Memory and hard drives can be upgraded.

1. Windows 7 Pointers & Mouse Settings for left-handed people http://sl.rhftech.com/zorzh

2. xplorer² (The best Windows Explorer alternative) — Advanced customization http://sl.rhftech.com/hlbkj

3. VMLite – VMLite XP Mode for Windows 7 is ready – http://sl.rhftech.com/vmlite

4. Google Labs – Google Apps shortlinks explained http://sl.rhftech.com/koybo

5. The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need : Codswallop http://sl.rhftech.com/wvxfl

6. Desktop Virtualization Software – A Comparison of Free Virtualization Tools for Windows http://sl.rhftech.com/xlfjk

7. Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog : Best Practices for Outlook 2007 http://sl.rhftech.com/bpwvg

8. iPhone or Droid http://sl.rhftech.com/lsmjl

9. Too little, too late – Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy; hardware support nonexistent – Ars Technica http://sl.rhftech.com/zyeln

10. Kindle for PC Now Available http://sl.rhftech.com/fwuzm

11. Stephen Fry 1 million Twitter followers – the video – http://sl.rhftech.com/xemal

This is the HP followup to one of the All-in-One scanning issues I blogged about in Hewlett Packard All-in-Ones hate operating system upgrades. The customer called HP, spent 90 minutes trying to fix it and then received this email. Their answer is wipe the computer, reinstall the operating system, the applications, the personal configurations and the myriad patches on the hope that will fix the issue with their scanning software not working.

I told my client, “I do not recommend this solution.”

Dear Customer, Case Number xxxxxx1120

Based on the interaction you had with our Engineer  this day 11/11/09, the resolution provided by L2 is to format the computer again, because you may still have waste from the installation of computer software in the previous operating system. We would like to know if you have any feedback. In case the same issue persists or you need additional assistance, please reply to the email address: aiocr@hp.com with the convenient date and timeframe for us to call you back; we would do our best to call you on the requested time, within support hours (7:00 am – 7:00 pm MT, M-F).

In case you need immediate assistance feel free to contact us at 800-334-5144, we would be glad to assist you.

AIO Tech Support

This post could be titled, “Why is Hewlett Packard installation software so awful? Redux.” My original post Why is Hewlett Packard installation software so awful? of May 31st allowed me to vent my then frustration with HP printer/scanner/fax software.

This past week my frustration with HP’s lousy software reached new levels as three different devices—a high-end  HP CM2320 MFP AIO color LaserJet, an Officejet 6480 and and an Officejet 6500—created issues when I upgraded their respective computers to Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Snow Leopard, and Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

In each instance the scanning software that had been working correctly stopped functioning. I have wasted hours trying to resolve these issues without any success. I want to send my bill to HP for my time and effort. Anyone know the address?

The NY Times’ David Pogue’s 2009 ‘Take Back the Beep‘ campaign is trying to get cell phone carriers to eliminate the lengthy messages that precede recording a voice message. My campaign is to change the way we launch applications or find files on our computers. I want you to learn to use the Windows’ built-in Search bar or the Mac’s Spotlight search technology. Once you start using these two similar tools you are unlikely to return to the old way. Sorry Windows XP users this does not apply.

Do you still launch an application from an icon? If you use Windows 7 or Vista do you click on a desktop icon, a Quick Launch toolbar icon, or search through the Start menu’s All Programs listing? If you use a Mac running OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, do you launch programs from an application icon on the Mac Dock, or do you open a Finder window and manually search the Applications folder? Alternatively, do you look through your documents, pictures, or music folders to find a file that you want to edit, view or play?

Spotlight and Windows Search are similar search technologies that provide lightning fast results when we search our computers. They do this by indexing your hard drive ahead of time so that when you want to find Microsoft Word the computer already knows where to find it.

Try it out. You will see what I mean. If you are using Windows 7 or Vista, click on the Start button or press the Windows key. Your computer’s focus is immediately placed in the Search bar. Type "word" and it will probably show you a list that includes Microsoft Word and WordPad. Select one or the other, using the cursor keys, and press the Enter key and the program starts.

Use a Mac? Click the magnifying glass icon on the upper right of the Menu bar or press  Apple key+space and the system focus moves to the Spotlight search bar. Type "word" and it will probably show you a list that includes Microsoft Word as the Top Hit. Press the return key and Microsoft Word starts.

Microsoft Word is a trivial example since most of you have Desktop, Taskbar or Dock shortcuts already set up. Try it with another application or document you use less frequently. Type "char" in the Windows Start menu Search bar and you will see Character Map as the first result. If you use a Mac type "text" in the Spotlight search bar. You will immediately see TextEdit as the Top Hit. I doubt that either of these two utilities reside on your Desktop, Dock or Taskbar.

Your old way of launching applications from icon shortcuts have deficiencies. If you have too many Quick Launch icons in Vista or pin too many applications to the Window 7 Taskbar you end up with visual clutter.

The desktop is a poor place to locate application shortcuts. It is almost always covered by open windows on Window or Mac computers. So you need to move or minimize your open windows in order to see the icon.

The Mac Dock is a horrendous waster of vertical screen space, a precious resource on wide screen monitors. Most people leave the Dock at the default location on the screen bottom. If it were not there you gain 15-20% more useable screen space. You can auto-hide it or move it to the side of the screen or both. But if you start using Spotlight to launch applications you can do away with it altogether. You lose the eye candy but you gain significantly in productivity