While Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP will be supported until July 2010, the writing on the wall is fairly clear, and Microsoft is encouraging users to upgrade to IE 7 or IE 8. Additionally, we have been recommending alternative browsers for years. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Desktop Software’ Category
Microsoft: “Please Upgrade from Internet Explorer 6.”
Monday, December 21st, 2009Software Review: Thunderbird 3
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009After a long period of apparent stagnation, Mozilla Messaging, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, has released the long-awaited Thunderbird 3 – its free, open-source email client. Thunderbird has been my favorite email client for several years now, as it does everything that Outlook Express or Windows Mail does (as far as I am concerned) and has a better track record for security, runs faster, and works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. (more…)
Likewise + Ubuntu offers a Quick, Cheap, Easy, Secure Email, Web Browsing, Word Processing Solution
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009Readers of my personal blog or listeners to the Fresh Ubuntu Podcast will know that I have long been a proponent of Linux as an alternative to Windows, and now, more than ever, this should be a reality at your organization. What’s changed? Last year, Ubuntu, the leading desktop Linux distribution today, addded a package called Likewise-Open, from Likewise Software, Inc., to their software repositories. This means that, with just a few clicks, it is possible to make a Linux desktop computer log in to your existing Windows Active Directory system, without having to make separate user accounts for it. (more…)
Software Review: Moneydance (Including a Rant Against Quicken)
Friday, August 14th, 2009I recently started the process of converting my personal finances from Quicken to Moneydance. I have been using Quicken for at least ten years, not because I like the program, it’s just that it’s “what I’ve always used.” I decided it was time to apply some of my own consulting practices and take a look at my personal finance management situation as if I was a client, and ask myself “is this the best solution for my problem?” The answer was a resounding “no.”
Software Review: Rubber Ducky System Monitor
Saturday, August 1st, 2009Today I am reviewing a tiny, free, handy piece of software for end-users: Rubber Ducky System Monitor by MimarSinan International. The program is a tiny application which gives even a novice user a simple, easy to read display which tells them how busy their system is and identify potential problems. (more…)
FOG – A Free Computer Cloning Solution
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Symantec Ghost is a useful application for what’s known as “imaging” or “cloning” computers. It allows you to copy a single computer’s hard drive contents to multiple machines at once so you have a base Windows install that’s exactly the same on all of the machines. The only difference is the uniquely identifying information about the machines (computer name, Hardware address, etc.).
Recently one of our client’s Ghost subscriptions came up for renewal. While Ghost does what it’s designed to do well enough, we were wondering what other options there were out there in the world. Enter FOG. (more…)
Microsoft Office 2007 Document Compatibility
Friday, June 19th, 2009If you’ve purchased Microsoft Office recently, you got version 2007 (unless you’re on a Macintosh). Office 2007 represents a “great leap forward” according to some (in Microsoft marketing), but from my perspective, it’s a lot of change, and a lot higher system requirements for not a lot of new, useful features.
One of the “feature” of Office 2007 is the new document format. Like previous versions of office, this latest version uses a format that older versions cannot read. This makes perfect sense on two levels. The file format was made after the older versions were released, so they didn’t know about it, so they can’t read it. Also, from a sales perspective, it makes sense because if Alice runs Office 2007 and Bob runs Office 2003, Bob must then upgrade to Office 2007 to read Alice’s documents.
Or must Bob? (more…)
You Can Never Have Too Much Memory
Friday, June 12th, 2009This will be a short post on the virtues of keeping your computer hardware current. Even today, I still see older computers which would be perfectly capable of doing their job, but because of a lack of enough memory, they grind along at a glacial pace, causing significant employee productivity loss.
How can you tell if your machine could benefit from a memory upgrade? First off, if you hear your computer’s hard drive running hard, or see the hard drive indicator light on a lot, particularly if you have multiple applications running, that’s a good sign. Another is to use the Task Manager, a utility included with all versions of Windows, to see how much memory your computer is using. The best time to do this is to during the middle of your work day, when you have the most applications running. In Windows, simply press Ctrl-Shift-Esc and you should see something like the image to the right. Pay attention to the “Available” number under “Physical Memory.” If this number is lower than, say, 256,000, your machine could probably benefit from a memory upgrade.
Techspeak alert! Note that if you have a standard, 32-bit version of Windows (2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, or 7), the maximum memory that your system can use is 4GB, minus the amount of memory used by your video card. So if you have a fancy video card for gaming or CAD or some other applicaiton which requires a high-end card, however much memory is on that card counts against the total amount in your system. If you find that you need more than 4GB of memory in your system, then you need to run a 64-bit version of Windows to use it, otherwise your computer will simply see 4GB as the maximum available, unless your computer supports Address Window Extensions to do some backflips to allow it to see more than 4GB of memory.
Using Microsoft Outlook to Access Other Users’ Mailboxes
Friday, June 12th, 2009If you have a Microsoft Exchange server at your business, Microsoft Outlook has the ability to access more than one mailbox at a time. This is a useful feature if multiple users need to share access to the same email address, or if someone needs to cover another person’s email (when an auto-responder won’t suffice) while on vacation. (more…)
So, How Do I Drop Those Administrative Rights, Anyway?
Friday, May 22nd, 2009If you’ve read my previous post on why administrative rights over your computer are a bad thing and you are motivated to do something about it, you might ask “just how do I go about dropping these rights to make my system more stable and less prone to malware?” (more…)