A Massive Tech Channel Roundup
I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.
Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum requirements. It may not be a good experience to try it on my netbook which just meets the minimum requirements and my laptop which is old enough to even miss the minimum. But if anyone is interested, you can get the Windows 7 look into Windows XP. He also found a couple of amusing videos, one called “how to say i love you.” and another a confirmation of love, a marriage at Taco Bell. Recession, aye?
Jason found a few websites that can assist you in unique ways: one for helping educate your kids, one a calendar to help others, and another to scan your computer online. He covered a lot of Windows Powertoys, a mobile media browser and found another reason to continue loving Zune. He also has a couple of how-tos for selecting non-linear text in a word document and sharing Outlook calendar availability. One bad news, I mean another one, is that Microsoft is shutting down MSN Groups.
Claire thought out loud about the gap between Linux and mainstream users, learnt something new about less (which all you Cygwin users may find useful), discovered a wonderful browser called Kidzui which attempts to make the Internet a more kid-friendly place.
Juan wonders whether the Mac is not invincible anymore and whether Apple really needs to make a netbook. He is glad to find a symbol cheat widget and an app that can save his day with a bunch of drawings. The latter isn’t my cup of tea. He along with Jayvee found out about Apple’s stand on piracy.
You Can Delete Msocache
The PC boot drive (usually C:) has a few folders, names of some of which don’t make sense. It is not wrong to panic when you see some shady name among them.
e.g. The drive on which you installed Windows usually has the following folders:
Documents and Settings
Drivers,… and similar ones
Program Files
WINDOWS
In addition, I have folders called cygwin, Downloads, and SysinternalsSuite. Until recently, I also had Msocache. Msocache is not always in C: but could be on any non-removable and non-network drive with over 1.5GB free disk space.
The Msocache folder is created during the Microsoft Office installation and is called the “Local Install Source”. It contains a copy of the install source files and is a hidden folder. The folder is not necessary after the installation and it is safe to get rid of. Save up to 270 MB disk space.
The Microsoft Help and Support site has a helpful article about Msocache explaining in detail its purpose, and ways of removing it. “Do not delete the MSOCACHE folder by using Microsoft Windows Explorer,” the article warns.
In the past and more recently too, I have deleted the folder directly and I had no problems. But I now learnt that it is not the right way to do it.
How to Minimize Microsoft Outlook to System Tray
Tech Channel Roundup of Year End Retrospections and Forecasts
We are still more than ten days from the new year, but a majority of the world has already started retrospecting the last twelve months and forecasting the next twelve.
Jayvee inspects the culture of FAIL on the Internet and finds that video advertising is going to decline. Actually, the rate of growth of online advertising has reached a saturation point even though online advertising itself is continuing to rise.
In these tough times, when the economy has been slowing down, Clair suggests that choosing Linux and open source software has become more necessary. For those who are already in that path, there is a free Ubuntu training course. Ubuntu is Linux for human beings, isn’t it?
A survey found that only 1% of people are using Google Docs, and many of those use Microsoft Office already. However, Colleen feels that the Microsoft’s stranglehold on office suites may be slipping away with Microsoft promising and postponing their next release and the availability of too many options for the users.
Juan says that 2008 is the year of iPhone, which is not very debatable in the user sense though this is also the year for RIAs, Twitter (@bsravanin) and cloud computing. But then, he is an Apple guy. :-) He also shares the offer that MacUpdate is having as a holiday promo. A good offer, far better than dreaming about the Apple 24″ LED display which is about $900!
Speaking of promos, Jason has a post about the Sears Wish Promotion, similar to the HP Magic Giveaway which has recently ended. There is already several Top 10 lists too, like the top 10 viral videos of 2008. I personally don’t like the fact that these lists do not consider the rest of the year that is still to be lived through. The more important news is, in case you haven’t already heard, that a serious security flaw has been exposed in the Internet Explorer and it is advised to not use it for financial and other sensitive transations of any kind.
While you wait for the security update, be sure to take note of the 8 security bulletins that Microsoft is ending the year with. Various OS users may want to check out the 2008 Service Pack 2 beta releases.
Forgot the Attachment!
A friend of mine once defined the tiniest measurable period of time as the time between you sending a mail and then remembering that you forgot making the attachment. How many times have we clicked “Send” without adding the attachment? A few of the instances may have been embarrassing as well. If only there was a way.
I’ve trained myself to add the attachments before composing the mail and to fill the address fields after composing the mail. Just so that I would neither forget an attachment, nor send to the wrong person. You could try that, or an easier way is to use an attachment reminder.
An attachment reminder is a simple function that makes one pass across the text in your composed mail searching for the substring “attach” (and perhaps common spelling mistakes around “attach”) and gives you an error message if you haven’t made an attachment. These are tiny apps (rather plug-ins) and you will be able to find one for most email clients with a straight-forward search.
Following are three widely used ones.
1. Forgotten Attachment Detector: Gmail’s attachment reminder. Go to Gmail -> Settings -> Labs. Scroll down a bit to find the feature and enable it.
2. Outlook Attachment Reminder: Mark Bird’s attachment reminder is an Outlook macro that you can easily add following the instructions in the attachment reminder’s home page.
3. AttachmentRemember: This Thunderbird attachment reminder is an add-in (.XPI) with a wide range of features (custom words and sentences to scan) and is available in multiple languages.
Let me know if you have trouble with any of these attachment reminders.
How to speed up Outlook 2003/2007
Is your Microsoft Outlook running slow or taking forever to download new emails? Here are some tips to speed up the performance of Microsoft Outlook (2003,2007). Note that you can also apply these tips to the new Mozilla Thunderbird 2 or even the older versions.
Convert Thunderbird 2 emails to MS Outlook
A simple guide on how to get emails from Thunderbird 2 to Microsoft Outlook.
I needed to transfer my Thunderbird 2 emails to MS Outlook a few days ago and here is what i needed to do to migrate back Outlook. This Thunderbird 2 email transfer guide works for Outlook Express, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2003, and Outlook 2007.
On to the steps to export emails from Thunderbird to Outlook. Read more
Setup cannot continue because a required file is either corrupted or not available.
Setup cannot continue because a required file is either corrupted or not available.
This error may come up if you are using an unlicensed copy of Microsoft Office. The fix? Read more
OpenOffice.org Beta Fails the Office 2007 Test
I am a big fan of OpenOffice so im excited about how this new beta for their suite will stand up in terms of compatibility with Microsoft Office 2007. Things aren’t looking rosy for Open Office users according to PC World:
“OpenOffice.org 3.0 has just entered public beta, and it promises plenty of improvements from the previous version. Mac users, in particular, will be pleased with the new native Aqua UI. Unfortunately, however, the one feature that I was really looking forward to on the Windows side — compatibility with the Office 2007 XML file formats — could still clearly use a lot of work.
As an experiment, I saved a simple Word 2003 document in Word 2007 format. Office 2007 opened it just fine, but OpenOffice.org Writer only got as far as the first two lines of the text; instead of skipping the next line, the rest was truncated. An Excel 2007 template fared no better. OpenOffice.org Calc preserved labels, numbers, and formulae; macros, embedded graphics, and page layout options disappeared. A plain .xlsx file created with the same template yielded identical results.”
Microsoft working on Low Cost Office Suite
Microsoft has confirmed it is planning to release a subscription-based “value box” of low-end productivity software code-named Albany, and has sent an early version of the product to thousands of beta participants for private testing. I dont know how cheap this new product will be but FREE Office suites such Open Office will be hard to outprice.
