On User Notifications in Browsers

One of the designers of Firefox did an interesting post on just how well-designed software should interact with the user.  It's interesting to see how things that I really don't give much thought to in Firefox or Internet Explorer have quite a bit of thought put into them.  It helps explain why Clippy was not the success that Microsoft wanted him (it?) to be.  The discussion of their prototype for a new tab page is neat.  It's pretty neat to see how far Internet browsers have come in the last few years.

Switching Easily Between Desktops on Windows

I found a utility, aptly named Desktops, which allows you to easily switch between desktops on Windows.  So, if you wanted to switch between one Desktop where you had Word set up and another desktop where you had Excel set up, you could do so easily.  It's published by Microsoft, and it looks like it will run on most versions of Windows.

Apple Forcefeeds Software to Users

On the Windows version of iTunes, Apple is, by default, disguising an installation of Safari (their browser) as an "update" to iTunes. It takes advantage of users who are told to install security updates religiously and forces an update on them. Microsoft does not take advantage of security updates to install new software onto people's computers.
See this blog entry for more information.

Apple Quality Control

Compared to Microsoft, Apple has serious quality control problems with their software/system updates. For many of the updates that they release, there are significant problems with them. One firmware upgrade caused my computer to become unbootable, requiring me to hold down a combination of keys on my keyboard to make their computer useful again, if Apple Support knew that trick (which they didn't, they made me send my computer in for service). One of the updates caused my computer's speakers to make popping noises (it wasn't just my computer's speakers, other people had the problem too). Apple resolved this problem with another update. Another update caused people's optical drives to stop working. Apple removed that update. Yet another update causes applications that were not specifically built for Intel-based processors (Rosetta applications) to stop working. I could sympathize with Apple (somewhat) if these were caused by obscure applications. But they're not. Many problems occurred directly with Apple's hardware. (The first three problems I've listed). While Apple may have come out with with Intel-native applications, there are certain applications -- for example, this obscure application called Microsoft Word -- that run on Rosetta. I'd like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but it is now at the point where if I see an update, I wait a week for Apple to iron out the bugs before I install it. For Microsoft updates, on the other hand, I install them instantly on my PC and, knock wood, have not had a problem with them.
Microsoft does not control the hardware that its updates are installed on, and yet still manages to have very few serious problems with their updates. Apple should improve.

Dell Windows Install Disks

I read on this blog that Dell -- one time only -- will give you a copy of the installation disks that came with your computer in case you lost them. I'm not sure if they charge you for the install disks (I don't see a discussion of payment on the initial page for it, and I'm not going to type in my information since I have the install disks already and I'd rather wait until I've lost them before ordering them)
Yet another reason I like Dell.

Surfing in Cupertino

I wanted to come up with a somewhat creative title for this blog entry about Apple Safari entering the Windows market.  

This blogger has much more authority than I do about Safari's market prospects, but my initial thought is that unless it offers something unique, it's going to have a hard time gaining widespread popularity among people other than techie-computer users.  The only thing Safari does is surf the web, and unless it has a "killer" feature, I'm not sure what its market prospects are.  Firefox came on the market and gained widespread popularity partially because Microsoft had so many security problems. Firefox has a reputation for being a "safe browser," and I don't think that Safari has that reputation (I don't mean to say Safari is unsafe, I just mean it doesn't have a reputation of being safe).  Unless something disastrous happens with Firefox, people who want a "safe" browser are probably going to install Firefox, not Safari.

I've installed Safari on my Mac, and am typing this blog entry using it.  I wish that Safari gave me the opportunity (Firefox does) to simultaneously have the beta and non-beta versions installed.  

I also wish that it had an option to add a new tab button to the toolbar.

I would install it on my PC, but my PC runs Windows 2000, which Apple apparently has chosen not to support.  It looks like Windows 2000 is beginning to fall by the wayside for Apple.  I don't entirely fault Apple for this.

Microsoft didn't develop IE 7 for Windows 2000 (although they'll continue to provide security updates until 2010).

Microsoft and the Animated Cursor Vulnerability (A PSA)

There is a vulnerability where, if you get an email message (and use Outlook or one of its progeny), or visit a malicious website, you can catch a virus. It's sufficiently serious that Microsoft is planning to go outside their normal security update cycle to release it tomorrow, 3 April. (In order to be stable for businesses, they usually try to release security updates on the second Tuesday of every month). In the past, they have usually pushed the update by 10:00 a.m. prevailing time in the Pacific time zone. I'd imagine that by tomorrow evening, it should be posted and you should be able to download it from their website or using Windows Update.
This is one reason I use Firefox. That and it's an awesome browser.
I'll have a more exciting post tomorrow, probably. It's about EMI and Apple's deal, but I'd like to work on it a bit more.

Booting Windows from a Floppy

My father's computer displayed a blue screen of death on boot-up the other day, and when we tried to boot from the Windows Install CD to troubleshoot, we got another blue screen of death, as discussed on this page on Microsoft's support site. Essentially, despite the fact that you are booting from a CD, Windows Setup still tries to mount (start reading and writing data to) any hard drives that are available. Following Microsoft's instructions, we had to create a set of four floppy disks to boot the computer. Then, we had to tell Windows Setup not to mount the hard drive by editing a configuration file. After doing all of these steps and running chkdsk, we were able to get my father's computer booted again. Fortunately he bought this computer with a floppy drive. And I thought that in the age of compact disc install programs, I would never see this message again.

Amaze your friends and scare your enemies

The quote is from Microsoft's System Internals Team.
Microsoft's System Internals team came out with a really neat screensaver. It simulates a Blue Screen of Death on Windows. I'll just copy and paste the sections on Windows XP and Windows 2000/98 functions (the exclamation points are Microsoft's, not mine).

•
•	On Win2K and Windows 9x it presents the Win2K startup splash screen, complete with rotating progress band and progress control updates!
•	On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 it present the XP/Server 2003 startup splash screen with progress bar!

Here is a link.
Someone at the System Internals Team had too much time on their hands.
If you have Windows XP, then you should have no problem dealing with the zip file, but if you have Windows 2000 or Windows 98, you'll have to download a program to deal with the zip file.

Microsoft Blogs

One blog that I am subscribed to is a blog published by the Mac Office team called Mac Mojo. Blogs that are published by teams at Google tend to read like press releases and are usually not that interesting (with the possible exception of Blogger Buzz, whose team does not seem to be so censored). While I'm sure Microsoft has policies in place for blog posts by its teams, the blogs there seem freer. This post on Mac Mojo, for example, talks about their testing program for Microsoft Excel. Essentially, they have a giant spreadsheet on which they run calculations to make sure that the calculations that Excel returns are the ones that they expect it to return. They run these tests on both older Macs (with PowerPC processors) and newer Macs (with Intel processors). It wouldn't do if all of the PowerPC Macs said that two plus two equaled five. Sometimes the posts on the Mac Mojo blog are technically over my head, but it is much more interesting to read about how they test their products rather than read some blog entry that reads like a press release.
The Microsoft Security Response Center's blog is also pretty interesting.