Replies

How about this idea? Uninstall the “end of life” program, and rescan to clear the PSI console – If you still find end of life programs useful, just be advised that you are setting your PC security up for disaster, as malicious malware look for such vulnerabilities to attack the local machine.

Should have responded to this before, but it is still relevant. I use end-of-life programs including Microsoft PhotoDraw V2 and Visio 2003. I see them as close to zero risk, since I only use eg, PhotoDraw for a few minutes each year to create birthday and Christmas cards. At other times the programs sit in their folders and IMO pose no risk. Please let me know if I am wrong.

To ignore end-of-life programs and keep your 100% score (as has been mentioned several times) click “+” by the program in PSI2, then double click the bottom line, right-click the program name and select “Ignore Program”.

In terms of PSI2 being slow, a scan of my 80 programs just now took 23 seconds.

Sometimes PSI fails to scan, maybe when someone from Flexera fails to push the right button before heading home for the weekend. This happened 10 days ago, and caused much concern. Luckily, it started working again after the weekend. see for example https://secunia.com/community/forum/thread/show/15787/psi2_does_not_scan_after_windows_10_update

Why would anyone want to send a 25 MB picture by email? Sorry you didn’t look at Eudora 7, still the best email client!

Try what I mentioned previously. Drag a picture into Word, select it, cut it to the clipboard, then Paste Special jpeg and see what happens. My file size (with a 1MB) pic was 224 kB.

To Paste Special btw, click Home, pull down Paste, then click Paste Special.

I have found that dragging (from File Explorer) and dropping into the file adds nothing extra to the filesize. I just tested it by dragging a 955 kB pic onto a 26 kB blank doc, which gave a new file size of 981 kB as expected. In bygone days I used to copy jpgs to the clipboard then paste special jpg, but there is now no advantage in that and maybe some loss in resolution. So try drag and drop – I would be surprised if it doesn’t work. I am on 365/2016.

And in passing, why do you want to include 2 or 3 meg files in your book? I would (almost) guarantee that no-one would spot the lower resolution if you first reduced them to say 500 kB which I do to all my pic files, except ones I might one day want to reproduce at A2 or A1 size.

I also did not care to be told about end-of-life programs every time PSI was run.

In PSI 2 (which I prefer to 3) it is very easy to ignore end-of-life programs. Just double click the program you want to ignore, right click the program name and select “ignore”. Then it will not show up in any future scan reports.

I find PSI 2 excellent, and run it in the background. It advises when updates are required on most of my 100 or so installed programs. Sometimes it is the optimal way to update, though at other times, it is better to go to the programs website (IMO).

If you use mouse mode with the latest release of Office 2016 (16.0.6568.2025) the space between icons on the QAT is substantially reduced.

Thanks for that – MS is reported on https://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general/suggestions/9906966-office-2016-quick-access-toolbar-too-wide?page=9&per_page=20 to have (finally) responded to their user base. I will give 2016 a try, and if it can fit as many icons as 2013 will stick with it.

I use 365/2013 and have not shifted yet to 2016 due to the previously wide icon spacing on the QAT. I also use Access, Visio and Project 2003 which work great under Windows 10. Also Photodraw 2000 – a shame MS stopped developing this amazing program.

I like many aspects of W10. But one of several things I don’t like is that Update will undo at least some registry changes you have made. For example I really do not want This PC to show the folders such as Documents, Pictures etc, so change the registry to remove them. It is very annoying to have them put back so often.

A recent update also unregistered current release Graphic Workshop Professional – easy enough to reregister, but pretty ridiculous. Alchemy Mindworks says that “version 6 software can become unregistered if Windows 10 performs a hidden major upgrade, such as the Threshold 2 build that began rolling out late last year”.

I use Office 365/2013. Works fine under Windows 10. I cannot upgrade to 2016 until MS fixes the stupid wide icon spacing in the quick access toolbar. Even 2013 is not great in that regard – in many ways I too would like to go back to 2003 which has been by far the best release of office for a PC – useful QAT, editable macro icons, no ribbon. If MS forces me to “upgrade” to 2016, I will happily go back to 2003.

If you have a pdf printer installed (I use Acrobat X), just press Ctrl P and choose pdf. However for many web pages this gives you a lot of rubbish and a very long file. This page for example out of Firefox was 26 pages long, with very narrow main content. Much better IMO is to copy and paste the parts of the page you want into Word (as other commenters suggest). A negative of this system is that pictures are often rather large and may need to be reduced in size and wrapped to reduce the length of the article.

An alternative for a page that fits on one screen, is to use Snipping Tool and save the snip as a jpg.

This alone will stop me “upgrading” to 2016. 2013 is bad enough but 2016 is worse. Hopefully MS will fix this major problem before too long. If it worries you, please visit MS feedback and add your voice and votes to the request to optionally allow narrow icon spacing.
http://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general/suggestions/9906966-office-2016-quick-access-toolbar-too-wide?page=2&per_page=20
There is also discussion at
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-word/how-to-reduce-spacing-between-icons-on-quick/edded976-628c-458c-ad3a-720a252d97af?page=3&tm=1443666291613&auth=1
But to answer the question, there is no way at present to reduce spacing between icons.

I create a new partition called Skydrive, and sync it with my data partition. I then sync the Skydrive partition to OneDrive. So the only time OneDrive wants to transfer files to the cloud is when I update my Skydrive partition. I do this (i) when I think it’s time for a backup to the cloud, and (ii) when I have good bandwidth (and no nasty charges). Generally my OneDrive sync needs around 250MB, if I sync twice per week. You can also filter out files not needed to be backed up between your data partition and Skdrive (or whatever you call it) like a lot of the Outlook or Eudora files.

The best thing about Eudora (I assume you’re talking Eudora 7) is that it is ridiculously easy to install, reinstall and back up. Install it as administrator in your data partition – say D:Data (or My documents), and request it to also save its data (ie, mailboxes, nicknames etc) to D:Eudora. Then (i) your mailboxes will be easy to find and backup (just sync the whole Eudora folder to your backup drive) and (ii) it can be reinstalled on the same or any other computer by simply copying the whole backed up folder to the new location, and reinstalling Eudora over the top. I have done this on around 15 computers over 20 years or so. Works fine on Windows 8, and hoping it will still work on 10.

I use Omnipage Ultimate, expensive but sometimes offered cheaply. Very efficient conversion of all files into Word or Excel. But no good if you can’t install software.

Encryption is useful for a range of activities other than whole disk encrypting. For example, I use it to encrypt my backup files on external hard drives, to reduce risks if a drive is stolen. I presume TrueCrypt is still ok for this. Or is it?

In passing, a fork of TC is being developed – known as CipherShed. Release is planned shortly according to http://www.esecurityplanet.com/open-source-security/truecrypt-getting-a-new-life.html

Lincoln: I am disappointed that you dropped OneDrive from your analysis. I have no use for versioning, or rather I manage my own versioning system, and absolutely do not want or need my OneDrive backup system to retain versions. OD provides a remarkably cheap (with 1 TB coming “free” with an Office 365 sub) and effective back up option. I sync my data partition to a OneDrive partition on my computer twice each week (on other days I backup key folders to Briefcase). This seems a fine option to me, since I am working in Central Asia and do not have the luxury of highspeed broadband. I hope you can think through the range of options that OneDrive (and other cloud backup programs) offer and cover them in a future article.

By the way, the reason I don’t want versioning in the cloud is that I maintain my own versions, by moving backup files to a folder in a different partition on my hard drive. So I end up with an almost complete history of a file, with up to around 50 versions. Some time after completion of the job, I delete the folder.