One of Vista's best security features is User Account Control (UAC). It solves the problem of people logging on with administrative accounts for everyday computing tasks, a practice that could put your system at risk in Windows XP and prior operating systems. With UAC, even administrative accounts run with standard user privileges unless and until elevated privileges are actually needed to perform a task. Then a dialog box pops up so you can explicitly authorize the elevation.

But many Vista users don't like UAC. They find it too "in your face" and don't like being nagged for permission every time they want to, for example, install a program - especially if they're setting up a new OS and installing many programs at a time. It is possible to disable UAC - so they do. But then they lose its protections, including IE running in protected mode, applications starting by default in standard user mode, and so forth.

You can use Vista's local security policy to modify UAC's behavior. but now there is another, easier alternative. A freeware program called TweakUAC can be used to turn UAC on and off, but it also gives you the option of operating UAC in quiet mode. This doesn't turn UAC off, but it does suppress those elevation prompts when you're logged on as an administrator, which so many folks find so annoying. All the other features of UAC are still enabled, and non-administrative user accounts will still get the elevation prompts.

You can find out more about TweakUAC and download it from this website:

http://www.tweak-uac.com/

Am I the only one who has this problem? I've never seen anything about it on any of the forums, and it's a small thing but a highly annoying one for someone who makes a living writing articles - often to a specified word count.

I really like Office 2007. I like the new ribbon interface. I like the new XML based file formats. What I don't like is Word's tendency to forget how to count.

When I first switched to 2007, I was delighted with the fact that the word count is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the screen on a continuous basis, rather than my having to enable a word count toolbar and click its button every time I wanted to know how many words I had. But soon I noticed that the word count often gets "stuck" for no apparent reason. I'll type along for a while, and notice that the word count is still displaying the same number it was several paragraphs ago. What's up with that?

In this doc, the word count is shown as 551. The problem is that this doc actually has 820 words.

Sometimes, if you keep on typing, it comes "unstuck" and catches up, and once again starts increasing the word count as you type. Sometimes it doesn't. My rather inelegant solution in the latter case is to do a Copy All and paste the document into Open Office's word processing program, and click the word count tool there to find out how many words I really have.

I don't like that solution much. Does anyone out there know what causes this and how to fix it?

I'm often asked about email encryption and readers want to know what programs they can get to protect their email messages. Many don't know that they can use S/MIME in Outlook to exchanged encrypted email with other users whose email clients support S/MIME v3, without having to buy a third party program.

S/MIME (Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard that was originally developed by RSA and conforms to IETF specifications. It's based on digital certificates and so depends on a Public Key Infrastructure, either a public or in-house PKI. It can be used for both authentication (digital signing of messages, which does not encrypt the content of the message but assures the identity of the sender) and confidentiality (encryption of the contents).

You can see a demo on how to encrypt one or all messages in Outlook 2007 here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012305361033.aspx

What's the downside of encrypting email messages? The main concern from a security viewpoint is that gateway virus and malware scanners can't detect malware in encrypted mail. This means the mail needs to either be decrypted at the gateway (thus defeating the purpose of end-to-end encryption) or it needs to be scanned for malware at the endpoint after it's decrypted.

The U.S. federal government has undertaken an new initiative with the objective of protecting government computer networks from hackers and attackers. President Bush signed an order to that effect, which reportedly gives the NSA authorization to monitor the networks of all federal agencies and creates a task force hat's headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and incorporates the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. You can read more here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012503261.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Having the government monitor its own networks seems like a good idea. However, some folks wanted private sector networks - such as those of banks, power plants and other important components of the national infrastructure - to be included. I see two problems with that: First, there's a privacy issue. Having the government monitor networks in the private sector, even monitoring for attacks, makes me uneasy. The government can already intercept and read everything that goes over the Internet. Should they be able to also intrude into the private networks of major companies? How long before that extends to all companies, and then to our home networks as well?

And even if privacy weren't a concern, should the government (i.e., the taxpayers, i.e. you and I) have to pay for it? Aren't we already paying for enough? Some of these companies make huge profits. Shouldn't protecting their networks from attack be their responsibility, not the government's?

Last week (January 16 post) I gave my first impressions of the AutumnWave OnAir Creator USB TV tuner. Since that time, I've put it through its paces and tried hard to reproduce the problems that I was having with the WinTV device. No matter how long I leave it running, though, there's no system instability, there are no conflicts with other applications, no memory hogging - no problems whatsoever. It just works.

Running live TV on Vista Media Center consistently uses about 4-6% of memory and almost no processor time, as encoding is taking place on the device itself. The picture quality is much clearer and sharper than it was with the WinTV device, using the same cable source. With the AutumnWave, I can watch in full screen mode, which didn't look good at all on the other device. With the OnAir Creator, the output from an analog cable signal looks almost as good as digital.

Unlike the WinTV and other low-cost "stick" type tuners, the OnAir Creator has inputs for S-video and composite audio/video signals in addition to the coax connector for cable or antenna and it will support Dolby 5.1 sound from HD channels that broadcast it so you can play it through your computer's 5.1 speaker system.

Although there is little need for it with Windows Media Center, the included software is also much more sophisticated and user friendly than that which came with the WinTV tuner. The Channel Manager is designed much like Windows Media Center, with the same familiar controls for playing, stopping, recording, volume, etc. The Scheduler is much more user friendly than the web-based scheduling system used by WinTV.

 
The interface for the program is sophisticated and user friendly

I also like that the User Manual is in .chm (Windows help file) format instead of PDF as many online manuals are these days.

 
The OnAir Creator's Help files are in a nice format

The manual, however, is only for the included software and doesn't address using the device with Vista Media Center. Luckily, that's a no-brainer. Again, it just works.

I'm very pleased with the OnAir Creator and won't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants the best possible experience from a USB TV tuner. It's true that you might be able to get an internal tuner for less, but if you have a compact computer with no extra expansion slots, or you already have all the slots filled, or you want to watch TV on a laptop, or you just don't want to open up the box, this little device is the answer.

Seems the TouchSmart is smarter than we are. I reported that the included wireless keyboard didn't work. Well, now it does, and the solution is a little embarrassing.

The keyboard came with batteries installed; you're supposed to pull a little tab to allow them to connect. Did that, and it didn't work. Our first thought was that maybe the batteries are no good; you often find that with cheap included batteries.

Tom changed them, and he took out the included ones and put the new ones in facing the same way as those. And it didn't work with the new batteries either. Well, a couple of days later I decided to try the keyboard again, and thought "what if, by some wild coincidence, both sets of batteries were bad?" So I opened up the battery compartment and took out those - and noticed that they didn't seem to me to be facing the right direction; the + end was facing the little spring.

So I reversed them and wah lah! It synced up with the external receiver and worked fine (the built in receiver still wasn't working but you can't have everything, I guess).

 
TouchSmart with the included keyboard tucked into its compartment underneath, barely visible.

The included keyboard is not so great to type on, since it's not split/ergonomic. But I'm not planning to type long documents on the kitchen computer. And the nice thing about it is that it slides into a little compartment underneath the computer, out of sight and away from the danger of being stepped on by a cat.

Speaking of cats, our "big kitty" seemed to like the TouchSmart. The first day we got it, he was immediately up there staring at the screen. Here he is, posing with it then.

Big Kitty with the TouchSmart

Then I installed the famous Marine Aquarium screensaver on it , the one that is so realistic looking (as you can see in that first photo). Kitty hopped up there, saw the fish swimming around, and backed off and started hissing at them. Who ever heard of a cat who's afraid of fish?

Since the keyboard problem turned out to be a case of user error, I'd now give the TouchSmart a rating of 4.8 out of 5. My only remaining annoyance is that the touch screen picks up fingerprints so easily. I guess that was inevitable.

I have, however, found a solution (somewhat) to that. Because it's optical, you don't have to actually touch the screen. Just putting your fingertip (or stylus, or whatever) right over the spot you want to touch has the same effect. So you can avoid leaving fingerprints if you do that, but it takes a little more finesse than just touching it. Now if I can just get Tom to do that, too.

But you do have to be pretty rich to afford a their new "world's thinnest" laptop. The new MacBook Air is, like all things Apple, a pretty little thing. But I've been burned before when I put looks first. I loved the look of my round-based iMac, too - but soon found it to be far less functional than my boring looking Windows machines, despite its high price.

Besides, just as there's a point where anorectic models don't look so good anymore, I'm not sure sure I like the super thinness of the Air. I remember an ultra thin, high dollar laptop that Sony came out with a few years back. I was excited when I read about it, but when I actually got my hands on it in the store, it felt far too fragile to actually work with (sort of like those skinny folks who look great in clothes but all those bones sticking out don't look so wonderful when they're naked). That Sony disappeared from the market very quickly. Apparently I wasn't the only one who, once I got a look at it up close, decided to go with something more substantial.

Steve Jobs casually dismissed the lack of a DVD drive, but when you're paying $3000 for a machine, I think you're going to expect that amenity. Laptops, after all, are for traveling and one common usage is to play DVD movies on the plane. I don't want to have to plug in an external drive (for which I had to pay extra) or take along a portable DVD player in addition to my computer in order to do that.

The real deal breaker for me, though, is that non-user-removable battery. Didn't they learn anything from the complaints about that very "feature" on the iPhone? I want to be able to take an extra battery with me when I'm on the go, in case of delayed flights or other situations where I can't get to a power source for many hours.

Oh, and solid state memory is cool, but only 64 GB of storage on a machine that costs three grand? Ack. A $2000 Sony TZ (which, by the way, may not be quite as thin but actually weighs less than the Air) gives you 100 GB. Yeah, you can get the Air with a regular 80 GB hard drive for "only" $1800, but that's still pricey.

There are some things to like to like about the Air other than its looks. It has support for 802.11n, which will be nice once there are some 802.11n networks to connect to. The ability to use the gestures like you use with the iPhone is also neat. And I'm sure the display is beautiful, as Apple's displays always are (oh, but we're back to looks again, aren't we?).

Apple is like those women and men who are born gorgeous. They expect rich suitors to flock around them, and they're rarely disappointed. Lots of people will buy this laptop because it looks so darn nice. The cool factor is undeniable. But me, I think I'll pass.

On the other hand, it does sport an Intel processor. I wonder if you install Windows on it? :)

Our new HP arrived and I feel as if I ought to send out a "new baby" announcement - I am so thrilled with this new addition to the family. I wrote a full review that will be published in the next edition of VistaNews, but here are a few photos showing how nicely it fits in.

Here's the new HP TouchSmart kitchen computer

Note the keyboard, which is not the one that came with it. My only complaint about the TouchSmart IQ775 is its wireless keyboard, which quite simply refuses to work. I tried everything suggested in the manual, changed the batteries, tried using the external transceiver - nothing worked. So I plugged in a regular USB keyboard. I don't care about having a wireless keyboard (you hardly need a keyboard at all with the touch screen) but if you do, be aware of this one issue.

It fits nicely onto the far countertop where you can easily watch TV while cooking

I was very pleased with how well Media Center, live TV and recorded TV work. This will be a major use of the computer in the kitchen, and it will be great to be able to watch our recorded programs in there while cooking or cleaning up.

Here's a view of the calendar application

The calendar application in Smart Center is very handy. You can leave typed, handwritten, audio or video notes and drag items to the calendar to create appointments. Dragging a note to the trash bin results in a neat "crumpling" visual effect that's very (dare I say it?) Mac-like.

For lots more details, see the January 24th edition of VistaNews at www.vistanews.com

If you read about my at first exciting and then disappointing experience with WinTV, you know that it set me on a quest to find a USB TV tuner that works well with Vista Media Center on my Dell XPS desktop system.

Shortly after I posted about those experiences, I received an email message from a representative of AutumnWave, another company that makes USB tuner devices. These are quite a bit more high end than the one I bought. They offered to send me their OnAir Creator model, which according to their web site retails for around $250, to evaluate. I read the specs and jumped at the chance.

The unit arrived yesterday and it's pretty impressive. Whereas the WinTV-950 is a little "stick" that runs off your computer's power (shown in the first photo below), the OnAir Creator is a slim modem-like device with function lights on the front and its own power supply, and comes with a remote control (shown in the second photo).

 
WinTV-950

AutumnWave OnAir Creator

The big reason that the OnAir Creator costs so much, and is so much larger, is that it uses a hardware encoder so that processing is done on the device, rather than taking up the resources of your computer. That also means you don't have to install any encoder software (like the MCE Soft Encoder that I had to install for the WinTV device).

All you have to install is a driver if you want to use it with Media Center, but there is a TV/PVR program included if you're using XP or a version of Vista that doesn't come with Media Center (such as Vista Home Basic or Vista Business edition). The remote control is made to work with the included TV program by default, but there is an option you can use to configure it so most of Media Center's functions will work with it. I haven't tried that yet, but will report back on it in my full review.

Setting it up took only a few minutes: install the driver, plug the device into an electrical outlet, connect the CATV cable or antenna, and connect it to a USB port on the computer.

Open Media Center and you get a message that Media Center has found a new tuner, with the option to configure its settings. That takes only a minute (choosing the cable or FiOS provider for your area) and then you download the Guide and you're ready to watch TV.

The picture was clear on all channels and what I really noticed was that changing channels was instantaneous, unlike with the other device. It's even faster than on our big main Media Center PC. Oh, and no problems opening Word and other Office programs or surfing the web with IE while the TV is playing.

Watching live TV with the OnAir Creator

I didn't get a chance to fully test it, and the WinTV tuner appeared to work fine at first, too, so I want to be able to run it for several days before coming to a conclusion. I'll be reporting back sometime around the middle of next week with an update. So far, so good.

For the past three and a half years, our kitchen computer has been a Mac. And for three and a half years, Tom has hated it and threatened to throw it into the lake. This year, after the hectic holidays were over, we decided to celebrate the new year by replacing it with an HP TouchSmart.


The old, much maligned IMac that has served as our kitchen computer for the past several years.

Normally, we wouldn't recommend all-in-one systems as primary workstations. But for the kitchen, the form factor works. We did a bit of research and in addition to the HP, tried out Gateway's, Sony's and Dell's all-in-one offerings. The Gateway is pleasingly thin and I love the Sony's foldup keyboard, but what it all came down to in the end was the touchscreen. The HP is the only one that could boast that feature. We also liked its SmartCenter interface overlay and the fact that it scores a very respectable 4.7 on the Windows Experience Index performance rating. The Sony, which costs $300 more, scores lower.

 
HP's very cool TouchSmart IQ775: the ultimate kitchen computer?

I had seen the TouchSmart at Fry's a week ago, so on Friday I headed out there to pick one up. They were all gone. I tried another Fry's, and then a third, but they didn't have it either.  I had also seen it at Best Buy, so today we checked out their web site, which indicated that it was available at the store nearest us. We went there, eager to give them $1600. It took twenty minutes to get a salesman to help us. When we finally did, he told us they didn't have any in stock. It seems "available" doesn't mean it's, well, actually available. How silly of us to have thought that it did.

We asked him to check other stores in the area. The computer said there was one at the Mesquite store, a few miles up the freeway. But the salesman warned that "1 usually means none." He didn't say what "0" means. He tried to call the other store and find out if there really was one there. We listened as he called repeatedly, got put on hold and forgotten. It was another half hour before he finally got through to someone who told him that the "1" indicated by the computer referred to the demo machine on the floor. I asked if they sold the demos. Nope. Of course not. All the other stores in the Dallas area were shown as sold out.

We stopped by Circuit City. They didn't have any, either, although they offered to order one for us. Hey, folks, going to a retail store for a computer means you want instant gratification. If I'm going to have to order it, I can do that online myself and probably get it cheaper.

So that's what we ended up doing. We ordered from Amazon and saved $60. It's supposed to ship in a week. They only had two left in stock. Apparently these things are selling like hotcakes. They have a five star rating on Amazon. So we have high hopes for it. When we finally get it, I'll be doing a full review in the VistaNews newsletter. Meanwhile, Tom has to put up with the Mac for a little while longer.

A couple of years ago, we got some of the most voluminous responses ever from WXPnews readers when I wrote about the rebate ripoffs that were being practiced by many tech manufacturers and retailers. I had sent in numerous rebate forms that disappeared into the ether, with nary a rebate in sight. Hundreds of readers wrote to say they'd experienced the same thing, and we even got mail from folks who had worked in rebate fulfillment centers and described how workers were encouraged to find reasons to reject rebate requests and even sometimes just dumped them in the trash unopened. Rebates that were sent often took months to process, and checks were often sent as postcards designed to look like advertising in the hopes recipients would throw them away without cashing them.

Well, when Tom and I bought our new Samsung i760 phones from Verizon Wireless a few months ago, each came with a $50 rebate. They sat around the house for a while, then during my time off at Christmas time, I ran across them and remembered that they were supposed to be submitted by January 31. Since for once I had some free time, I decided to fill them out and send them in, not particularly optimistic about my chances of getting anything back.

It's been less than three weeks and today, both fifty dollar checks arrived in the mail. They were in envelopes clearly marked with the return address "Rebate Center" with a local address here in the Dallas metroplex. I have to say I'm impressed. Maybe the whole rebate business has gotten its act together, or maybe it's just Verizon that's good at this, but either way, it's a vast improvement over most of my previous rebate experiences.

I've complained often about the pokiness of Vista on my Sony TX laptop. Yesterday I decided to try the Service Pack 1 Release Candidate on it. I didn't have a lot of hope that it would help, but hey - it couldn't really hurt, could it? For months the computer has been mostly a $2200 brick, since it's so slow that I can't stand to use it. If I want to get work done on a laptop, I take either my older Sony T series that runs XP or my tiny little Eee PC on which I installed XP. Both are faster and the Eee PC is more portable.

So I downloaded the Service Pack from the Microsoft web site, which took a little over an hour. Then I started the installation. It proceeded smoothly, if slowly, until it got to "Stage 3 of 3," at which point it just sat there at 0% for over six hours.

I did some web research and found that many other people had experienced the same problem. I also found info regarding conflicts with SP1 and some Sony VAIOs, although my model wasn't on the list.

It certainly appeared to be stuck. The mouse pointer wouldn't move and the disk light had stopped flashing. Finally, reluctantly, I shut it down - wondering if I'd soon be reinstalling Vista completely.

When I rebooted, the computer went back into the "installing service pack" mode, picking up at the same point in stage 3. And once again, it sat there at 0% for over two hours. At that point, it was time for bed. I decided to just let it keep trying (if indeed it was trying) overnight.

This morning I came into the office to see a blessed sight: the Vista logon screen. The service pack had finished installing sometime in the night. All seems well now, and maybe even a little faster. Toward that end, I'm now uninstalling some applications that may have been contributing to the slowness (including Norton Internet Security and the Office 2007 Small Business Edition that came with the computer - I'll go back and install Office Ultimate, which has always worked well for me on other computers).

At least it's no worse off than before, and I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be able to get a usable computer out of this yet. I'll keep you updated on that. In the meantime, if you're installing the SP and it seems to be hung, have patience. I'm glad I did.

Well, if you've been following my saga with WinTV, I don't have any good news to report. I went to the Hauppauge web site and followed the instructions there to uninstall the software, then downloaded the updated driver and latest version of the MCE encoder and WinTV applications.

Unfortunately, now the nice clear picture that I had before (see my post on January 7) is almost unwatchable, as shown below:

Severely degraded picture quality with new WinTV drivers and software

You can see that the bottom half of the picture is broken up and pixelated; all channels are like that (and yes, I checked another TV to make sure it wasn't a problem with the cable itself).

After spending the whole day on this problem, I'm close to giving up on WinTV, although not on the idea of live TV on the desktop. There are quite a few competitors out there, and although it will require spending more money, I'd really like to find one that works the way WinTV appeared to the first day I installed it.

In yesterday's post, I was quite pleased with the WinTV USB TV tuner I had installed on my main Vista desktop. Unfortunately, the joy didn't last.

It worked great all day, but the next morning I got up to a myriad of problems, which I'll be describing in this week's VistaNews (www.vistanews.com). I had to revise my enthusiastic article; luckily it hadn't gone to publication yet.

There seem to be some conflicts between the device and Microsoft programs, including Office 2007 applications, Expression Web and Microsoft Live Writer. The gist of it is that if you have the programs open before you watch live TV on Media Center or the WinTV software, they work fine. But if you try to open any of these programs after opening the TV program, you get error messages such as those below:

 
Windows Installer message when you try to open an Office program (Word, Excel, Expression Web) after playing live TV for a while

Error message when you try to open Windows Live Writer after playing live TV for a while

Error when you try to open the snipping tool after playing live TV for a while

Error when you try to open Outlook after playing live TV for a while

Such a system-wide hork is pretty amazing. I confirmed that only Microsoft programs seem to be affected. For instance, I couldn't open web sites in IE, but Firefox continued to work fine. My guess is that there's something in the MCE decoder software for WinTV that hooks into the Microsoft dlls to affect so many programs across the board.

A reboot fixes everything - until the next time you play live TV. I'm looking into it more and hoping to find a solution (other than the rather clunky one of making sure to open every Microsoft program I might want to use before I watch TV). I just tried installing an updated driver for the WinTV device and am hoping maybe that will solve the problem.

See the VistaNews editorial for more of the details.

This week in VistaNews (www.vistanews.com) I wrote about the cool little Hauppauge USB device I ran across in Fry's last week, that lets you input analog or HDTV OTR signal or analog cable to Windows Media Center in your Vista Ultimate or Home Premium computer. It's called WinTV-950 and I found it on sale for only fifty dollars.

 
The Media Center interface on Vista is a bit more elegant than on XP MCE

 
Watching live TV via Windows Media Center on Vista

Recorded TV on Windows Media Center

You can, of course, run Media Center either in full screen mode or as a window on the desktop.

 
Running WMC in a window on the desktop (click the image to enlarge)

If you're using Vista Business or Home Basic Editions (which don't include Media Center) or you're still running XP, you can still use the WinTV device. In that case, you'll need to use the WinTV applications, which include the main program for watching TV, the program guide (web-based) and the Scheduler program for recording TV at a pre-set time.

 
Watching TV with the WinTV application

Whichever app you intend to use to watch and record TV, you'll probably need to install the WinTV software first and scan for channels using its Channel Manager; at least, I had to do that before Windows Media Center would work with the device.

You use the Channel Manager option in the WinTV menu to scan and detect available channels

All in all, it's a nice low-cost and easy to implement solution.

A few days ago (December 30, to be exact), in my post Registration Required, I complained about web sites whose links take you off to a different site where you then have to go through a lengthy registration process and download a PDF to finally view the article you wanted to read. I used as an example a link on ZDNet that took me to a BNET site which asked me to register and then flipped over to a TechRepublic site for the download. There's nothing unique about those sites, though; the same thing happens all the time, on many different, unrelated websites.

Well, today I got a nice message from the Vice President of Products and site manager of CNET, BNET, ZDNet and TechRepublic (obviously a very busy guy), who read that post and took the time to explain some things that weren't apparent, such as the fact that I could have used my TR or ZDNet credentials instead of going through the whole sign-up process with BNET. He also graciously acknowledged some bugs in the labeling and site behavior I experienced and indicated that they would be fixed in the future.

Most importantly, he assured me that BNET, as part of the same company as TR, does have the proper permissions to use the content. That was really my biggest concern, since as an author I often run across articles I've written being reprinted in the strangest places (sometimes even in foreign languages, so I have no idea what I'm saying). :)

It was a pleasant surprise to me that someone at his level in the company would take the time to respond in such a thoughtful manner. I'm impressed. The editors I've worked with at TR and CNET have almost always been great folks and easy to get along with. It appears that trend extends into the management area, as well.

I rarely hesitate to voice my complaints when I'm displeased. I try to be just as quick to give praise where it's due, and a little praise is definitely due here to the CNET sites and Mr. Stephen Howard-Sarin.