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Broken Heart

A woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over a US$59.25 charge for downgrading her Windows Vista PC to XP.

In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado is asking that Microsoft return the fee she paid for downgrading a Lenovo PC with the Windows Vista Business OS preinstalled to Windows XP Professional. Alvarado purchased the PC on June 20, 2008, according to the suit.

Alvarado also is inviting others who have paid fees to downgrade to XP to join the suit (PDF) and is requesting refunds for them as well.

Many customers who purchased PCs with Vista installed opted to downgrade to XP because they weren’t happy with Vista’s “numerous problems,” according to Alvarado’s suit.

“As a result, many consumers would prefer to purchase a new computer preinstalled with the Windows XP operating system or at least not preinstalled with the Vista operating system,” according to the filing.

The suit goes on to accuse Microsoft of using its “market power to take advantage of consumer demand for the Windows XP operating system” by requiring people to buy Vista PCs and then charging them to downgrade to the OS they really want.

This action violates Washington state’s Unfair Business Practices Act and the Consumer Protection Act, according to the suit.

Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster said the company has not been served with the lawsuit, so it would be premature to comment about it.

From Yahoo Tech: Microsoft is used to criticism; after all, it’s a standing joke that the third version of any Microsoft software is the first one that works right. But the backlash against Windows Vista in 2008 was unprecedented. The new OS had been out for a year, finding its way into new consumer systems through 2007 but not getting much adoption by business.

Throughout 2007, InfoWorld heard IT staffers and CTOs grumble about the new OS, despite some nice features for IT, such as unified install images. Application incompatibility, a UI rejiggered without any user benefit to its changes, and a bothersome security mechanism increasingly annoyed individual users and small-business consultants.

InfoWorld contributing editor Randall C. Kennedy’s Vista tests showed that it took way more resources than XP. As his tests revealed, the new Aero interface was a major resource pig, but it wasn’t the only one. And in his testing, Service Pack 1 didn’t help matters any.

The Vista backlash begins
By January 2008, 11 months after Vista shipped to the broad market, InfoWorld launched its Save XP campaign.

Our rationale was that Microsoft had already extended XP’s kill date from Dec. 31, 2007, to June 30, 2008, due to customer queasiness over Vista, so we had hoped it might do so again. It was not a birthday present that Microsoft liked.

By the time of the “Save XP” campaign, consumers and businesses alike were beginning to realize that they could not get XP past June 30 and thus no longer had the option to ignore Vista if they didn’t like it. In the six months that followed, more than 210,000 people signed an online petition to keep XP available indefinitely, and the news media was full of reports of an anti-Vista backlash. Resistance to Vista grew, especially by businesses. Major analyst firms joined in, recommending that Microsoft delay XP’s demise until 2009.

Microsoft defended Vista, saying its usability studies showed that users loved its new interface and that the new security approach was needed to finally force developers to abandon sloppy programming techniques — to be fair, Microsoft had been imploring developers since 1999 to change their behavior, to little effect.

But Microsoft was embarrassed by revelations that its own execs had trouble with Vista and that computers labeled “Vista Capable” in fact could not run Vista, calling into question Microsoft’s honesty, as well as that of many PC makers. The result was a messy lawsuit that is still dragging on, as it became clear that Microsoft was split internally about the accuracy of its “Vista Capable” certification claims.

Great question that has been popping up all over the internet. XP users concerned about having to upgrade.

Courtesy Guy R. Briggs: Q: My company just bought me a Dell Vostro PC, with the Windows XP “downgrade” installed at my request instead of Windows Vista. If in a year’s time I do my annual PC-cleansing routine of FORMAT C:, OS re-install, patch/update and Acronis image, what am I going to have to do to get a machine that works?

Dell gave me both Vista and XP installer CDs. Will I have to install Vista first?

A: The short answer is “no,” meaning there is no need to install Vista first. The XP installation CD that Dell gave you works like any other XP installation CD. You install XP, enter the product key and activate it. Microsoft will continue to do activations until extended support expires in 2014, perhaps longer.

Two things to be careful of: (1) you need the product key, so make sure you keep it in a safe place, and (2) make sure you’re installing XP on the same machine.

Microsoft’s policy is that the OS dies with the machine, so even if the old machine has been melted down to its component base metals and will never run any OS again, you can’t “move” the license to a new machine.

Your annual wipe ‘n’ reload might go a bit easier, especially as support for XP decreases, if you save all your current device drivers beforehand.

Share more than photos; share an experience.

First there was the snapshot, and then came video. Now there is Microsoft Photosynth, a new service from Microsoft Live Labs that goes far beyond how you now view, experience and share photos.

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark; with a digital camera and your own creativity and inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your “synth” is put right in your shoes, sharing in the same sense of exhilaration and wonder that you did at the time, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

Imagine yourself beneath the Eiffel Tower or in the heart of Times Square. Now imagine being able to see that exact scene in an amazing new way. With Photosynth, you can look up or down, pan from left to right, zoom in, or pull back to reveal the full sense of where you were. Photosynth provides incredibly realistic close-up detail of a place as seen in the collaboration with National Geographic. Exclusive synths of some of the world’s most renowned locations, such as Machu Picchu and the Parthenon, were created using photographs taken by National Geographic.

An Entirely New Medium

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to estimate where a photo was taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos. The potential uses of Photosynth can range from sharing experiences to storytelling and documentation:

• Share experiences. Think about the times you have been in the midst of a beautiful location or having a once-in-a-lifetime experience and wished you could share it with more immediacy and sense of place than still photos or video can capture. Photosynth puts viewers in the center of the moment and in control of how they experience it.

• Tell a story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a synth composed of 20 or 50 photos makes visual storytelling as rich and compelling as a short story. Synths capture the totality of important moments in time, such as the anticipation and joy of an entire wedding party and guests at the moment vows are exchanged, or the elation of a child scoring a winning soccer goal as the fans cheer.

• Form a community. Synths can bring the best of your digital photos together with the best of everybody else’s. Imagine if you took a trip to Rome with your friends and each of you took photos of the Trevi Fountain. Later, you can tag and upload all of the photos from each person’s camera to create a synth of it. In addition, you can share that experience and your favorite places with others by embedding the synth in your profile on a social networking site.

• Educate or archive. If you want to re-create how you decorated your home for the holidays or how you planted your garden last season, the ability of Photosynth to provide intricate detail allows documentation impossible to achieve with conventional photos.

Using Photosynth

Getting started with Photosynth is easy:

• To begin, just take a few dozen digital photos — 20 to 300 photos are required, depending on the size of the place or object — with overlap between each shot, from a number of locations and angles.

• Next, download a small, free software application to your computer from http://photosynth.com. This software works in concert with the Photosynth Web site, which is also a free service.

Is this a product and service you’ll use? Tell me how you will use Photysynth in your daily personal and work life.

Browse Encouraging Health.

I just came across some secret codes for 3D Pinball in Windows XP. Now you don’t need to start from ground zero! Howzzatt?!!

Note that the 3D Pinball window must be active for these codes to work.

• Regain your old rank from a previous game by starting a new game and immediately typing rmax. Each time you type this secret command, you’ll advance one rank level.
• Get an extra ball while the Awaiting Deployment message displays by typing 1max.
• Activate the Gravity Well by starting a new game and immediately typing gmax.
• Get an unlimited number of balls and essentially play for as long as you like by starting a new game and immediately typing bmax. Each time you lose a ball, a new one will appear. (While playing with an unlimited number of balls, none of the other tricks will work.)
• Control the ball with your mouse by starting a new game and immediately typing hidden test. When you do, you can click the ball with your left mouse button and essentially drag it anywhere you want and rack up an unbelievable number of points.

Keep in mind that there isn’t a text box into which you enter these secret codes — you simply type them.

In addition to this, how about tweaking your Windows XP sound scheme to play Pinball sound effects!

Here’s how:

1. Go to Start | Control Panel and double-click the Sounds And Audio Devices Properties tool.
2. Select the Sounds tab and then choose the program event that you wish from the Program Events menu.
3. Click the Browse button
4. Select the Look In drop-down list and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Pinball folder.
5. Sample the .wav files by hovering over a file and clicking the Play Sound button in the Preview panel located in the bottom left corner of the Browse For Default Beep Sound dialog box.
6. Once you’ve identified an interesting sound, double-click the .wav file, click the Apply button, and save your Sound Scheme.

Trick: Try assigning Sound999.wav to the Minimize Program event.

How cool is that?!

Source TechRepublic

Recommended Downloads: Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility | Downloads: Windows Media Codecs

One of the nice little features in Windows Vista that you don’t think about is the graph of drive space for your drive icons, so you can visually see at a glance how much space is used. There’s no reason to upgrade for this feature, especially since some programmers created a small utility for XP that gives you the same functionality.

You’ll notice the new icon looks very similar to the ones in Vista, but the more interesting addition is the new bar under the icon that gives you a tiny graph of the current drive space.

The graph will show up on most of the icon sizes other than the details view.

When your drive is running low on space the graph will turn red to indicate that you should probably stop downloading so much.

You can see in task manager that it really doesn’t use all that much memory.

Download Drvicon from Sourceforge.net

This update includes minor changes to how Internet Explorer handles some web pages that use Microsoft ActiveX controls. Please see the Overview section of this page for more information.

So you haven’t made a move to Windows Vista.

Fair enough! How about transforming the look and feel of XP to look like Vista?

All you need to do is follow these steps:

• Download UX Theme MultiPatcher from here
• Run the setup file
• Grab anyone of the following styles and download them on to your PC
• Double click on the .msstyle file and apply the style.
• Voila! Your XP has a new look

Razor Vista

(Download)

VistaVG

(Download)

AeroGlass

(Download)

Thanks Shankar!

Just as you can hack Vista registry to take advantage of Vista ReadyBoost feature, you can use this simple guide to ‘activate’ ReadyBoost like features in Windows XP as well.

Right click on My Computer, go to Properties, and then navigate to the Advanced or Performance tab.
After you have reached this point, follow the images below.



Once you have reached the screen above, select your flask drive, and add it to your virtual memory (paging size is up to you).

*It is recommend making a partition just for file swaping (if using a hard drive instead of a flask drive), so that system fragmentation won?t force the swap file to fragment as well.

Source

Get Vista cursors (lookalikes) for XP

Source | Download

How to automate Windows software updates
How to automate cleanup of Windows temporary directories
How to automate Windows desktop folder synchronization
How to automate Windows desktop backup tasks
How to automate advanced Windows desktop tasks

Sysinternals’ PageDefrag is one freeware programs that you must have on your usb drive.

PageDefrag lets you defragment immovable system files.

It won’t defrag while the system is actually running, but at the next reboot it will defrag the system.

The utility defragments the page file, the event logs, the Registry hives and the hibernation files, all of which normally cannot be defragmented.

When first run, PageDefrag generates a report that describes the location of those files, how many clusters they occupy and how many fragments they’re in. You’re then presented with three options:

1. Defragment once at the next reboot,
2. Defragment at each boot time with a countdown delay, or
3. Disable defragmentation.

If you choose either of the first two options, defragmentation will occur at the next reboot before the Windows GUI loads, and the program will provide real-time feedback on its progress. PageDefrag can also be invoked from the command line or in a script; you don’t need to use the GUI to trigger it.

Here’s how to configure Windows to by pass AutoPlay dialog box and launch Windows Explorer when you insert your USB key in.

1. Insert your flash drive into the USB port.
2. When you see the AutoPlay dialog box, click Cancel.
3. Open My Computer, right-click your flash drive icon, and select Properties.
4. In the Properties dialog box, select the AutoPlay tab.
5. Perform the following steps for each item in the Content Type drop-down list:
   - Select an item in the Content Type drop-down list.
   - Choose Select An Action To Perform in the Actions panel.
   - Select the Open Folder To View Files In Windows Explorer action.
   - Click the Apply button.
6. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box.

Windows Explorer, USB, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar

Windows Explorer, USB, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar

A lot of Windows applications retain memory and this generally happens when you see the icon in the Taskbar, but it doesn’t appear or come to the foreground when you click on it.

Here is the fix for it:

1. Right-click on the application button in the Taskbar and select Size. Better yet, press the S key. This way, you’ll be using the keyboard immediately.
2. Look for a four-way arrow cursor somewhere on the screen. It might be along one of the edges of the screen, or tucked up in a corner.
3. Use the arrow keys on the keyboard to try and expand the window size. If you don’t see anything, you might be expanding an extent of the window that’s not visible yet (i.e., it might be offscreen). Press Enter to end the sizing operation.

Immediately after you select Size, the arrow key you strike will determine which edge of the window you’re resizing. For instance, if you hit Size and then press the right arrow key, the right edge of the window will be the one sized. You might need to size each window edge separately by selecting an edge, sizing it, pressing Enter and then repeating the process for another edge. This is a simple two-step process.

1. Right-click on the application button in the Taskbar and select Move. This will again cause a four-way cursor to appear somewhere.
2. Use the arrow keys to move the window into view now that it’s been sized properly.

Via TechTarget

Windows Tip, XP Tip, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar

Windows Tip, XP Tip, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar

Here?s how:

1. Right-click the Start button and select the Explore command.
2. Go to File | New | Folder.
3. Name the new folder My Control Panel.
4. Right-click your new My Control Panel folder, select the Properties command, choose the Customize tab, click the Change Icon button, and select an icon that will differentiate this folder from all the rest on the Start menu.
5. Open your new My Control Panel folder, and then open the original Control Panel and select Classic View.
6. Drag and drop your favorite tools from the original Control Panel to your new My Control Panel folder.
7. Close both your new My Control Panel folder and the original Control Panel.

Now when you need to use your favorite tool, just click Start | All Programs and at the top of the All Programs menu select the My Control Panel folder. You?ll see your favorite tools in an easy to access drop-down menu.

Windows XP, XP Tips, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar

Windows XP, XP Tips, MSTalkOnline, Alpesh Nakar