Replies

With Kathleen’s departure, is Lounge Life finished?

Tracey Capen says not necessarily. He’ll do the column as he has time.

@ wavy: Your suggestion is a good one–and I’ll pass it on.

Ms. Atkins,

Thank you for your response. I just sent another message to Penton customer support and also emailed the WS web master. In my email to the webmaster, I asked that it be forwarded to you and I pasted a copy of my email to Penton.

For future reference, do you have an email address at WS? This would make it easier to send you a copy of my correspondence with Penton.

Best regards to you and your coworkers at Windows Secrets during what must be a trying time for you.

Charles

Thank you, Charles. My email address is kathleen.atkins@penton.com. I should let you know that I’m an editor, not a member of the customer support team. But I can advise them in some matters, and I do pay attention to Windows Secrets reader concerns expressed in the Lounge.

Best, Kathleen

Still not receiving a Newsletter, but rather a spammy email full of click bait. The emails do not even have the word “Newsletter” in the subject line of the email anymore.

I have complained twice, both to Customer Support and the Editor. I guess they don’t care about the customers and have no intention of delivering an entire Newsletter.

I guess it’s time to ask for a refund and cancellation. Maybe I should put that request on a webpage and send them an email containing a link to the webpage. Does anyone think that they would click links in an email?

As I have mentioned in this thread previously, we are working on the problem of returning the newsletter to a full-text email. It’s a challenge to do that reversal on Penton’s platform. In the meantime, the best advice for a full-newsletter experience that I can give you is to white-list the newsletter email and click the link “Click to see the full newsletter online.” Just out of curiosity, why do you hesitate to go on to the Windows Secrets website? Over the years, subscribers naturally have gone on to the site to renew subscriptions or buy ebooks or change email addresses or other preferences even if they have tended to read the whole newsletter in email. Many subscribers go online to participate in the Lounge–you, yourself, do that. The Windows Secrets website and the Lounge are reputable online places, after all.

Penton bought WindowsSecret Newsletter to eliminate the competition. Apparently, it is doing everything in its power to eliminate all the subscribers and bury the Newsletter. Looks like it’s well on its way to accomplishing its mission!!!!

HammondMike,

Perhaps you’re right. There has been black printing over the pages of WS for several weeks now. The first time I wrote about to Penton about this, they responded quite quickly and asked me to send them a screen shot. This quick response impressed me.

I sent them a second message and attached a screen shot. This time they neither responded nor fixed the problem. To add insult to injury, Penton stopped sending me Windows Secrets this week. Given the level of service to subscribers of Windows Secrets, customer service is probably deluged with messages from subscribers to WS. Consequently, I don’t fault the people in customer service.

Perhaps I should write to someone else at Penton requesting a refund of my subscription. If your subscription will expire in a couple of months, base your decision on how Penton treats subscribers between now and then.

Hello,
I sent this exchange to the customersupport@penton.com team, who can’t find an email from you. Could you please resend your complaint to them so that they can follow up? They’ll be expecting to hear from you at customersupport@penton.com.
Best, Kathleen

Kathleen – many thanks for this. I have rebuilt Win 7 several times, but have the uncomfortable feeling that it was never quite the same as when it was fresh out of the box.

To your advice I would add that, before embarking on rebuilding Win 7, you (not you, I mean!) should have all the up-to-date drivers from the PC manufacturer, or driver supplier, and – this is vital – a note of the order in which the drivers should be installed. After my first rebuild, I learned that this does matter, certainly does with the Dell Latitude E, now four years old.

So glad you like Susan Bradley’s article–she wrote it, not me. I merely posted it. KA

I can see where there is some advantage to having the newsletter now appear on the website, e.g., the content can be accessed from one’s PC, tablet or smartphone. However, I really liked the old newsletter that came to my inbox regularly and did not require me to log onto the website. I’m curious as to whether there is any chance that the old totally self-contained newsletter will be brought back, perhaps as an option.

We’re having conversations about the possibility of publishing full articles in the newsletters again, but we must consider technical issues with the Penton publishing system. Not everything is equally possible in all systems.

ppascoe, we still publish both LangaList and Patch Watch, with the same frequency as always. Here’s a link to Fred’s most recent LangaList, (published in Tuesday, February 9 issue: http://windowssecrets.com/langalist-plus/what-maintenance-do-solid-state-drives-require/
And we’re presently editing Susan Bradley’s Patch Watch to be published this evening for the Thursday, February 11 issue. Look for it in your Windows Secrets newsletter tomorrow morning–or on the Windows Secrets website tonight.

If you are not receiving the newsletter, contact customerservice@penton.com. Let them know right away. Tell them how many you’re missing, your email delivery address, and whether you have ever used other email addresses for the Windows Secrets newsletter. Also be certain to whitelist the new Windows Secrets newsletter Send address: windowssecrets@enews.windowssecrets.com

Try using the “Contact” tab at the top of the page to send a message to the editor. They usually reply promptly.

Joe

The best people to contact regarding delivery and subscription issues is at this email address: customersupport@penton.com. The Contact tab messages come to me, and I’m not the correct recipient of newsletter delivery-trouble email. When you write to customer support people, remind them that they might have heard from you before regarding delivery. You should also check your spam or deleted mail folders because as an earlier poster noted, your ISP might not recognize our new sending address. You should white-list it.

Lifetime Subscribers: We want to clear up any confusion regarding subscriptions for Windows Secrets Lifetime Subscribers. Your subscriptions are being honored along with your access to the newsletter archives. You will also have an opportunity to sign up for new bonuses and offers going forward.

I just noticed that of all threads listed on the first page of The Lounge: Windows Secrets Columns section, views for this particular thread pretty much dwarfs every other.

And checking back through a couple of pages into past threads, I seem to be seeing FAR less participation and page views since the change to the newsletter format.

I wonder if the Penton suits have noticed? Anyone in the capsule think of alerting Houston that maybe we have a problem here?

We in the capsule wouldn’t keep all this news to ourselves. So yes, as you say, we alerted Houston.

For those of you who are waiting for me to answer your emails, I’m sorry about my delay in answering. You can imagine that your thoughts about the recent changes in the Windows Secrets newsletter’s format, subscription policies, publishing schedule, and other changes are reflected in many emails and postings from your fellow subscribers. I have not yet been able to answer every email or post, but I have read every one of them.

To address just one issue right now, the new format of the newsletter and the related ease (or not) of getting to Windows Secrets articles: we can make that better, and we will. I can’t give you a date for changes, but fixes are in development. Quite frankly, we, too, liked opening the newsletter and seeing the whole thing there. We, too, archived copies of the newsletter on our local machines. It’s extremely doubtful that we can give all that, exactly, back to you, but we are working on restoring ease of use by different means.

By the way, a large part of the reason for the new format has to do with the limitations of our publishing platform. To be cost effective, media companies typically standardize on one platform for their various publications. Windows Secrets’ previous owner migrated the newsletter from proprietary code to its standard WordPress platform – after many hours of custom coding in WordPress. So, too, Penton must now migrate the newsletter to the same platform it uses for its many other publications. That platform has its drawbacks and advantages. For example, the current publishing system and the abbreviated form of the newsletter should let Windows Secrets automatically reformat for smaller smartphone screens. Some of our subscribers are reading Windows Secrets on smartphones now.

As for another matter that irks many of you, the publishing schedule, let me assure you that you’re still receiving every week the same number of articles you received in the old-format, once-per-week Windows Secrets. They’re distributed differently—two to three articles per issue twice a week produces the four to six pieces per week that you were accustomed to receiving. Fred Langa is still writing LangaList Plus, as usual, and Susan Bradley is still producing the Patch Watch columns. Our other regular columnists continue to write columns. We continue to be very glad to work with all of them.

Just so you know, I continue to read all your posts here in the Lounge, too.

Having seen the first few iterations of the new Windows Secrets Newsletter format, I am not seeing Susan Bradley’s Patch Watch column. Has it been discontinued, or am I missing something?

Susan Bradley’s Patch Watch column will continue as usual. Her most recent column appeared last week in the January 14 issue. Here’s a link to it:
http://windowssecrets.com/patch-watch/a-deadline-for-obsolete-ies-and-windows-8/

Thanks for your kind and professional reply. It it obvious that some subscribers are upset. I’m not. My subscription dates back to the original LangaList. I have increased my contribution progressively over the years, and currently pay $24/year. I based my contribution on what I was paying for PC World and PC Magazine subscriptions. I have long since discontinued my subscriptions (of course, PC World is defunct) because they became irrelevant. Not Windows Secrets, however.

My questions about the change:
1. Will we have continued access to the Windows Secrets archive?
2. Will we have continues access to the LangaList archives?
3. Will the Windows Secrets Forum continue to operate?
4. Will we be able to communicate with the editors and writers as we have in the past?

I hate to see that the free articles will be gone. I’m afraid that the Windows Secrets free articles might be lost in a flood of articles on WinInfo. I often sent links to the free articles to friends. I have no idea how many subscribed to Windows Secrets because of their introduction to the excellent articles that could be found.

Wishing you (and us) good luck in the momentous and uncertain future.

Thank you for your clear and kind email, lien.
1. Yes, subscribers will continue to have access to the Windows Secrets archive.
2. Yes, the LangaList articles that are part of Windows Secrets archives will be available as always.
3. Yes, the Windows Secrets Lounge (the forums) will continue to operate.
4. Yes, you will be able to communicate with the editors and writers as you have in the past.

Thank you very much for your good wishes.
Kathleen