WorldCAD Access

Using a second PC as a second display

Luna not Last year I kicked in $99 towards Luna when it launched. It is a dongle that let a Windows or MacOS computer use an iPad tablet as a second display. It works, but is $99 and does not support Android or Windows tablets as second displays, even a year later. This would be handy for me on road trips, as I usually take a Windows laptop and an Android tablet with me, anyhow. So I looked around at other possible linkages. I normally ignore "Watch My Youtube Video!" solutions, but thought I'd give one a try, as it... Read more →

When Windows Update Stalls at 35%... or 100%

Replug Despite the tech media having shrieked confidently and loudly about the death of Windows 7, Microsoft continues to update it and I continue to use it. Last week, an update alert appeared in the operating system's taskbar, and so I installed it. I think the update had to do with that 20-year-old hole in the print spooler software that could let a malicious actor (bad guy) wreck your computing experience. I installed it, and after rebooting the computing, Windows Update stalled at 35%. I let it sit there for a long time before manually restarting the computer. I won't... Read more →

Best tweet reactions to new BSOD

Black screen of death As most of the tech media are Apple-maniacs, they don't really don't care about Windows 11's hottest new feature -- running Android apps -- and tend to be really, really clueless about the technique of side-loading. A fact none of the tech media mentioned is that running Android apps on Windows is not new: it's been possible for many years (going back to 2009), as there are Intel CPU-versions of Android. See pcmag.com/how-to/3-free-ways-to-run-android-apps-on-your-pc for some examples. As a result of Apple Devotion, we were fed a lot of misinformed Android Development articles. - - - What... Read more →

From the "Why We Hate Microsoft" File

No More GWX! A reader writes: Ralph, here is shocker that I got this past week. I put my laptop in sleep mode during the middle of the day and then later that night I looked at the screen to find it running. I looked closer to see that it was installing Windows 10 without my permission or any action by me. You talk about hijacking a computer: this is just about the ultimate: it warning me not to shut off the computer to stop it. Microsoft wonders why people hate them, and then they do cr*p like this. If... Read more →

Microsoft doesn't want you printing folders; we show you how

DOS Redirection From 1983 One of the top requests for Windows 10 is that Microsoft allow printing of directory listings -- getting a print out of all the files in a folder. But Microsoft so far is maintaining a stance of deafness towards its customers and so it is up to me to show you how. Now, I know that readers will tell me that such-and-such utility does this, and that's great. Here is the method I use, and it goes back to 1983 when PC-DOS v2 was released. The trick is to use redirection, which still works today in... Read more →

My first few hours with Windows 10

Downloads and runs perfectly Microsoft made the preview of Windows 10 available October 1. October 2 I had airplane tickets to fly to Europe. This was going to be a real fast eval. I have, fortunately, one too many Windows 8 computers (don't ask), and so it was easy for me to pick the one on which I would install the experimental operating system. I tested it on my Sony Vaio Tap 11 tablet, which like a Surface tablet: super thin, with independent keyboard, 1.2GHz Pentium CPU, 4GB RAM, 128GB solid state drive, 1920x1080 11" screen -- a device I... Read more →

My experience with the doomed Surface-class tablet

UK figures this week show Microsoft sold around 10,000 slate-style tablets last quarter, out of almost 600,000 sold overall. That’s the size of a rounding error. - Andrew Orlowski The Surface Pro tablet is a sexy beast, which is why Microsoft marketing emphasizes its hardware functions. But do you ever wonder why Microsoft marketing largely ignores its own software running on the same tablet? I did, which is why I bought one. Well, not the Microsoft version. With a starting price of over $1000 here in Canada, it is way too overpriced. And the Pro 3 is misleadingly-hyped. I mean,... Read more →

Solving Windows' un-Recycle-able Problem

Hope for the hopeless When Microsoft added the Recycle Bin to Windows for holding erased files for up to a month, external devices tended to be read-only, such as CDs. There was no need for the Recycle Bin to support them. But then read-write media became uber-popular, like USB thumb drives and SD cards. (External hard drives do get the Recycle Bin's safety net.) Microsoft isn't known for keeping up with the times. When we erase files by accident from today's most common types of external media, like precious photos from an SD card, they are not moved to the... Read more →

Using VLC on touch screens

You have to turn on mouse gestures One of my frustrations running Windows apps on touch screen computers or tablets is that the touch interface of programs is immature compared with Android or even iOS. This is a surprise, given that Microsoft has worked with tablets for twice as many years as either Google or Apple. So I love using MX video player on Android, because it has touch-size controls, and touch-sensible controls. For example, to change the volume, I swipe up or down on the right half of the screen; to change the brightness, I do the same but... Read more →

The paradox of UAC

A reader asks: Windows User Account settings? What is it? Apparently were "turned Off", supposed to be "turned ON" -- H. G. It's one of those safety things that Microsoft constructed poorly. The purpose of UAC (user account control) is to prevent programs from running maliciously, such as when you click a link on a Web page that downloads and runs a dangerous application. When turned on: each time you start a program (or when a program starts another program) UAC asks you if you want to run the program. But there are several problems: When the warning dialog box... Read more →

Another reason why Windows 8 is so much better than Windows 7

Microsoft is desperate that your computer runs Windows 8 so that it can spread its monopoly from desktop to laptop to tablet to phone and to XBox. The Gatesian fantasy of "a [Windows] PC on every desktop" is no longer enough. Here is another reason to switch to Windows 8. Sometimes, you have to set the default printer in the operating system, because in certain instances the application cannot do it itself. Here are the steps to doing this in Windows 7: 1. On the Windows taskbar, click the Start button. 2. Choose Devices and Printers. 3. In the Devices... Read more →

Windows 8 not selling well, and here's why

The release of Windows 8 failed to give Microsoft and hardware makers the boost they were expecting. We knew there was a problem early, when no CAD vendor made a fuss at the launch, and that most haven't bothered certifying their software to run on the crazed-hybrid operating system. You could say 8 is the anti-XP. There are two reason for 8's failure to ignite sales: The touch interface is a FAIL on non-touch computers, and Microsoft's advice to memorize lots of keyboard shortcuts is no solution for those users who haven't even mastered Ctl+C/Ctrl+V. (My neighbour last week got... Read more →

Microsoft Surface? We've heard of it

Across from the Apple store in Munich, Germany... ... I spied last Monday a street artist painting the sidewalk... ...which turned out to be grafitti for Microsoft Surface: Read more →

Next reason to avoid Windows 8 RT

No Chrome browser. Microsoft says only it can build a good Web browser for tablets. We know how well that tuned out the last time they had the Web browser monopoly: five years of no improvements ended only when Firefox ate IE's lunch. Reports Mosaic: On ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won't give to other browsers... This sounds like a repeat of the early days of Windows, when Microsoft gave its own applications access to secret APIs, making third party software run slower and then die. By locking... Read more →

Next reason to avoid Windows 8

No DVD playback. Microsoft says it's too expensive to license, and could cause a decrease in the $58 billion cash it has in the bank. Read more →

Unless something changes in the next months, Windows 8 will prove less popular than Windows Me

Let's say a software vendor one day decides that the next release of his software will feature a touch interface, but is meant to run on desktop computers. To be clear, these are today's desktop computers that lack touch-screen monitors which sit an arm's length from your face and are positioned perpendicularly to you. The software vendor decides the touch screen interface should overlay all other elements of his program, so that users will be confronted by it frequently. Since their screens don't respond to touch, they'll be simulating touch by moving their mouses in unnatural movements, or else memorize... Read more →

How try out Windows 8 without wrecking Windows 7 on your computer

A new beta of Windows 8 is out, and you will probably want to take the test drive. See if the Metro interface is interesting or awful (I say it's awful), and if critical software works with it. (Changes to Windows 7 broke some software and device drivers, more so than did the Vista dialect of Windows.) There's a couple of ways to do this:Windows Install it on a spare computer. The problem here is that spare computers tend to be older, and so no great spec-wise. Install it on your main computer through a dual-boot process. The problem here... Read more →

Eradicating the "Windows Anti-virus" virus

Last week, the computers of my dad and a daughter caught a virus that looks just like Windows own security software. You can tell virus from the real security software because (1) it pops up so many dialog boxes and balloon alerts and(2) it asks for money when you agree to "eradicate" the virus. (Both computers run anti-virus software, yet were infected. Perhaps the anti-virus definitions were not updated? Both asked me where the virus came from; I don't know, but I suspect they clicked on a link in a Web page.) I found the following steps work to remove... Read more →

Everything old is new again: Windows 98 install screens

During an installation of Windows 98, I captured its golly-what's-new screens. Here's some of them: Today with Windows 7, old people are just as frustrated in using a computer. - - - One of the primary promises for Windows 7: getting it to start faster. One of the promises for Windows 8: getting it to start faster. - - - The registry: the one-stop location for most of your software problems. - - - I think this is the one screen that gets reused for every release of Windows. As well as the one that says something about being faster... Read more →

Theory: It was HP who re-org'ed Microsoft's entertainment division

The best theory I've read is that HP's purchase of Palm caused the massive re-org of Microsoft's Entertainment division. Here is my line of thinking: HP is Microsoft's biggest customer. They had already been dabbling in consumer Linux with their netbooks, but weren't happy with the result, and so were looking for an alternative. They were not keen on Android, because of the lack of product differentiation, as well as being once again dependent on another company for advances in the OS. They suffered through years of Microsoft's handicapping its CE and Mobile operating systems. They already know what is... Read more →

How to print documents when Word won't

Despite Microsoft making billions a year off licenses of Word and other applications in its Office collection, the word processor is a poorly made product. (Undeserved wealth breeds complacency.) I find it runs slowly; the ribbon is a mess of confusion; and it frequently flags correctly-spelled words. My children and I use it only for compatibility reasons. One problem they commonly encounter is that Word will not print their documents. In the university environment, students have the situation where they are printing essays and papers at the last moment before deadline. Using software that screws up is unpleasant. (Which is... Read more →

Windows Mobile 7 to offer feature-free experience

Headlines from Tech-meme this morning: Microsoft Hates Features Windows Phone 7 Comes with Limitations for Users Microsoft “photocopies” missing iPhone Cut/Copy/Paste feature Windows Phone 7 Series Will Not Have a File Manager Nor USB Mass Storage Is this rocket science? Tech giants struggle with copy and paste Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 Users Don't Need Cut, Copy And Paste To Microsoft, this is not a technical-shortcoming, but a user-lacking: "... most users, including Office users, don't really need clipboard functionality." The statement contradicts a Microsoft study from last year that showed Paste to the be most commonly-used command in Office. Read more →

Loverly how Word cannot spell

Screen grab of a constant problem in Word 2007 (which I use only because of the demands of a client): The false misspelling problem occurs in no other word processing software. Read more →

XP-to-7 upgrade is a nightmare

by Don Beaton This is the history of my upgrade from Windows XP Pro 32-bit running on a 5-year-old IBM T42 laptop, to Windows 7 64-bit running on a 1-year-old HP laptop. My IBM Thinkpad T43 is almost dead -- old battery; Q and U keys missing; Windows Updates stopped working more than one year ago. I had 396 programs loaded, and hundreds of old versions and updates loaded and unloaded over the years (with the expected mad-cow disease effect on the registry). The T43's fan stopped working so, on December 16, it crashed from overheating 15 minutes after I... Read more →

Five Reasons Why You Should Not Upgrade to Windows 7

I have friends asking if they should upgrade to Windows 7. I tell them, "No," and here's why: Vista If Vista is running fine on your computer, you gain nothing by switching to 7. The bugs are largely shaken out of Vista, but new bugs are added to 7. Witness the full day I wasted trying to solve the problem of 7 unnecessarily shutting down power to USB ports connected to drives -- in addition to downloading hundreds of megabytes of driver updates from HP and nVidia. (The only reason I upgraded to 7 is because I am a technical... Read more →

WIndows 7 Poor in Handling Network Drives

As 7 enters mainstream use, we are getting less biased information on its quality. For example, three sites confirm that 7 is harder on notebook batteries than XP; other tests prove 7 is slower than XP SP3. Another story shows Microsoft employees still live in la-la land, thinking their work is original (all of Windows is derivative). Walt Mossberg reports that 7 isn't faster at booting, typically taking over two minutes. I needed a new backup drive, and decided to get a network drive, because of Microsoft's reluctance to let me access my own files and folders across my networked... Read more →

3 Windows 7 Install Problems -- 2 Solved

I had bought the Windows 7 upgrade back in July when it was half-price. Because I write technical books, I need my screen grabs looking up to date; and I figured I might as well stiff it to The Man by giving him half the amount. Last night I installed the upgrade. Took four hours. After installation, 7 gave me several points of pain, most of which I solved in under an hour, fortunately: 100% CPU Usage 7 was running very slowly, and I finally found it was due to the CPU being run at 100% load. The problem was... Read more →

Microsoft Fails with Windows 7 (Again)

Window 2000 shipped in 1999, perhaps the most important release of Windows ever. Two years later, Microsoft nattered on about Cairo, the rewritten operating system that would be delivered next. With the state in which Windows 7 ships to end users today, Microsoft has failed again. As the decades passed by, the codename Cairo changed to the brand name Vista, which would have three primary features, as stated by Microsoft eleven years later, in 2003: 1. Fix Windows' security problems with code access security in .NET. 2. Merge the Internet and the desktop through XAML-hosted browsers. (Eh? I thought the... Read more →

When Press Releases Get Smacked by the Future

Press releases provide information from companies in a formal format. But inside the cocoon inside the companies' pr offices, extravagant claims get made. They imagine themselves "the world leader..." and so on. Press releases predict the future and then become part of history. Eventually the future foretold by the press release arrives, only to turn around and smack the text and its promises. Harry McCracken of the Technologizer hauls out a few not-so-old press releases for us to chuckle over. In particular, there is Microsoft's embarrassing "Microsoft launches Windows Vista and Office 2007" press release from Jan'07 -- less than... Read more →

Ballmer Bad-Mouths Google Chrome OS

In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning. Source. Read more →

Dueling Analysts

Windows 7 Forecast to Squash Vista Quickly. Windows 7 installations will ramp up quickly, and quickly replace Vista in corporations, IDC analysts predict. - PC World Is Your Office Wary of Windows 7? Just because Microsoft is readying a new operating system doesn't mean everyone's eager to upgrade quickly. - PC World Six in 10 companies plan to skip Windows 7, many of them to pinch pennies and others over concern about compatibility with their existing applications. - Reuters (IDC and PC World have the same owner.) Read more →

7RC Worse Than 7Beta

I was pretty pleased with Windows 7 beta running on my netbook (LG X110). The beta ran speedily, especially with the 4GB Class 6 SD card that was used for ReadyBoost. The only problems I experienced were that it tended to forget settings; if I muted the sound, the sound was back on after a reboot. Before leaving on a three-week trip to Europe, I updated to 7RC, because I knew that the beta trial period was coming to an end. I figured it would be as good as the beta, but with fewer annoyances. Big mistake! The "release candidate"... Read more →

Microsoft Rips Off Canadians (Again)

Windows 7 upgrades are available in Canada today, and once again Microsoft is overcharging Canadians. Whereas the Home Premium Upgrade is $50 in the USA, the price is $65 in Canada -- a surcharge of 30%. The difference in exchange rates accounts for only half the surcharge, 15%. The other 15% is extra profit for the convicted monopolist. Poor FutureShop, though. Their Windows7 upgrade page was not working 10 hours after the offer was due to begin. On their regular site, only the $130 upgrade price was available for Home Premium. Parent BestBuy Canada's upgrade page does work, however. Read more →

If Microsoft Didn't Have a Monopoly, They Wouldn't Exist

I recall sitting in the press conference as then-president of WordPerfect mocked Word and how badly Microsoft implemented its word processor. Two decades later, Word is still a poor product with which to write. I was reminded of that long-ago incident when a software company today invited me to take part in a new product announcement. Most use WebEx or GotoMeeting. This company decided on Microsoft's Live Meeting, and what a bad choice it made to go with a Microsoft product. A few minutes before the event was to begin, I did the usual: copy'n pasted the conference URL into... Read more →

Revealed: Why Microsoft Fails at Search

Microsoft Corp.'s share of Internet searches in the U.S. fell to a 12-month low [of 8.2%], according to a comScore Inc. report on Internet search queries for February. - Elizabeth Montalbano, Computer World One aspect I find fascinating about corporate marketing is when they spin their solution to fix problems that don't exist. The reason is Dibert-itis: the product created doesn't solve problem,so a problem must be found for it to solve. We see Dilbert-itis infecting Microsoft's Satya Nadella, as revealed by Boomtown's Kara Swisher in A Sneak Peek Look at Microsoft’s New Kumo: A Spidery Cloud? A Cloudy Spider?... Read more →

Where's Vista?

I've noticed that fliers from electronics shops have been missing something. They no longer identify the operating system installed for the depicted computer. This holds for fliers from Best Buy, Future Shop, Wal-mart, London Drugs, Staples, and others, for computers from Toshiba, Acer, HP, and more. No longer do we know if we are eying a computer with Vista or one of the other many dialects of Vista. (Does any computer even ship with the rip-off Ultimate variant?) The exceptions are ones with Linux, Windows XP, or include a Vista-XP upgrade disc. I wonder if this is a campaign by... Read more →

Vista? We've Heard of It

Forrester finds that 71% of all enterprise PCs continue to run Windows XP in North America and Europe. Windows 2000 powers my desktop computer, and 10% of others. Mac is 3%, and Linux 2%. Vista? Adopted by fewer than 10%, while 32% have said "Never" to Vista. Source. Read more →

Windows 7: For Testing Purposes Only -- for sure!

Installing the Windows 7 beta on my LG netbook worked so well that I decided to also install it on my HP notebook computer. Big mistake. I spent this morning reinstalling Vista. Windows 7 does not seem to recognize the HP's AMD dual-core CPU, and so I was faced with the following problems: Fan on all the time, even with maximum power saver settings. The non-stop sound gets irritating after a while, especially compared to the LG's whisper-quiet fan. Regular blue screens of death, several times a day. What ever I'm working on was interrupted. The BSOD error message seems... Read more →

Ballmer Ignores Obama's Advice

The USA's new president asked companies to reduce costs through work sharing rather than layoffs. I was at CADalyst magazine when it hit a rough patch in the late 1980s, and I suggested we all take a 10% wage cut instead of firing a couple of the staff. The good thing about the wagecut is that the income tax also goes down; this meant that my net pay fell by just 5%. Five percent was a worthwhile exchange for knowing that my coworkers still had a job. Two days after the Obama swearing-in love-in, Microsoft's ceo decides to put 5,000... Read more →

Microsoft Creates Mistrust

Andres Guadamuz of TechnoLlama has an interesting theory for the reason so many Windows computers are vulnerable to attack. (The primary reason is that people don't update their computers. Each time I see my dad, or when my daughters come home from university, I spend time updating security items on their computers.) In New Windows virus infects millions of computers, he has a second reason. He blames Microsoft itself for creating distrust in its customers. Recall that Microsoft promised to never update Windows without your permission, but then did it anyhow, secretly. The update negatively affected honest users when its... Read more →

Dumbest Alert, Ever

The dumbest message ever is found in Vista, of course: No wonder Vista runs slow; it wastes CPU cycles monitoring the plugging and unplugging of audio jacks. What's next, Microsoft alerting me that I just pressed a key on the keyboard? (Second-dumbest message written by Microsoft is that one that warns me the battery is very very low and that I need to plug in a power supply to the notebook computer -- moments after I've plugged in the power.) Read more →

Windows VSINIT.DLL Problem

After solving the RTS problem on the Toshiba, I faced another hurdle. After booting the computer with Windows 2000, I clicked an item in Explorer. The computer kind of locked up: nothing much worked. This occurred time and again, displaying a dialog box complaining: Validation failed for VSINIT.DLL. Missing root certificate. It took longer to find a solution to this problem. It turns out to be a problem with Zone Alarm not finding a security certificate it needs. The solution is two-fold: 1. Erase all trace of Zone Alarm. In my case, I had to reboot into DOS mode and... Read more →

Earth Round, Vista Flat.

The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to around the 6th century BC in ancient Greek philosophy and Indian philosophy. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth A reader reminds me that the Hebrew Bible has an early reference to the roundness of the Earth: [God] who is sitting on the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are as grasshoppers... -Isaiah 40:22, written 700BC, Young's Litteral Translation - - - My favorite headlines from bloggers discussing Microsoft hail-mary marketing for its rejected-by-Intel Vista operating system: Windows Vista: The Official OS of The Flat Earth Society. - John Paczkowski The world is round, says... Read more →

Visa 10x Slower at Printing Than Linux

Vista is painfully slow at printing to networked devices. This is particularly onerous on me, as I am working on a documentation project that involves some 400 commands. I am using documentation software that has to run on Vista, and it takes a long time to print sets of pages as I complete commands for my copy editor to check. I wondered: did the problem lay with Vista? To learn the answer, I tested the print speed between my brand-new $400 Asus Eee 4G notebook computer running Xandros Linux on 512KB RAM, and my nearly-year-old $1200 HP tx1220 notebook computer... Read more →

Linux Trumps Vista

One the the primary headaches over Vista is its lack of support for peripherals. Even Microsoft executives bellyached that they couldn't get the rushed-out operating system working with their printers. Like Microsoft executives, I cannot get my HP-branded notebook computer (which came with Vista installed) to connect to my HP-branded PhotoSmart P1100 inkjet printer. I've been doing a bunch of stuff with my brand-new Asus Eee 4G notebook computer, which runs Xandros Linux OS. (I have a half-dozen Eee tutorials lined up for the next coupla' weeks.) This afternoon, I was able to connect it with the HP printer over... Read more →

Confession: I Bought Microsoft Software

I have prided myself in never buying any software from Microsoft. Ever. The Microsoft-branded software that I have came either with the computer I purchased or was given to me by Microsoft. The list of free-bees from Microsoft included Office 97, Windows 2000, and Visio 2002. But on Saturday morning, 9am, June 28, I entered Staples to buy a box of Microsoft software: Windows XP Pro Upgrade. It was, as I explained to my son, an insurance policy. For the night before, I had been sitting at my 6-year-old workhorse of a desktop PC running Windows 2000 (the one whose... Read more →

MSFT Q3: Battling Headlines

Microsoft press release, dated 24 April 2008: Microsoft Reports Record Third-Quarter Revenue Bloomberg.com news report, dated 24 April 2008: Microsoft Profit Drops; Forecast May Miss Estimates Read more →

The Hidden Meaning of Wow!

Microsoft marketing launched Vista with a single word, "Wow!" A launch phrase so vacuous served as an unintended warning of the operating system's lackluster content. It takes some time to reverse engineer marketing slogans, but I think I've finally achieved it. WOW is short for... Windows, ow! Read more →

Zip: Vista Creates New Security Problem

About 99% of my email is spam, and of the hundreds I get, these days many have an attached ZIP file. The file names are typically ls.zip and vs.zip, and contain HTML code for a Web site in China. (ZIP files contain one or more other files, and are compressed to save file space.) I wondered why Chinese spammers are sending ZIP files. Spammers target the typical low-level computer user, who wouldn't know what to do with a ZIP file. Then today it struck me: Vista users. Vista opens ZIP files as if they were folders. One click, and the... Read more →

Microsoft Emails on Vista Problems

The law suit against Microsoft's use of the "kind of, sort of works with Vista" labels is revealing emails between executives. Todd Bishop of the Seattle PI newspaper is summarizing important parts in Full text: Microsoft execs on Vista problems. Reading it reminds me of this one thing: AutoCAD Release 13 Read more →