News, Hints, Tips and Tricks

Gadgets Gone Wild If you use Remote Desktop to connect to your Vista computer, you might have noticed that when you log back onto the computer locally, any gadgets you might have placed on secondary monitors will all have moved to your primary display. Ugh. I use RD a lot, and I get tired of tediously moving all my gadgets back to their correct positions each time. This was also a problem with dual monitors and RD on XP, but in that case it was the desktop icons rather than gadgets that got moved. You can read some possible solutions here: (registration required) http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-Gadgets-Gone-Wild Run Office 2003 on VistaI often hear from readers who complain that they don't like "the version of Office that runs on Vista." They're talking about Office 2007, which was released at the same time as Vista. But in talking to many users, there seems to be some confusion: a lot of people think you must upgrade to the new Office if you upgrade your OS to Vista. 'Tain't so! We happily run Office 2003 on some of our Vista machines. You can even run both Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications on Vista, by choosing to keep the old versions when you install Office 2007. The only program that you can't have installed in both versions is Outlook. For some tips on installing Office 2003 on Vista, see http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-Vista-Office-2003 How to block Vista SP1 from installingEarlier this month, Microsoft released a blocking tool for those who want to prevent Vista SP1 (as well as XP SP3) from installing through Windows Update. You can find it here: http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-Block-Vista-SP1

How to keep Windows Update from rebooting your computer

How to keep Windows Update from rebooting your computer Have you ever gotten up in the morning and sat down at your computer, only to discover that it had rebooted itself during the night because of Windows Update - and all those documents and web sites you had spread across the desktop and were working on are now gone? Grrr. Well, there is a way to prevent this from happening, at least with some versions of Vista (we've heard that it doesn't work with Home, but haven't had a chance to test that). It does work with Ultimate and Business editions. The fix involves editing the registry, so be careful and back it up first. Here are the steps: 1. In your registry editor, navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ WindowsUpdate \ AU 2. Right click an empty space in the right pane and click New, then select WOR value. 3. Name the new value NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers 4. Set the value data field to 1. 5. Close the registry editor. Now you don't have to worry about the OS shutting down when you least expect (and least want) it to.

Does Vista Security Go Too Far?

Last week, we recounted how some industry pundits, as well as users, are now commenting that Microsoft has taken security too far in Windows Vista, and asked your opinion. Lots of you wrote to weigh in on the question.Al P. noted that "The price being paid for this extra security is very low considering what could happen to a system that very often has the sole copy of thousands of digital images from family events." And Joseph B. said, "I think they have finally gotten it right."Not everyone agrees. Elliot C. said, "UAC is worse than useless; it gives you a false sense of security, AND drives you nuts." His reasoning: "The problem is that it pops up so often that you just click yes without even thinking about it." I have to disagree. When I said I've gotten so used to it that I don't even think about it, I didn't mean that I automatically click to continue - I meant that I don't think about it being any kind of hassle. I'm cognizant of whether or not I'm running something that should cause the UAC dialog to engage, and if I'm not, having it pop up is an immediate red flag.Lots of you agreed with me that it's often not the security features themselves, but the mysterious behavior that bothers you. Stuart C. said, "An explanatory pop up instead of access denied for the junction documents would have saved me much searching on the internet as to why that was happening."And Michael M. reminds us that what may not seem to be a hardship for the technically savvy can be much more of a challenge for users without much computer expertise. He said, "I don't mind much, as someone who makes his living off of supporting computers, committing a portion of my time to maintaining my computer and ferreting out why it won't do what I'm asking it to do. If I had no computer background though, and got my new Vista computer and then tried to run my old family tree software only to see it not, I wouldn't know where to start to fix the problem. It shouldn't necessarily be less secure, but it should help me do what I want to do."

Vista Home Premium

(Vista) Home (Premium) for the Holidays. If you're like me, you want the best of everything. I might not always get it (there's still no Porsche in the driveway), but that's what I want. That means when it came to selecting which of the many editions of Vista to run, the answer was easy: the Ultimate edition has everything, so that's the one I wanted.And Vista Ultimate really is the best choice for my primary desktop computer, because a large part of my job includes writing about and troubleshooting all the Vista features. With Ultimate, I have them right there in one package. Our home network is a Windows domain, and you can't join a computer running either of the Home editions to a domain. I also need to create DVDs and work with Windows Media Center, and you don't get those applications with Vista Business edition.My situation is pretty unusual, though. Most folks really don't need to spend the big bucks for Ultimate; Home Premium or Business will meet their needs. I run Business edition on my Vista laptop, and recently I've had a chance to work with Home Premium, which came preinstalled on my son's computer.For the average home user, Home Premium is the way to go. It costs a hundred dollars less than Ultimate for the upgrade, and it has many of the same high end consumer features, such as Media Center, Windows DVD maker, Windows Movie Maker, Scheduled Backup and, of course, Aero. It also has some of the business oriented features such as Windows Meeting Space and the Windows Mobility Center. But what do you miss out on if you opt to save a C note and go with Home Premium?In addition to losing the ability to join the computer to a Windows domain (note that you can still log into a domain with your user account; the computer just can't be a member), the biggest loss for me is the Remote Desktop Connection. With Ultimate or Business editions, you can set up your Vista computer as a remote desktop host, and you can connect to its desktop over the network from other Vista or XP computers (as well as computers with older operating systems if you install the remote desktop client software on them). I like remote desktop and use it a lot, so there's yet another reason Ultimate is the right choice for me.Home Premium also lacks the Windows Fax and Scan application. Of course, you can install third party fax and scanning software, but it's handy having it built in and I like having it. Another feature that Home Premium doesn't have is the Complete PC Backup and Restore feature, which let you not only back up your data but also create a complete image of your system. I've only had to use it once, but when I did, I was glad I had it. Finally, Home Premium doesn't have all the security features that you get with Ultimate, such as full Encrypting File System (EFS) support and BitLocker full drive encryption.If you don't know what any of those features are, or none of them sound like something you would use, save some money and get the Home Premium edition. It comes installed on many of the consumer grade machines that are being sold by retailers this holiday season, and if you find that you really do need the extra features later, you may be able to switch easily using Microsoft's "Anytime Upgrade" program.One of the most fun features in Home Premium is Windows Media Center. With XP, Media Center Edition was only available preinstalled on a few special models of a few vendors' computers. You couldn't buy that edition of the OS at retail and install it yourself, and most vendors' Media Center PCs had fairly hefty price tags. Thus, most folks never got acquainted with this fantastic application.Now Windows Media Center is built right into the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista. You can use it to organize, search for and play your music, photos and home videos on any computer. And if your system has a Vista compatible TV tuner card (or you buy an add-on card and install it), you can also hook up your cable or satellite service to your computer (just run a cable to the tuner card's input jack). Now you can watch live TV on your computer or use it to schedule recordings of your favorite programs and play them back later, on that computer or another.We've been using Windows Media Center PCs since 2003 and there are a lot of reasons we like it better than a TiVo or the DVRs that the cable and satellite companies provide. First of all, there's no monthly fee. That means once you get past the initial cost of the computer (or now, with Vista, the tuner card), there's a definite cost advantage.A second benefit is that you aren't really limited in the number of recorded programs you can store. Other DVRs give you a set amount of space (for instance, a $599 TiVo lets you record "up to 32 hours in HD or 300 hours in SD). We often don't get around to watching shows for a while, or we want to save them and watch them again later. If we run out of space, we can just add more USB hard drives. Our main media center now has three external drive for a total of about a terabyte of space, so we can keep hundreds of hours of recordings. We can also move those files to another computer's hard drive, or burn them to DVD.When we're away from home, we use a free program called Orb to access our recorded shows or live TV (as well as music, photos and other files) remotely from our laptop computers or even from our Windows Mobile phones. It's pretty cool to be able to watch your favorite TV show while you're stuck waiting at the airport for your delayed flight. If you want to know more about Orb, see http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-OrbThere are some cool plug-ins for Media Center, too. For instance, it can be difficult to web surf using the Media Center remote control, but MCEBrowser is designed specifically for that. It works with both XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Vista Media Center, and it's a free download at http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-MCEBrowser DVRMS Toolbox is another useful set of applications that you can use to automatically skip commercials on shows recorded in Media Center format (DVR- MS). You can read more about it at http://www.vistanews.com/LGM1CL/071220-DVRMS-Toolbox Vista has enhanced the Media Center interface and improved both performance and reliability. One of the aggravations of XP Media Center is the stability issues. Remember when you ran Windows 95 and had to reboot the system at least once a day or it would stop working? XP Media Center isn't quite that bad, but it does require a reboot much more frequently than XP Home and Pro editions.If you've never experienced Windows Media Center and you now have a Vista Home Premium or Ultimate computer, you should check it out. If you've used Media Center, let us know what you think. Do you prefer it to TiVo and other DVR options? Why or why not? Do you like Vista Media Center better than the XP version?