Replies

As far as I know, the Office 365 licence is per machine, rather than per user. Am I correct in this assumption?

Incorrect. Office 365 is licensed to a specific email account/user. Office 2010 and earlier are licensed to specific machines.

I have not tried it myself, but as I understand it in theory, other Windows userids on the computer should be able to use Office 365 installed on your machine.

However, with Office 365 Home Premium, you also have the option of “inviting” up to 4 other people to share your Home license. They will be able to install and use 365 on any machine also. You will be limited to using your license with it installed/activated on a max of 5 machines at a time, but you have control to “deactivate” any current installation.

VIDEO 1:02 MINUTE: INSTALL OFFICE 365 ON MORE THAN ONE COMPUTER
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/support/install-office-on-more-than-one-computer-HA102901468.aspx
You can install your Office 365 2013 Home premium license on up to 5 devices. On each of those devices, multiple family members can have Windows accounts to access the Office apps you installed. You can install Office 365 Home Premium on up to five Mac or PC computers. You can even install it on a family member’s computer. Before you start, check the system requirements to make sure your computer can run Office. You will access https://www.office.com/myaccount

2014 02 04- NEW METHOD OF SHARING YOUR OFFICE 365 SUBSCRIPTION – INVITE – INVITATION
http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1997
How to share your Office licenses around to the family.
An Office 365 Home Premium subscription has always come with 5 licenses for Office desktop software (Office for Windows or Mac).
Originally you could only access those installs by login to the purchasers Microsoft account. That wasn’t a great idea because it meant giving your password to another member of the family to let them install Office.
Now the owner/purchaser of Office 365 Home Premium can nominate up to 4 other people (household/family members according to the license) who can install Office desktop software.

Click on Add user and enter the email address of the person.
Tip: ask them what email address they have, if any, linked to an existing Microsoft/Hotmail/Outlook.com account. That’s the most convenient address to use for linking to the subscription because no new account has to be created. The extra 1TB (recently upgraded from original 20GB limit) of OneDrive (formerly Skydrive) space is added to their existing OneDrive allowance.

INITIAL INSTALL OFFICE ON YOUR PC OR MAC WITH OFFICE 365 – https://WWW.OFFICE.COM/MYACCOUNT
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/office365-suite-help/install-office-on-your-pc-or-mac-with-office-365-HA102822111.aspx
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MANAGING OFFICE 365 INSTALLATIONS: ACTIVATING, DEACTIVATING, AND REACTIVATING
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/archive/2012/11/28/managing-office-365-proplus-installations-activating-deactivating-and-reactivating.aspx – note: Although this article refers to Pro Plus, the process is the same for other Office 365 bundles
DHB 28 Nov 2012 9:39 AM

(NOTE: The general ideas in this article apply to all versions of Office 365)

Being able to install and use Office on up to 5 PCs at the same time is one benefit of your organization having an Office 365 subscription with Office 365 ProPlus. For example, a user could have Office installed on the following computers:
• a desktop computer in her office
• a laptop that she uses when traveling
• a home computer

Even though Office is installed on three different computers, only one Office 365 license is used.

So how do you manage to keep track of all these installations? What happens if the user already has Office installed on 5 computers, but needs to install Office on another computer?

This blog post will cover both the user experience of managing Office 365 ProPlus installations and what aspects the Office 365 administrator can control. Why are we focusing on the user experience in a blog for IT Pros? As you will see, the Office 365 user, not the administrator, actually plays the central role in managing Office 365 ProPlus installations. But administrators will need to be prepared to answer questions from users about such things as activation and deactivation, because these will be new and unfamiliar concepts for most users.

As we go through the user experience in this blog post, we will provide some administrator-specific information. And the blog post finishes up with additional information for the administrator to consider for managing Office 365 ProPlus installations.

This article includes following subtitles:
• Viewing a list of Office 365 installations
• Activating an Office 365 installation
• Deactivating an Office 365 installation
• Reactivating an Office 365 installation
• Some considerations for Office 365 administrators

Re: No-reformat reinstalls for all Windows versions

You’ve been “drinking the coolaid” passed out by MS Marketing (grin!).

Windows 8/8.1 actually does have a non-destructive “re-install”. It is called “Refresh“. Out of the box, Refresh uses a default image that does not include “traditional”/”desktop” applications (ie MS Office) that have been installed. This was a major hang up for me before Win 8 was released, ie “what a useless tool!”.

What MS forgets to mention, and that most reviewers don’t find, is that Win 8 ships with a complimentary tool called RecImg.EXE. This tool generates new “image” files that captures installed desktop programs. So the theory would be, after you install a “desktop” application and finish configuring it you would run RecImg.EXE to capture the newly installed program.

Personally, I don’t understand why MS does not publicize Refresh & RecImg.EXE as “single” tool.

There are free tools that can help you manage these image files allowing you to select which image you use for a refresh and to delete obsolete ones.

Some people have found that turning off Hardware Acceleration has helped with various problems in Office 2013

After a series of troubleshooting, I traced the problem to the accelerated graphics. Just disable the it. Here’s how:
1. File menu,
2. Options command
3. Advanced option
4. Scroll down to the Display section of the dialog,
5. toggle the check the box for “Disable hardware graphics acceleration

This same problem has shown up in Office 2013 and Win 8.1.

One fix is to disable Hardware acceleration in the application, ie
1. Click the File tab.
2. Click Options.
3. Click Advanced.
4. Under Display, select the Disable hardware graphics acceleration check box.
5. Also try changing the box for “Use subpixel positioning to smooth fonts on screen”
6. Click Ok.

Registry “Hack” to Disable Hardware Acceleration
1. Run regedit (Win + R ; “regedit”)
2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice15.0Common
3. Create a New Key and name it “Graphics”
4. Select Graphics, right-click on the right panel and create a New DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it DisableHardwareAcceleration.
5. Enter Value data as 1
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspx

Win 7
1. Choose Start > Control Panel.
2. Double click Personalization and select Display Settings.
3. Click Advanced Settings.
4. Click Change Settings on the Troubleshooting tab.
5. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to None.
6. Click Apply and then click OK to accept the new setting and close the dialog box.
7. Click OK to close the Display Properties dialog box.
8. Restart Windows.

EFFECTS OF DISABLING HARDWARE ACCELERATION
With hardware acceleration disabled, AirSpace device renders using software rendering (WARP) that relies mainly on the CPU and uses limited or no graphics card resources. You can cause a lower frame rate and increase in the working set. Performance becomes more dependent on CPU characteristics, like memory, number of cores, and on how many apps are open, and can strain the CPU resources.

On Windows 7, Office animations are disabled. On Windows 8, animations are enabled because of D2D WARP improvements found in Windows 8.
Workaround No workaround currently available.

****************

Here are some more fixes that worked for some people:
Turn off High Contrast on Win8 release preview and check the results. To turn off the high contrast, try the below steps:
o Press Windows Key +R, type in Control Panel and click OK.
o Click on Ease of Access, Ease of Access Center, and then click on Make the computer easier to see.
o Uncheck all the options under “High contrast” and click on OK.

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ANOTHER FIX DISABLE SCALING ON HIGH DPI SETTINGS
PPT 2013 Poor Scaling (Fuzzy/Blurry) on High-Res Display
Normally, this would be very simple. You just:
• Right-click on your PowerPoint shortcut, and select Properties
• Go to the Compatibility Tab
• Check the “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” checkbox
• Click OK / Apply
• Relaunch PPT
Presto chango, problem solved. However, PPT15 is a 64-bit application, which means that these checkboxes are grayed out and cannot be changed from this UI.
The only solution I found was to edit the registry manually (caution: this is generally a very dangerous thing to do, so be very careful with this)
• Type Windows Key + R to open the run dialog
• type “regedit” and click OK
• Expand the tree to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > AppCompatFlags > Layers
• Click on the “Layers” node in the tree
• Right-click in the right hand side of the window (where it says Name / Type / Data) and select New > String Value
• In the name of the key item that is created, enter the location of your POWERPNT.EXE file (mine was “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice15POWERPNT.EXE”) and hit Enter
• Now, right click the key that was created and select Modify
• In the Value Data text box, enter “~ HIGHDPIAWARE” and click OK
• Close the registry editor, and try reopening PPT
If your problem was scaling on high DPI displays, the problem should be solved.
To confirm that you edited the registry correctly, follow the first set of directions above to view the compatibility settings of PowerPoint in the UI. The checkbox will still be grayed out, but it will now be checked.

******************

WIN 8 ENABLE CLEARTYPE OPTIMIZATION
http://www.insideris.com/windows-8-tips-enable-cleartype-optimization/

EXPLANATION
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/blurry-text-in-windows-8/ed053d17-b525-4e09-bdbc-de91114d975c

***************

Remember that 2013 is an evolution from 2007 -> 2010 -> 2013. So tips and suggestions you see for earlier versions will often still be applicable in the later versions.

One key point to remember is that the ribbon was designed from the ground up as a way of making using Office easier for NEW USERS. Experienced users like us were a distant second consideration.

For any new user I strongly suggest they take advantage of the some of the “command search/finder” tools listed in the “Learning the Ribbon” section below. Particularly the “Map 2003 menu to 2010 Ribbon Silverlight applets” and the “Word Command Finder” web page

If you are a tinkerer and want some answers to the question “why the **** did they decide to do this stupid thing in the ribbon”, take a look through the Jensen Harris link. There is a lot! of reading there.

Here are a bunch of “what’s new” articles

What’s new in 2007 / What’s new in 2010 / 2013
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178980.aspx – This page has links to specific details for Office 2010 as a whole and each of the Office Apps

Changes in the 2007 Office system – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178954%28office.12%29.aspx

Technical reference for the 2007 Office release, 257 pages of all changes – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=79595

WHAT’S NEW IN OFFICE 2013
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ – section on left hand side called:- What’s New in Office?
Win8 Review – What’s New in Win8 RTM Version? http://www.askvg.com/windows-8-review-whats-new-in-windows-8-developer-preview/
http://www.askvg.com/review-whats-new-in-microsoft-office-2013/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178980.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178954.aspx

http://www.7tutorials.com/what-s-new-office-2013-and-office-365-where-buy-it

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-whats-new-in-office-2013-your-unofficial-overview/ – link to download 27pg booklet

Here is an overload of “learning the ribbon” type tips and links

LEARNING THE RIBBON LINKS
A key point to keep in mind is that from the point of view of the “Average User”, Office 2007 and 2010 are 99% identical. Tips specific to 2007 almost always are still valid in 2010 apps so don’t automatically ignore things that were created for 2007.

Unfortunately, I have not seen many of these tools recreated for 2013.

This next link is one of the best resources I’ve looked at for getting you into the right frame of mind.
Stop Clicking and Exploring Excel 2007 like a Newbie – http://www.scribd.com/doc/29093109/Stop-Clicking-Exploring-Excel-Ribbon-Like-Newbie – applies to any Ribbonized app. This is an excellent booklet to get people into the right frame of mind to learn and use ANYribbonized app.

2010 / 2007 Search Command Addon http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx .

Office Watch Word/Excel Command Finder –
http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx
http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2007.aspx
http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Excel_2007.aspx – Office Watch Excel 2007 Command Finder

The Office watch command finders are really good tools, they actually provide a more focused result, but the path it describes is sometimes wrong. (They got all of the info from MS …). They have also added some commands that are not on the “official” MS command list.

You can add the link to OWW Command Finder tool to the QAT using this macro:
Public Sub command_finder()
‘ Ed Weber
‘ Call the Office Watch Command List applet
‘ Equivalent to the Search Tab addon
‘
ActiveDocument.FollowHyperlink _
Address:=” http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx”, _
NewWindow:=True, AddHistory:=False
End Sub

Map 2003 menu to 2010 Ribbon Silverlight applets and spreadsheets- https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/learn-where-menu-and-toolbar-commands-are-in-office-2010-and-related-products-HA101794130.aspx?CTT=3 – Another way of finding “lost” commands

I just watched the video on this page:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx
It’s just under 1.5 hours. I found it quite informative. It explains a lot of the (ir)rational behind the Ribbon design, including the name by the Manager in charge of it’s development (not that I agree with it all…). The slides download just don’t tell the story.

12 Steps to become awesome in Excel (and your work) in 2012 – http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/01/06/12-ways-to-learn-excel/ – although this tip is identified as being specific to Excel, it applies to any software (ruined by ribbonization or not), and life in general.
http://www.askvg.com/download-free-microsoft-office-2010-getting-started-screensaver-for-windows-7/

Download a free screensaver from MS that presents short video tips. New tips constantly downloaded from a MS RSS feed.
Good site, lots of good tips. Their newsletter is worth signing up for.

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog –
This one can be used to find answers to the inevitable question: “why did stupid MS do this, that or the other stupid thing in the stupid ribbon’:
Original source: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/10/09/58
alternate source http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/table-of-contents.aspx
This is an organized Table Of Contents to a large collection of links to MS Dev Team Blogs about the design and building of the 2007 ribbon. A LOT of reading, but interesting to understand the underlying (il)logic of the Ribbon

Map 2003 menu to 2007 Ribbon Flash Applets, spreadsheets – https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/guides-to-the-ribbon-use-office-2003-menus-to-learn-the-office-2007-user-interface-HA010229584.aspx
http://www.worldstart.com/ms-office-2010-still-having-trouble-locating-things-on-the-ribbon/comment-page-1/#comment-26505

2007/2010 Getting Started Tab addin Download
The optional “Get Started” addin also has a button to the “Interactive Word 2003 to Word 2007 Command Reference Guide”, but this button activates an internet link to the MS website. Personally, I prefer using the downloaded flash applet. Note: I have had problems trying to run the online version on FireFox, it worked fine in IE.
https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/download-help-to-get-started-with-office-2007-HA010214685.aspx?pid=CL100788241033
This download adds a Get Started tab to the end of the Word 2007 Ribbon. Commands on this tab give you easy access to free content on Office Online, such as training courses, video demos, and other Office Online content designed to help you learn Word 2007 quickly. An Office Online interactive command mapping tool, also available on the Get Started tab, shows you where to find Word 2003 buttons and commands are in Word 2007. Office Online Community discussions are also available directly from Word with this add-in.

Ribbon Hero – http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/be-ribbon-hero-and-have-fun-doing-it-HA010390372.aspx A learning game that guides you through various Office features.
Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy’s Second Chance – http://www.ribbonhero.com/news.html New version of the learning game.

Office 2010 Getting Started resources downloads page- Articles, interactive guides and guidance to help you be more productive with Office 2010 more quickly. – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17339

2010 Migration Guides – https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/office-2010-migration-guides-HA101982272.aspx

3 ways to learn the Office 2010 ribbon http://blogs.office.com/b/office-education/archive/2011/01/10/3-ways-to-learn-the-Office-2010-ribbon.aspx

10+ ways to help your users transition to Word 2007 http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=407

10+ ways to train your users on Office 2007 for free http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/msoffice/?p=144

Word 2010 / 2007 Free Tutorial – http://www.wordtutorial.net/

Mini-glossary: Office 2007 terms you should know – http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6180692.html

10 new Office 2007 interface elements (and what most of them are really called) http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/msoffice/?p=139

Dictionary of Windows UI terms – http://www.askvg.com/complete-guide-for-windows-customization-terms-and-resources/

Word 2007 Cheat Sheet – Intro to Ribbon UI http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9010482/Word_2007_Cheat_Sheet

Excel 2010 cheat sheet – What’s New- http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220441/Excel_2010_cheat_sheet?source=ctwirhr_excelcs_reg

Explore what is new and different in Microsoft Word 2007 http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6153797.html?tag=content;leftCol

A few things you’ll miss when you upgrade to Office 2007 http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6161683.html?tag=content%3bleftCol

Changes in Office Word 2007 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179199%28office.12%29.aspx -This article lists the changes in Microsoft Office Word 2007 from Microsoft Office 2003.

Word 2010 Beginners Guidebook – Good intro to Ribbon based Word $20, 236 pg http://store.tips.net/T010905_Microsoft_Word_2010_Beginners_Guidebook_Table_of_Contents.html

10 cool add-ins for Office 2007 and 2010: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-cool-add-ins-for-office-2007-and-2010/2455 Everything, E-mail Follow-up, More Add-in, FreeFile Viewer, ASAP Util (excel), Proposal Pack Wizard, Visual Bee (PowerPoint), iSpring Pro (PowerPoint), Pop-Up Excel Calendar, Excel Fuzzy Dup Finder.

10 Quick Tips to Get the Most from Microsoft Office – http://www.howtogeek.com/98499/10-quick-tips-to-get-the-most-from-microsoft-office/

Reveal Codes in Word – Is there life after “Reveal Codes”? – http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/RevealCodes.htm . This is an excellent article describing all of the native Word tools for discovering formatting.

Formatting Problems? Install CrossEyes – http://www.levitjames.com/Products/CrossEyes.aspx
This tool adds a pane that converts Word formatting into HTML/WordPefect like “codes”, displaying a WordPerfect like “Reveal Codes” pane. It is a great complement to MS’s inadequate attempt in the “Reveal Formatting” pane.

Backup and Restore Your Office 2010 Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar Customizations – http://www.howtogeek.com/72670/how-to-backup-and-restore-your-office-2010-ribbon-and-quick-access-toolbar-customizations/

Outlook http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/make-the-switch-to-outlook-2010-RZ101809884.aspx

Word http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/make-the-switch-to-word-2010-RZ101816356.aspx

http://www.baycongroup.com/wlesson0.htm Free Tutorials to other apps too

Excel http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/make-the-switch-to-excel-2010-RZ101809963.aspx

PowerPoint http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/make-the-switch-to-powerpoint-2010-RZ101791923.aspx

http://www.editorium.com/editkit/TH_18.htm – Word Functions for Editors. A good list of Word features to learn as a starting point for new users.

Q4 Differences between Office RT and Office Desktop
For the most part the features in the Ribbon should be very much the same. Much (MUCH) more so than in Office Web Apps for example.

This blog from MS describes what has been removed from Office RT. The most significant one being Macro support. Most of the rest are not really significant
[h=3]2012 09 13- Building Office for Windows RT – What features are Removed?[/h]http://blogs.office.com/b/office-next/archive/2012/09/13/building-office-for-windows-rt.aspx
To minimize the power impact, Office on Windows RT stops blinking the cursor after a few seconds if the user stops interacting with the application. When the user is away, we just show a fixed, non-blinking cursor.
Office detects when the user is not actively using the system. When this occurs, Office releases these temporary caches.
For example, rather than including large number of templates and clipart on the drive, we opted to put frequently used templates on the drive while making the more extensive collection available via the start center in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and also online .
Windows RT provides APIs that allow applications including Office to understand the user’s current network state. We can identify if the cellular network is unrestricted or if usage is metered (the user is paying for their usage), if the user is approaching or over their limit, and whether or not they are roaming. When we detect that the cellular network is metered we throttle network traffic to reduce our impact.
Beyond the differences listed below, Office for Windows RT is fully-featured Office with complete document compatibility.

[*]Macros, add-ins, and features that rely on ActiveX controls or 3rd party code such as the PowerPoint Slide Library ActiveX control and Flash Video Playback
[*]legacy features such as playing older media formats in PowerPoint (upgrade to modern formats and they will play)
[*]legacy features such as editing equations written in Equation Editor 3.0, which was used in older versions of Office (viewing works fine)
[*]Certain email sending features, since Windows RT does not support Outlook or other desktop mail applications (opening a mail app, such as the mail app that comes with Windows RT devices, and inserting your Office content works fine)
[*]Creating a Data Model in Excel 2013 RT (PivotTables, QueryTables, Pivot Charts work fine)
[*]Recording narrations in PowerPoint 2013 RT
[*]OneNote Searching embedded audio/video files,
[*]OneNote recording audio/video notes,
[*]importing from an attached scanner with OneNote 2013 RT (inserting audio/video notes or scanned images from another program works fine)

[h=3]2012 09 13 – MS Details Office Home & Student 2013 RT[/h]http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/microsoft-details-office-home-student-2013-rt-windows-rt-144249

Q5 – thanks for that info about HP printers. I hadn’t seen it before. Lucky me, my printer is mostly supported.

Q7 – Using Office RT in business. Yes you can, if you buy a license for it. This question has been discussed during the last week. This article summarized the info best

[h=3]2012 10 17- Microsoft Office for Windows RT: How to move to a commercial-use license[/h]http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-office-for-windows-rt-how-to-move-to-a-commercial-use-license-7000005893/

HTH
Rohn MS MVP

PS: While we won’t need this article to get a refund/exchange, I bet we all know people who will need to have a copy of it to present to equally confused sales clerks.

Good information. Thank you. (I’ve downloaded it …)

I understand why you focus on XP, but could you follow up and expand on the benefits to Vista, Win7 and even Win8. Just a table listing the EMET mitigations that benefit the other Windows versions would help sell management on supporting the effort required to implement this free tool.

{snip} the thickest operating system I’ve ever used. {/snip} :o: The first time I read that line I snorked! Did you mean to say it is the dumbest OS you’ve used, as in “as thick as 2 short planks” or feature rich? I hope you meant the first, {grin}! I tried the Win8 Preview on my PC and hated it. It is NOTintuitive if you have not used a touch device like a smart phone. It is actually counter-intuitive for PC users! I’ll have to wait to see how it looks and feels on a touch device. But I don’t fee encouraged. Once again MS has taken the stormtrooper (yes a “N” allusion) approach with UI changes. First they did it with the Ribbon “gooey” in Office. What a thick, phat, waste of space! It would have been trivial for them to include an option to revert to a menu but they didn’t. They could have even made it awkward to get to, but still have it there. The text based UI is a small part of the overall app. They got away with that, so now they are doing it with Metro. Again, all they had to do was maintain a “reverse compatibility” option with the old Win7 UI and they would have eliminated almost all of the resistance to it. But no, they are shoving metro down our throats sideways! It’s really sad. Almost all of the “legacy” structure is still there. When MS went from Win 3.1 to NT, people investigated and still found 1980’s era DOS code modules running in it. When Office 2010 abends, it fails over into a pre ribbon UI display. And the same is true of Win8. There have already been hacks published on how to recover the Start Button. Although I hear that MS has taken steps t suppress that one. It is sad that they have moved away from supporting the huge mass of loyal, or at least involuntary (“I had to use it at work…”) long term customers and “super users”, apparently in favor of chasing new customers. Personally, I’ve invested almost 25 years in their products. That is, I’ve invested my personal time and money (buying products and training) learning the products, and even becoming competent in many of them at an above average level of competence. And yet they blithely throw away my investment, apparently without a thought. I’m disappointed. PS: I REALLY HATE your input box. It keeps eating my paragraph breaks!

A couple of extra points I share with people in similar situations Before doing any sort major work, do a full image copy backup. That applies to CCleaner too. I use it regularly, and have been luck so far to not have any problems attributable to it. But I don’t let it “clean” everything. I’m selective. On the question of the swap file, I do 2 more things. After defining a size for the swap file, if as in this case there is “lots of room” on the HD, I set the max and min swap file size to the same size.

Then I defrag the swap file (and whole HD). Letting windows manage the swap file size is guaranteed to fragment both the swap file and data files. Since the swap file already represents slow access memory, why make it worse letting the swap file fragment.

I’ve invested going on 25 years learning the office menus. The favourite commands I use daily I learned to the point of muscle memory, my fingers would just do them without having to concentrate on what I was doing. Much of that is gone. Some of the old menu shortcuts still remain, but other’s don’t. I resent that MS unilaterally threw out my personal investment of time and MONEY spent on books and courses to learn the menu organization. I’ve learned some of the “dis-organization”, but for commands I don’t use regularly I have to play “hide and seek”, searching for them. Others have mentioned 2 tools I find very handy, the MS Search addon, and the Office-Watch Command Finder page: Search Command Addon – 2007 & 2010 http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx Office Watch Word Command Finder – http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2007.aspx http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx The Office watch Word command finder is really good too, it actually provides a more focused result, but the path it describes is sometimes wrong. (They got all of the info from MS …) You can add the link to OWW Command Finder tool to the QAT using this macro: Public Sub command_finder() ‘ Ed Weber ‘ Call the Office Watch Command List applet ‘ Equivalent to the Search Tab addon ‘ ActiveDocument.FollowHyperlink _ Address:=” http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx”, _ NewWindow:=True, AddHistory:=False End Sub The ribbon is just another User Interface shell replacing the “Menu” UI. They both access the same underlying functions. It would have been trivially easy for MS to provide a “Menu” tab that maintained the old menu access. Even if they had buried access to it in the Options dialog, it would have been a huge step to reduce resistance to the ribbon. People could have used the menu and slowly become acclimatized to the new “default” ribbon ui. Sure, the Ribbon flattened a couple of “levels” of the menu, but still invokes the old, deeply nested dialog boxes. I could understand that in 2007, but I had expected they would have finished redesigning the old dialogs into flatter structures for 2010. But the didn’t. They only partially implemented the ribbon redesign. Why, in 2010, is the new “File” tab a MENU rather than a buttony ribbon? I strongly object to the “hieroglyphics” (icons). I am not a 4000 year old Egyptian, I prefer text! I object that there is no longer option to select icon, both, text only display. Unfortunately the introduction of th “new & improved” “Phat” ribbon that uses too much screen real estate coincided with the standardization on LOWER resolution LCD monitors. My “good old” CRTs had vertical resolutions up to 2500 lines, now the highest HD LCD screen is limited to a paltry 1080 lines. I’ve seen it several times now, small apps that have been “ribbonized” with 4 or 5 buttons representing all of the commands avaiable. The menu was nice and compact. Back in Office 2000-2002(?) I always immediately turned of the “smart” menu that hid “unused” commands. Unfortunately we don’t have that control with the ribbon. Every time I resize the window, all of the commands play “musical chairs”, changing location, size and appearance! I hate it! MS got rid of the “smart” feature in 2003, just to bring it back in spades in the ribbon. The ribbon is the Transformer “Gooey” for the A.D.D generation! “Ribbonausaurs- the UI for Egyptian Pharohs, and Dinosaurs Why is it that we can’t edit the default ribbon. Even in 2010 all you can do is turn off default groups. You can’t add buttons to them. I tried to recreate the default tabs, but I could not get my recreations to display the same way as defaults! The ribbon UI elements are not consistently implemented. What genius decided to create that teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy little blob on the Group name bar for the “dialog launcher” button. Why doesn’t that button look like the rest, and be included with them? How about the “menu” in the File tab? Why in the Print “backstage” pane is there a “big” square “Print” button, long skinny drop down selection buttons for the settings AND Hyperlinks (instead of buttons) for “Printer Properties” and “Page Setup”. Or in the Styles Pane (a old dialog box that was converted to the ribbon UI) (launched Styles “dialog” launcher button); you have check boxes, 3 small buttons, an the “Options” hyperlink text button which is NOT underlined. Microsoft always claims it conducts extensive user interface research, but still revamps the UI every chance it gets. It must be using a different species of alien each time. Galen Gruman

suggestion: please add suggestion we add para break HTML code to maintain paragraphs. I’m hugely annoyed that my nicely laid out text is rendered as one large, illiterate, unreadable blob!

Thanks for reporting on something that most reviews ignore. The only additional piece of info I would have liked to see was in the boot and shutdown times, what was the time for a system without an AM to get an idea of the the relative impact adding AM had. Not that I would suggest running without AM!

Your link to the IE 6 countdown page is so ironic. MS is selling the “BIG LIE” again. Today I found out the the HTML rendering engine used by Word and therefore Outlook 2007 and 2010 is
…. I.E. 6
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201%28v=office.12%29.aspx – Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
{snip} Word 2007 supports a subset of the standard HTML 4.01 specification and of the Internet Explorer 6.0 HTML specification {/snip}
PS: Please use a comment tool that does NOT strip out spacing we insert, making us look like illiterates …

I’ve used a tool complimentary to TreeSize, that is WinDirStat: http://windirstat.info/ . It also helps identify “space wasters”, but it does so visually. It uses the “treemapping” technique of displaying files and folders as blocks. The size of each block is relative. You can drill down in folders.

On the 1 or more partition question I vote for “more”. At a very minimum I recommend C: for
Windows and Apps, D: for personal DATA files. This way you can restore windows/apps without worrying about nuking your personal data. Part of this approach requires redirecting your Windows profile to the D: drive. That includes your desktop, docs and IE favorites folders to name the “big 3”.

Given the size of HD’s shipping with new computers these days, 200-500+GB, partitioning makes sense. Setting aside 50-70GB for the C:, gives you lots of room for adding apps, while leaving lots of room for data files. Separating OS from Data allows you to customize your backup strategy, setting different frequencies and types Full Image or Incremental, based on changes to files.

What I NEED to know about Win 8? …

Nada, nothing!

Sorry Woody, I realize that as a Windows columnist you are interested in it. And that you have many other interested readers. But as an “average user” (not really, but for this discussion, yes) I don’t care a hoot about Windows 8. It is still firmly in the realm of VAPOURWARE! None of the features are fixed. Remember all of the talk before Vista came out. And more importantly, since I don’t have a direct line to “uncle billy”, any comments or suggestions I may make about features will not even be heard, let alone ignored, by MS. So why should I waste my time reading about it, and waste time getting upset about the stupidities they are about to inflict on me. Win 8 will show up all too soon.

From what I’ve read in passing about it I agree with one of the other comments, Win7 will probably the last version of windows I buy. It really sounds like another case of “MS Knows Best“. Someone at MS has a brain fart, it gets picked up and all of a sudden everyone is on band wagon. The most recent example of that sort of “stroke of genius” is the Office “Ribbon”. What an ugly kluge! Why can’t MS learn from user comments and include an option to revert to an “old”, ie Win7, user interface. The new UI is just pasted on top of the old underlying commands and functionality. Sure there are a small set of totally new features that the old UI won’t support, but they can be handled easily enough. It is not that much of an additional effort to include the old UI with the new one. People will eventually get used to the new ugliness, even if it is only when the “old” Win7 users die off .

I will be interested to read about it when the Beta version is released. At that point features will be pretty much set in stone and I can be interested the upcoming train wreck .

It has already been said, GET LEGAL ADVICE specific to your location.

Most of the articles I’ve read on this subject (Canada, US, Great Britain, Europe, Australia) agree that if you do not have “proper” policies in place you do NOT have any right to do things like snoop on email or network traffic or wipe an (ex)employee’s smart phone. Even with policies you still may not have the right to those things depending on the specific legislation and legal precedent in effect in your location.

Think of proper policies (publicized, education sessions, periodic reviews, employee signature that they have read it etc) as part of the employment contract between the employer and employee.
[INDENT]”In this situation, we expect you to do this that or the other thing. If you do (or don’t) we will do the following: smack on wrist, written “traffic ticket”, unpaid “vacation” or even termination (with extreme prejudice).”
[/INDENT]
Back to the original question, volunteer organizations are a mixed bag of experience. They are rarely at the leading edge of computing best “anything” (practices, equipment etc). They make do with what they can get. So it is not surprising that they would have “employees” with better computing equipment than the organization can afford, such as smart phones and laptops. It is also not surprising that they do not know about need for securing these devices, or the need for good policies in general. I’m not taking a shot at them, I just see it as a reflection of the reality they live in. IT is totally a subsidiary support service that has less visible need than the janitor. If the janitor is not there the garbage piles up, floors get dirty. If IT is not there, what happens or doesn’t is not always immediately visible.