Tag Archives: Windows

Drop in Windows Web Browsing

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Kelson

From yesterday’s Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter, here’s a report on changes in global web traffic patterns:

Browsers and Operation Systems (OS) are identified by the “referrer” string sent by users’ browsers.

% Visits from OS 11/1/09 – 2/1/10 11/1/10 – 2/1/11 Difference
Windows 89.9% 84.8% -5.1%
Macintosh 4.5% 5.2% +0.7%
Linux 0.6% 0.7% +0.1%
Other 5% 9.3% +4.3%

That’s a huge drop in Windows, almost entirely matched by the rise in “Other.” Want to bet that “Other” has an awful lot of Android and iOS in it?

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Links: Cloud Caps, Kahlua Cupcakes, Bizarre Comic Team-Ups, and the Anti-Vista

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Kelson

A couple of days ago I clicked on the StumbleUpon toolbar and landed on this incredible photo of lenticular clouds over Mt. Rainer at APOD. It was a bit unnerving, because that picture has been my desktop wallpaper for the past year or so! Good call, though.

Windows 7 is doing what Vista couldn’t: convincing people to replace Windows XP. The best quote in this ZDNet article: “Windows 7 is the Anti-Vista.”

The Straight Dope experiments with Kahlua cupcakes to determine two questions: How much alcohol is left in each cupcake? (Not much) Can you get drunk? (Not unless you eat so many cupcakes that you’ll be sick anyway.)

Some comics fan art. First, a realistic Darkwing Duck by Mike P. Mitchell. I suspect that if someone other than Disney owned the character, we’d be seeing a “live-action” movie that looked like this. Second, Comics Alliance collects a fantastic series of cover art for Great Comics That Never Happened – team-ups like the Justice League and the Wu-Tang Clan, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen featuring 1980s icons like Mr. T, Doc Brown and MacGyver, or Hannah Zatanna, torn between the worlds of superheroes and magic, or a race between Superman, the Flash…and the Dukes of Hazzard.

Posted in Comics, Computers/Internet, Food | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Screenshots for Tech Support

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Kelson

I used to get annoyed when someone would send a complete screen shot along with their tech support request. I thought it was a waste of bandwidth when a simple text message would do just as well, and be faster to send, receive and display.

But the thing is, screenshots have their advantages. For one thing, they’re exact. There’s no risk of an error code being mistyped.

More importantly, a screenshot can tell you other information that the user hasn’t thought to mention. This is critical, because the reason people call tech support is because they don’t know how to solve a particular problem…and that often means they don’t know which information is relevant.

Like, say, the fact that they’re running another program which happens to conflict with the one that they’re calling about.

Still, I wish Windows would create a file instead of copying the screen to the clipboard. Users need to paste it into something, so they paste it into what they’re most familiar with: Microsoft Word — something even less suited for sending images by email than a .BMP file created by Paint.

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

How to Get Rid of Windows Live Messenger

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Kelson

You know how it goes. You install something that you think might be useful or interesting, and it installs something else that just. won’t. go. away. I ran into the problem while setting up a new Windows 7 system at work. I installed Windows Live Essentials mainly so that I’d have them available if I ever had to talk someone through tech support, and it included Windows Live Messenger.

I don’t use Windows Live Messenger. I don’t even have an account on Windows Live Messenger. But every time I logged in to my system, WLM would pop up a window and ask me to log in. Every single time.

There was no obvious way to disable it, and most of the suggestions I found online only applied to earlier versions of Windows.

It doesn’t provide an option to stop it from launching on startup. Or rather, it does, but only if you’ve logged into WLM. Since I didn’t have an account, I couldn’t do that, and I wasn’t about to create one just to turn it off!

It wasn’t in the Start-Up folder.

I didn’t see it in Services, so I couldn’t disable it there.

I tried running System Configuration and disabling it in the Startup tab, but that didn’t work.

I couldn’t even find it in the list of programs to uninstall.

But you know what?

I finally got rid of it! And it was easier than I expected.

It turns out that if you uninstall Windows Live Essentials, you don’t have to remove the whole thing. You can choose which pieces to remove! Just tell it to uninstall, and it’ll bring up a checklist of the pieces that are on the system. Check off Windows Live Messenger, leave the pieces you want to keep, and hit Continue.

Done!

Posted in Annoyances, Computers/Internet, Troubleshooting | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments

Hello chkdsk, my old friend…

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Kelson

Hello chkdsk, my old friend
I’ve got to run you once again
Cause my Windows box is acting weird
And the disk drive must need something cleared

And the error that was printed on my screen
Made me scream
And put aside my work
For chkdsk

Posted in Annoyances, Computers/Internet, Music | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Windows 7 Chart, Opera for Android, Chrome

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Kelson

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Double Tap & Windows 7 Priorities

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Kelson
  • This double-tap to unlock feature is probably good for not hitting numbers with your face while talking, but it’s a pain for phone menus #
  • Um, yeah, that’s what I most want from an OS: “Microsoft also plans to offer [Windows 7] in an easier-to-open box.” #

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Installing IE8 RC1 — Or Trying

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Kelson
  • Installed IE8 RC1. Installer crashed, and I ended up with IE7…even though I’d been running the IE8 beta before. #
  • IE8 installer crashes system. New HW checks out. Bad RAM may have screwed something up before I replaced it. Time for System Restore. *grr* #
  • Wow, System Restore is taking a lot longer this time. Maybe it’s actually working? (Or maybe safe mode just makes it slower?) #
  • I can’t remember how many times I’ve rebooted this computer today. (And no, safe mode didn’t solve it) #
  • Finally got IE8 RC1 installed by telling it not to install updates immediately. The Malicious Software Scan was crashing the system. WTF? #
  • Now that I’ve FINALLY got IE8 RC1 running, a cursory check of websites I maintain shows no glaring problems. *whew!* #

Posted in Browsers, Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Alphabet Soup: XP SP and EV SSL XSS!

Posted on May 19, 2008 by Kelson

Sorry for the lack of updates this past week. I was just way too busy prepping for our move this weekend.

A couple of interesting news bits I noticed when I got into work this morning:

It looks like I’ve been lucky with installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’ve had no problems with the one machine I installed it on. According to Information Week, a lot of people are having serious problems with SP3, including BSOD on AMD-based systems.

Also, NetCraft has a screenshot of a PayPal page with both the green bar of an Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate and a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. It’s a step or two beyond the standard lock icon, but there are still limits to what an EV cert can tell you. Unfortunately PayPal and others are really trying to drum “green bar = safe” into people’s heads.

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Apple UI Nitpicking

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Kelson

I appreciate that Apple offers a single software updater for all its free Windows software. But one thing annoys me about it.

It opens a window, then opens a message box showing a progress meter as it checks for updates. Only one problem: It fills out the “New software is available” caption before it actually checks.

New software is available from Apple.... Your software is up to date. No updates are available.
New software is available… oh, wait, no it isn’t.

This isn’t an issue on Mac OS X, because the progress meter is shown as a sheet, which drops down from the top of the main window and obscures the caption. But on Windows, that caption is visible from the moment the window appears, saying that you really do have something new available, raising your hopes that maybe, just maybe, Apple has finally gotten around to releasing that new version of Safari, or that security fix for the flaw you heard about a week ago, then dashing them to the ground.

Or, less dramatically, it’s jumping to conclusions, providing potentially false information.

And then, even if it turns out there isn’t anything new, the caption stays in place…leaving you with two contradictory statements as to whether any updates are really available.

Posted in Annoyances, Apple | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments