Category: Windows XP

In his brilliant book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the tremendous impact that the Pepsi Challenge had on the soft drink industry in the 1980’s (see pp. 155-159). Pepsi was trailing way behind Coke in market share, but it looked like there might be a sea change. Pepsi began running ads featuring the Pepsi Challenge. The […]

When you install a software program it’s supposed to tell your operating system what kinds of files it’s supposed to open. For example, .doc files are generally association with Microsoft Word, .one files with Microsoft OneNote, and .mp3 with one or more media players such as iTunes or Windows Media Player. Occasionally this gets mixed […]

 Here’s ZDNet columnist Mary Jo Foley’s view on Microsoft’s decision to delay the deadline to cut off sales of XP on new computers: » Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft’s own good? I take the view that XP ain’t broke and am only recommending Vista on new computers in rare circumstances. Looks like I’ll […]

Something was terribly wrong with the synchronization of My Documents between my server and my laptop. Not only was my laptop’s hard drive starting to run out of space for no good reason, but often I would turn my laptop on at a remote location and discover that the offline files weren’t there. I solved […]

Here’s an extremely handy tip from Andy Parkes that will save some time when renaming computers on a network. That is, it will save time in theory. In practice, if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend more time trying to remember where you saved that time-saving trick than you would actually spend just doing it […]

I really thought I had been good about applying the Daylight Savings Time patch on all the PCs I manage for my clients. But there I was this morning, looking at reports from machines I was sure I had patched, and they were still 5 hours behind GMT rather than 4. What happened? It turns […]

What’s worth reading this month? Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader version 7 need patches Review of 5 blogging platforms, including WordPress (which runs The Schlog) Review of teeny, tiny Fujitsu notebook “35 Things Every PC User Should Know,” most importantly: How to secure your wireless network Learning to use the Event Viewer Troubleshooting wireless connectivity […]

Warning: This is long. Really long. Like 17,000+ words / 30+ pages long. You might not be able to take it all in one sitting. But I thought it was important to consolidate a lot of information into a single post. Microsoft has a relatively new software bundle that they’re pushing hard. It’s called the […]

One in a series of posts on various things you can do with technology to make yourself more productive … Filter your company’s inbound e-mail. More than 90% of all the world’s e-mail is spam, according to one spam filtering service. If you block all that junk mail before it ever gets to your company’s mail server, […]

Mapping a network drive means assigning a letter to a folder on a shared resource, such as a network server, to make it the shared folder function like a hard drive on your own computer. Some computer programs, particularly older or poorly written ones, require you to map a drive in order to function properly. You can […]