Microsoft must be desperate. That was my first thought when I read that Microsoft made the decision to remove the Windows Genuine Advantage validation check from the download and installation of Internet Explorer 7. I was not able to come up with any other explanation why they decided to turn around 180 degrees and head for the other direction.

Categories: Browsing, ie

Preezo is a fast powerpoint maker on the web. Like most of the web 2.0 apps it uses Ajax to power its site. To use the application you need to register and log in. The first thing I notice is there is no lag at all using the different features. It is very responsive. Even with Google Docs there is some lag while adding stuff. I would happily use this on my browser.

Categories: Online Services, Software, Tools

I have been writing about the stealth update that Microsoft did two weeks ago. Files in Windows XP and Windows Vista were updated without the users consent silently in the background. After some users did find out about the secret update Microsoft tried to convince everyone that the update was used to update the update routine of Windows XP and Vista.

Categories: Operating Systems, Windows

Welcome to another post in my weekly Software Updates series. I write about software that has been updated the last week on every Wednesday with a focus on software that has already been written about here at Ghacks. I encourage everyone to post findings of their own in the comment section which will give me the opportunity to check those applications out and write an article about them.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

Enigma, a regular visitor of my blog, asked if there was a way to stop pdf spam from appearing in his Windows Live Mail Desktop software. I decided to investigate the matter and take a look at it. Windows Live Mail Desktop is basically a mail client like Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook integrating with several other Microsoft applications such as Windows Live Messenger or Live Spaces.

Categories: Email, Operating Systems, Windows

Outlook blocks certain file types like exe and vbs by default giving the user no option to enable certain file types that the user would like to access. The only possible option for most users is to ask the sender to send the mail in a format that is not blocked automatically by Microsoft Outlook.

Categories: Email, Operating Systems, Windows

Page Defrag is a tiny 70 Kilobyte software that displays information about how fragmented your paging files and registry hives are. Defragmenters running in Windows have no way of defragmenting those paging files and registry hives which usually means that they get fragmented over time which can degrade system performance.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

Microsoft released the Office 2003 Service Pack 3 just a few hours ago which contains the latest updates for Office 2003. The pack with a size of 117 Megabytes contains 22 security patches and updates as well as the previous two service packs for Office 2003. The main emphasize of this service pack seems to be security related because 14 of the 22 updates are security related.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

I do not like the way all major browsers display and let you manage the bookmarks and favorites. Internet Explorer 7 displays the favorites either in a sidebar or a tiny window and it becomes really annoying if you have to edit a lot of favorites from time to time. I do add a lot of websites to the favorites at work because that is the only computer that I’m forced to use the Internet Explorer.

Categories: Browsing, ie