Pages Tagged “Microsoft”
Reviews
- Microsoft Edge ★★☆☆☆ Once you turn off all the Microsoft specials, it feels usable again – but then, it’s just another Chromium skin.
- Microsoft Outlook (Android) ★★★★☆ It works. More stable than the desktop version. Handles mail, calendar and contacts, offers the focused/other inbox view. Tries to keep you in Microsoft’s apps. OK for work, wouldn’t use it for personal mail.
- Microsoft Outlook (Desktop) ★★★☆☆ I won’t say I’ve never liked Outlook, because the macOS version has been pretty decent for a while now (if a bit of a resource hog), but the Windows versions have always been awkward, cluttered, and quirky.
- Microsoft Surface Go 2 ★★★★☆ A great ultra-light Windows 10 tablet with detachable keyboard. Or an annoyingly slow Windows 11 tablet.
- Windows 10 Mail and Calendar (discontinued) ★★★☆☆ Not a bad email client. Snappy, works with multiple accounts. Some issues with Nextcloud calendar and contacts. So of course it’s been discontinued in favor of Outlook.
Tech Tips
- Downgrading a Microsoft Surface Device to Windows 10 You can reinstall Windows on a Surface tablet or laptop using a hardware-specific recovery image and a USB drive. Microsoft will want you to log in and provide the serial number of the device you want to reinstall.
- How to disconnect OneDrive on macOS from an extra account that doesn’t exist anymore. Hidden inside the resource folder of the OneDrive app package, there’s a command to reset OneDrive.
- Minecraft Bedrock Beta vs. the Microsoft Store There’s got to be a better way to do this. Actually, I know there’s a better way to do this, because Minecraft already does it in Java Edition.
- Unhide the Windows 10 ESU Offer Windows Update is a bit flaky about making the offer to enroll a Windows 10 system in an extra year of security updates. If it’s not showing the offer, this can make it re-check whether your system qualifies: cmd /c ClipESUConsumer.exe -evaluateEligibility
- WGA False Positive Experience The time Windows mistakenly told me I was running a pirated copy…because Norton Internet Security had blocked its validation attempt.
- What do GNOME Online Accounts Do? It’s not obvious which services GNOME will use from each provider. Here’s where to find it.
Blog Posts
- Marketing
In retrospect, it’s wild that so many tech people who were hyper-aware of the fact that Microsoft’s dominance in the 1990s and 2000s was due to more to marketing (“never underestimate Microsoft on marketing”) than technical merits fell for the idea that a “marketplace of ideas” would coalesce around the best ideas, and not just […]
- Tech Giants’ Core Strategies
The Verge makes an interesting point about Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda: for the most part, Microsoft doesn’t care what hardware you run their stuff on, they just want you to buy the software. So it’s less likely to be about trying to gain Xbox exclusives and more likely to be about getting more games for […]
- Divide and Conquer
A pair of separate billboards used for Microsoft’s Surface tablet ad campaign. Creative use of existing space.
- WordMess
Must remember: No pasting from MS Word into WordPress. It’s faster to paste plain text and redo formatting than clean up Word’s mess.
- Alphabet Soup: XP SP and EV SSL XSS!
Sorry for the lack of updates this past week. I was just way too busy prepping for our move this weekend. A couple of interesting news bits I noticed when I got into work this morning: It looks like I’ve been lucky with installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’ve had no problems with the one machine […]
- Hazards of DRM on Music (or video, or any other media)
Mark Pilgrim, in The Day the Music Died, points out what happens when DRM meets market failure. On August 31, Microsoft will turn off the servers that validate their “PlaysForSure” DRM system (this predates the system they use for the Zune). This means that anyone who has bought music that uses PlaysForSure will not be […]
- Web News: Acid3 and IE8
Two items of interest today: First, the Web Standards Project has announced the completion of the Acid3 Test. Like Acid2, it’s specifically designed to test features that are in the specs, but that have incomplete, buggy, or nonexistant support in current web browsers. Acid2 focused primarily on CSS, and Acid3 focuses more on scripting. Also, […]
- Yahoo vs. Microsoft
Okay, I really have been out of it the last few days. I hadn’t heard that Microsoft was planning a hostile takeover of Yahoo!. I have to agree with this Google blog post: this would be bad. Yahoo! seems to “get it” (where “it” is an open Internet) much better than Microsoft does. Actually, it […]
- Corporate Evolution
Hixie’s Natural Log: Evolution in the species “Companies” – Microsoft’s dominance of the industry has killed off or absorbed many smaller companies. Those that have survived are those with strategies resistant to Microsoft’s tactics. The article looks at Mozilla, Google, and Apple.
- Will Internet Explorer 7 finally put IE6 to rest?
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Team reports on a new IE installer release. They’ve changed a couple of defaults, updated their tutorials… and dropped the requirement for Windows Genuine Advantage validation: Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, weâre updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as […]
- Unlikely Partnership
Here’s a surprise: web standardista extraordinaire Molly Holzschlag is now working with Microsoft to promote web standards within the organization. Improving interoperability, especially at high-profile services like many of Microsoft’s, is critical to the future of the web. I can only hope that the emphasis on standards will feed into the design goals for Internet […]
- Pumpkin Patch Day
Well, it’s the second Tuesday of the month. With Microsoft’s regular update cycle, that makes it Patch Tuesday. It’s also October, the month leading up to Halloween. I hereby declare today to be Pumpkin Patch Tuesday.
- Browser Discrimination hits IE7
I just read an interesting post from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team on The IE7 User-Agent String. This statement in particular illustrates a problem not unfamiliar to Opera users: There are a few remaining sites which fail to recognize IE7 because they are performing exact string matches to look for specific IE version strings. Those checks […]
- The Fall of Windows 95
Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition will stop getting security updates next month. Firefox 3, due out next year, will require Windows 2000 or later. A lot of controversy has erupted over the wisdom of these decisions. But how many people are still using these older versions of Windows? And how quickly are […]
- WaSP/Microsoft Collaboration
The Web Standards Project has announced a joint task force with Microsoft to promote web standards in products like Visual Studio and ASP.NET. I imagine this was probably a factor in the decision to divest themselves of Browse Happy last month. Certainly this project is more in line with their core mission—promoting the use of […]
- Perspective on the browser wars
At the end of a post on SSL/TLS and just how much security a “secure” site really gives you, Eric Lawrence of IEBlog posted an interesting thought: The so-called “browser wars” have fundamentally changed. It’s no longer Microsoft vs. Mozilla vs. Opera et all. Now it’s the “good guys” vs. the “bad guys.” The “bad […]
- The Pain of Winstallation (a Haiku)
Windows gets installed Now reboot–again!–again! Why so many times?
- Bring It On
As reported all over the place, Microsoft has reversed its previous plans and will be releasing a new beta of Internet Explorer this summer instead of keeping it locked to the next version of Windows. About frelling time. Of course, there’s no word on whether they’ll actually improve page rendering—all the statements so far have […]
- The Geek Factor
I saw this CNET headline — Microsoft battles piracy with free software — and my first thought was that they were using some GPL’ed/BSD’ed/etc. tool for tracking or some such. No, they’re just giving away free software to people who will let them remotely verify that their OS installation is legit. Which makes perfect sense […]
- IE 2 Flashback
I had to reboot one of the Windows servers on Thursday, at which point the GDI+ checker installed by Tuesday’s security fix popped up a message explaining that there was still some software with the JPEG vulnerability. OK, fine, I’ll run it again and see what’s missing. So I clicked on, well, OK, and it […]
- Backhanded compliment
Microsoft responds to Apple’s contention that portable video isn’t a big market: “Ask kids in the back of a car on a two-hour trip, ‘Hey, would you like to have your videos there?’ My kids would,” Gates said. “I guess Steve’s kids just listen to Bach and Mozart. But mine, they want to watch ‘Finding […]
- What’s NOT in a name?
Cliches aside, it appears that as a result of the trademark suit by Microsoft, Lindows is now going by the name Lin—s (LinDash) in parts of Europe. Lindows — or Lin—s if you prefer — is a company that has been selling an ultra-user-friendly version of Linux. Criticized by many for lax security (they’ve chosen […]