CHRISdotTODD

Perhaps it happened with prior versions of Word and Excel, but I definitely noticed for the first time switching to Office 2007. As a laptop user, I don't always work while connected to my office network, or it may just be that I'm connected via a much slower VPN connection. Regardless, every time I start Word and Excel, they ping the Default Printer, which happens to be on the office network. Due to this, whenever I'm using Word or Excel outside the office the applications hang for several minutes. Apparently so the onscreen display will match the Default Printer specifics, such as margins, Word and Excel will perform this action when started. When over 95% of my documents are never printed by me, and the great possibility that when printed by someone else, they won't have the same printer, I fail to see why Microsoft has chosen this path. From the research I've done, the workarounds are limited. For the Word/Excel VBA Power Users, you can write some code and have ...

This is likely dated for most folks, but if you are still having problems with the Microsoft XP Update for MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2, there is a rather simple fix. If you are not sure, but have had Microsoft's yellow shield in your taskbar for some time, select Custom Install and you can see what is trying (and failing) to install. If it is MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2, then this is the fix for you. Go to Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel Remove all instances of MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2 (KBxxxxx) Retry the update -- that's it.

LMH (an unidentified hacker) and Kevin Finisterre have started publishing a new Apple bug each day this month (January 2007) in order to bring attention to that fact that Apple software has security bugs too. This is similar to a browser bug a day that H D did in July of 2006. H D did give the vendors advanced warning before releasing each vulnerability, though LMH and Kevin Finisterrre will not. I believe if Apple really wants us to switch to their platform, some proof that they know how to deal with security issues is important. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds. LMH and Kevin Finisterrre claim their goal is to make OS X a better platform -- I hope they are successful.

The new release of Firefox, version 2.0.0.1, which was released December 19th, still has problems running on Vista . The biggest problem is that it cannot be set as the default browser. It almost seems as if Microsoft purposefully changed things to make it more difficult for Firefox. According to W3Schools , Firefox had nearly a 30% market share in November, number two after IE 6's 50% share.

You may recall that September 20th of this year, I suggested that you should not be the first to take new software updates -- let others see if there are problems. In this case, I was speaking of iTunes 7, as many people were having problems (and on Apple's Discussions forum ) with the popular software. About a month ago, I finally installed iTunes 7 on the PC that I did not sync with. The new software seemed to work well, but I had no reason to update my PC used to sync my 3rd generation iPod. Yesterday, I finally took the plunge -- 3 months after my warning. Everything seemed fine, the software loaded fine, my iPod seemed to sync okay too. This morning though, I found a problem -- I no longer had Podcasts listed as an option in the playlist. Fortunately I could scroll through recently added songs and find my podcasts. Tonight I reconnected my iPod, found the Podcast tab on the iTunes sync screen, and specifically synced all podcasts. Now I do not know whether it was coincidenta...

My wife and I bought the same model computer this past summer (HP Compaq Presario, Win XP Media Center), and while I have had no problems, she seemed to have many. The first problems was that her computer seemed to lock up when accessing the Internet. After several different tries, I ended up re-imaging her computer, and that seemed to do the trick. Within a month though, she started having memory problems: "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service." After doing a bit a research, I concluded that the problem stemmed from the new multi-function HP printer we bought . HP kindly [grrr...] installs a java-based server and application to monitor the device. And because it is so important, HP installed it in the system tray upon startup, so it is always available. Come to find out, HP has know memory leak issues with this application. And worse, it is a very difficult application to uninstall. This led me to Bleeping Computers and Startup Inspector . S...

Remember a few weeks back when Apple released iTunes 7 and Windows users had several problems? My advise at the time was to never be the first to download a new product version; wait for others to give it a try first. BTW: Apple has already release iTunes 7.1 , but I still have not updated, as there are still some issues for listening to podcasts. Well, Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 7, and a bug has already been reported . Apparently the problem manifests itself in Outlook Express , but because the two are closely integrated the cause was from IE 7. Let's review: Never be the first to try a new version of a product (if you really must, test it in a sandbox first) Use Firefox , not Internet Explorer Use Thunderbird , not Outlook Express Any questions?

Today ZDNet and other news agencies reported yet another security hole found in Internet Explorer. For only the third time, a third-party has provided an immediate fix, so that users do not have to wait on Microsoft. Microsoft expects to release the fix as part of their monthly "patch Tuesday" distribution, which occurs the second Tuesday of every month. Do not forget we have another patch that is the patch of all patches -- Firefox .

Yesterday my organization announced that they are still unable to get a fix from Microsoft for the security patch MS06-042 from August 15 that broke our ClearQuest web interface for creating queries. The August 15 patch was actually the third release of the MS06-042 patch from Microsoft, as each time they have introduced new problems. The original release of the patch actually introduced security problems . This is the recommendation from my company to fix the problem, "Internet Explorer is the only browser impacted by the Microsoft security patch. The only known workaround at this time is to use one of the other supported browsers; Firefox version 1.5 is suggested ."