CHRISdotTODD

It's hard to figure whether the Gates/Seinfeld ads ran their course as expected or were they cut short because thy missed the mark expected. Regardless, Microsoft has releases some new, more relevant ads that displays all types of people and their roles as PC users. I'm a PC: Pride I'm a PC: Not Alone I'm a PC: Stereotype The New York Time released an analysis of the Microsoft strategy to combat the Apple TV spots, and they point out that Microsoft isn't the first company to try and take some very bad press and turn it around in their favor. “This is just the beginning, the first phase of the campaign,” said Mich Mathews, senior vice president for marketing at Microsoft. “We’re on a journey to reposition the PC.” Looks as if we may have many more entertaining commercial spots ahead of us.

You may have the need to open and view more than one Outlook Inbox at the same time. Take for example an employee quitting... who's going to monitor his inbox until a replacement is hired? In my office, email support is handled through a shared email account, with designated individuals watching it at various times. Here's how you can add additional inboxes to Outlook, so you do not have to switch back and forth between accounts: Start Outlook Go to Tools | E-mail Accounts... Make sure View or change existing e-mail accounts is marked and click Next Make sure your Microsoft Exchange Server is highlighted and click Change Click More Settings... Click the Advanced tab Click Add Enter the name of the additional inbox you want to add. This is the same name you find in the Outlook Address Book. Click OK -- you may have multiple choices, if the name you gave matches more than one account. If so, select the account you want and click OK , again. Click OK Click Finish Here's a

I just got a new laptop and was reminded of a common annoyance in MS Office products. The menus never fully display immediately -- you either have to click the arrow at the bottom of the menu or wait a few seconds. There is actually a fairly easy way to keep them expanded all the time. Right-click any toolbar Select Customize Check "Always show full menus" That's it.

Microsoft has released their 2nd ad, from their infamous ad campaign to combat Apple. At 4 1/2 minutes, it's certainly different than what we're accustom to from a commercial. I don't think there are as many buried messages as the first ad ; the big message here is Microsoft connects people. "Bill, have you had scallop potatoes before?" confirms a feeling many have about Bill: he's different, therefore he has not experienced the typical American family dinner. "Do we have any more ketchup" and "Nobody told me we were eating" are lines that tries to re-enforce that this is an average family and Microsoft (through Bill and Jerry) are trying to better understand ("re-connect with real people") what it's like to be an average family. "Didn't we have this yesterday?" Bill implies that with Microsoft, you don't have to have the same thing every day. Bill reads a technical story; Microsoft knows technology "Jer

Well it has been a week since Google released Chrome, a week since I've tracked my Internet bandwidth usage, and 5 days since Microsoft released its ads to compete against Apple. Let's take a look and see how each are doing. =============== I wrote a little about Google's surprise announcement of their new browser Chrome last week, highlighting some of its features. One feature that intrigued me was the ability to "tear-off" a tab and turn a browser window into a pseudo application on your desktop. I did just that with my email and RSS reader -- I replaced Thunderbird with a direct window into my Gmail account and replaced the RSS reader with Google's RSS reader. I had looked and tried many RSS readers before settling on Thunderbird, but found that over the last six months that I've used it less and less. I like the Google Reader interface much better than Thunderbird and others and Chrome has made it just a little easier to access it. In addition, in th

Couple funny lines, but I don't get how it applies to buying anything Microsoft. "Bill, your a 10"

I recently started having a problem where my Excel 2003 and Word 2003 files would not open when clicked, unless Excel and/or Word was already open. If the application wasn't open, it would open the application, but not load the file. I did quite a bit of searching, but couldn't seem to find the right answer. Some sites recommended checking a setting to Ignore other applications -- a setting that wasn't even available in Word. Turns out for both applications, it was the Addins that were causing troubles. To remove the offending Addin, you need to edit the Registry. Here's the process I used. Go to Start > Run... , enter regedit, and click OK . Go to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\ Addins . Right-click on Addins and select Export . This will let you re-import the keys. Delete the individual Addins one at a time, testing each time to find the offending Addin. Once you identify the offending Addin, re-import all Addin keys, and de

I found a new tool from Microsoft that will evaluate the security of your PC, and give instructions on how to correct potential vulnerabilities. Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is an easy-to-use tool designed for the IT professional that helps small- and medium-sized businesses determine their security state in accordance with Microsoft security recommendations and offers specific remediation guidance. You don't need to be an IT professional to use MBSA , as instructions for correcting potential vulnerabilities are easy to follow. MBSA examines the following areas on your Windows computer: Security Updates Windows Administrative Vulnerabilities and System Issues, e.g. is Windows Firewall enabled, is the Guest Account disabled, and if are unnecessary Services turned off Internet Information Services (IIS) Administrative Vulnerabilities and System Issues, e.g. are the sample applications removed and has the IIS Lockdown patch been applied Note, many folks do not realize t

I haven't had to use MS Access in 7 or 8 years, so recently when I had to do some simple data conversion, it took me longer than it should to figure out how to best accomplish the task. I needed to run some reports against some Salesforce.com data, and the data set was too large for the built-in report tool to handle, so I decided to import the data into Access to perform the reporting. I quickly learned that the date/time format from Salesforce.com is not in the same format as Access. The solution is actually quite easy... transform the data when you import it. I began with my Salesforce.com data in the form of a CSV file (too big for Excel). Here are the steps I used: Link to the CSV data source Create a Make Table Query against the CSV datasource, selecting all data columns -- of course you only need to select the columns that you want to import Replace every date/time field with a forumla that parses the format and writes it in the format Access will accept. Salesforce.com fo

With the last Microsoft patch this past Tuesday, if you were a user of ZoneAlarm , you were no longer able to access the Internet. I happen to be one of those users. I could get to my router, but not the Internet. Other devices on my network, of course, also were able to access the Internet. When I finally discovered that ZoneAlarm was the problem, I found a reference on the ZoneAlarm site . Apparently the patch was fixing quite a serious flaw in Internet addressing. "You'd have the Internet, but it wouldn't be the Internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything." - Securosis analyst Rich Mogul I find it funny that fixing the flaw caused ZoneAlarm problems. Anyway, if you're finding this post, then you were not affected or you have solved the problem.

Just one more of many tributes to Bill Gates, TWiT (This Week in Tech) this week, episode 149 , spent significant time talking about Bill Gates and the history of Microsoft. Leo Laporte had on old time industry followers John C. Dvorak, Jerry Pournelle, and Bill Machrone. If you have any interest in personal computer history, this is a great podcast to catch. You can download it on the TWiT site or subscribe through your podcatcher.

Today ends an era of Bill Gates working at Microsoft, as he redefines his priorities moving forward. There has been a tremendous number of articles written about Bill Gates in preparation for today. I found this particular video from the BBC that I thought was very interesting as he reviews the early days of Microsoft. The BBC has also published a Bill Gates and Microsoft Timeline.

John C Dvorak just posted an interesting opinion piece on Microsoft's bid to acquire Yahoo!. I like his rationale here. Did you invest in a company (Y!) for what the company has to offer and its potential future or did you invest, waiting for Microsoft to buy it? For most, it is (or should be) the former. By going with the Microsoft buyout, you're giving up on your investment. Further I would add, sure you get Microsoft stock (which you can get anyways without the buyout), but you really have no idea what's in store for the future merged company. What parts of Y! stay and which parts go? Oh, and if you've ever been one of these acquired companies, how often has the "new plan" panned out? Typically the highly skilled employees from the acquired company leave for new jobs; the acquiring company never lets the newly acquired company influence and teach the valuable parts they bring to the table; and so you are left with a bunch of assets now being ran by inexper

With May being Bill Gates last month at Microsoft, Wired.com posted an article with a chronological view of his life. Did you know that at 13, Gates was acting his shoes size? Seriously though, at 13, along with Paul Allen, Gates worked out an agreement with Computer Center Corp to report software bugs in exchange for computer time. This was after spending his schools annual budget for computer time in a matter of weeks. Here's a couple other highlights: January 1977 Gates takes a leave of absence from Harvard and establishes Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico,... ... 1997 On several occasions, Gates' secretary enters the Microsoft building to find him crumpled on the floor, asleep. ... August 28, 1980 Gates signs a contract with IBM, agreeing to develop software for the PC. ... November 10, 1983 Windows debuts. ... August 1, 1989 Microsoft Office debuts. ... August 24, 1995 Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer. ... June 15, 2006 Gates announces his retirement from day-to-

Ballmer and Gates promise a late 2009 release of Windows 7 (and not a minute too soon). Here's a brief look at the UI. Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7 I think it looks good, but I don't like the idea of reaching over my keyboard to the screen -- I think it needs to be a tablet PC to really enjoy the multi-touch screen, not unlike the Microsoft Surface product. (Of course it works well on the iPhone, too.) I also wonder how it'll work for handicapped people -- those missing fingers, hands, or even just tremors.

John C. Dvorak posted a great opinion piece in his PC Mag column on Microsoft buying Yahoo!. He reminds us that for the same $44 billion we could by GM and Ford and have enough left to have a great party too. You could buy General Motors lock, stock, and barrel for $14 billion, name all the cars "Google Sucks," and get more bang for the buck. Heck, you'd have enough left over to buy Ford for around $16 billion, and you could name all those cars "Google Sucks More" and still have $14 billion left over for a big party. He also points out Microsoft's (lack of) success with prior mergers. Give this one a read for yourself .

Time is running out, but it's still not too late to get Windows XP. Computer World recently published Microsoft's current schedule, among other related information. I bought a new Dell laptop for my daughter in November with XP installed. I bought it from Dell because it was an easy choice on their website; other sites that I heard has XP available made it difficult to get XP. You should be able to get XP on new PC purchases until June 30, 2008 (from Microsoft , Sept 27, 2007). The Computer World article links to a recent blog post from Dell . Here's part of that post: The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this summer. InfoWorld is sponsoring a petition to encourage Microsoft to continue selling XP beyond the current deadline. Before you sign the petition, you may want to review InfoWorld's privacy statement. Postal addresses, and other personally identifying information and data will be used to promote InfoWo

Do you like those commercials? Well in addition to finding them at Apple's website and parodies on YouTube (including Linux), you can also find parodies at TrueNuff TV! In case you haven't had enough, here's one more.

With Microsoft's pending release of the consumer version of Windows Vista, there have been many blogs and articles about the pros and cons of moving to Vista. Before I discuss some of the details, need I remind you as I did with iTunes , you DO NOT want to be the first to adopt new software. Let others use it first and see if the reported issues play out or not. Okay, so you are not going to be an early adopter to Vista. If you were recently in need of a PC, you bought one while you could still get XP, right? If you didn't, now is the time to give Apple another shot. Why am I taking this position? Well for one thing, Microsoft completely re-wrote the security layer for Vista, and there certainly will be bugs (and their track record for fixing bugs in a timely manner is abysmal). But don't just take my one reason, let's consider some other compelling arguments. franticindustries recently posted a good article on why power users will hate Vista. Case in point, with the

I am generally skeptical about new versions of software. If I have been productive in the version I have, why would I need a newer version? Usually it seems that it is just a money grab by software vendors. In the case of Office 2007, I was additionally skeptical about the replacement of the menus with ribbons. This was partially based on the new Internet Explorer 7 design, which I do not like. Just by chance, today I picked up a copy of PC Magazine's January edition (so I could read it on the plane), and it provided a First Look review of Office 2007. Ironically, I also happen to be listening to an older (Nov 7, 2006) podcast from PC Magazine (called PCMag Radio), which happen to also review Office 2007. In listening and reading, my opinion began to change. If that wasn't enough, today Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal also released a favorable review of Office 2007. All the reviews promise that the changes will be difficult to make for current Office experts, as the