Yikes.

I thought the vultures at LiveNation/TicketMaster had figured out how to squeeze every last dollar out of their customers, what with ticket surcharges, junk fees, upsell offers, and merchandize tie-ins.

But then I saw this…

When I visited the website to purchase tickets today, I discovered that the “type these distorted letters to prove you’re human” captcha had been replaced.

The new system shows this screen, with a helpful “click here” link.

When you click, a video ad begins playing. You have to watch for at least five seconds before you see the magic phrase, which you must then type in the box below the ad to continue.

And that phrase is actually a tagline from the ad.

Head. Desk. Head. Desk. Head. Desk.

I ran into this one earlier today. An update gets “stuck” and refuses to install, giving this cryptic error message. It’s happened to me before, although rarely enough that I can’t remember the specific steps of what to do.

Here’s the fix: 

Windows Update error 80070003

If you receive Windows Update error 80070003 while checking for updates, you need to remove the temporary files that Windows uses to identify updates for your computer. To remove the temporary files, stop the Windows Update service, delete the temporary update files, restart the Windows Update service, and then try to check for Windows updates again.

[Detailed steps follow]

Took just a few seconds, and things started working again.

So I share this with you in case you ever need it.

You might recall that after Windows 8’s launch, Microsoft gave away free Media Center product keys for use with Windows 8 Pro. The promotion ended at the end of January, and Microsoft implied that the keys needed to be used immediately or they would expire.

Here it is, 40 days later, and I just had an opportunity to put that question to the test.

In preparation for a review, I upgraded a Windows 8 PC to Windows 8 Pro and then used a free Media Center Pack key that I received from that same promotion.

The Upgrade Assistant recognized it as a working key and performed the upgrade normally. After rebooting, the system wasn’t activated, but following the link to activate manually worked. Online, no phone call required, took about 10 seconds.

That’s a single data point. Anyone else tried lately?

If you’re running Windows 7 or Windows 8, you can expect a lot of security updates today, at least 10.

I’m also running Office 2013 Professional Plus. With that package in the mix you get so much more:

Yowza. That’s a lot of updates. Maybe even a record for me. (I should note this machine hadn’t been updated in a while, so it might have been getting two months’ worth of updates in one serving.)

On another machine with Windows 8 and Office 2010, I counted 16 updates.

It’s interesting to note that Office 365 Home Premium, which has almost exactly the same apps as Office 2013 Professional Plus, apparently hasn’t received this update yet. It updates itself through the Click-to-Run feature, whose options are set on the Office Account page. Currently, the version number for Office 365 Home Premium is 15.0.4454.1004, compared to 15.0.4454.1504 for the standalone version, which uses Microsoft Update.

I imagine that update will be coming along soon, and I’ll be curious to note just how the update process compares to this one.

Dear Microsoft,

These days, consumers buy PCs and tablets and other similar devices. They’re not familiar with binary calculations.

So when they see a device that claims to have a 64 GB drive and then they look in File Explorer and see that it’s only 59 GB, they feel cheated. And when they hear that their 128 GB drive only has 89 GB of free disk space, they wonder what you’re doing with all the space they thought they paid for.

You can explain the difference between binary and decimal calculations until you turn blue. Consumers won’t get it.

Apple bit the bullet and did this in 2009. If you buy a 1 terabyte external drive and plug it into a Mac, the OS X disk tools tell you it has 1 trillion bytes of storage, with 996 GB available after formatting.

Plug that exact same drive into a Windows machine and it tells you that you only have 931.51 GB available. (Don’t believe me? See for yourself.)

Which answer is easier for consumers to understand?

I understand it’s a hassle to convert your Windows tools (File Explorer, Disk Management, Resource Monitor, etc.) to show MB and GB in their decimal form. I know it will annoy techies who have been working with Base 2 since the 1990s or earlier.

But you really need to make this change, because otherwise this sort of thing happens. It is insane, from a marketing point of view, to publish a table disclosing storage space in binary terms when the device itself AND its packaging AND your advertising use decimal measurements.

Meanwhile, maybe you can whip up a little app and put it on the Windows 8 desktop, one that will conveniently display actual free and used storage in decimal terms.

If you open the Metro-style PC Settings today on a system running Windows 8 or Windows RT and tap General, you see this:

It can’t be too hard to tweak that text so it says something like this:

Your total system disk size is 128 billion bytes.
You have 110.5 billion bytes available.

Seriously, people.

Tomorrow, Microsoft puts its second Surface device on sale. Unlike the Surface RT, this is a full PC, with very muscular specs.

My full review is here: Is the brilliant, quirky, flawed Surface Pro right for you?

Microsoft’s Surface Pro page is here: Windows 8 Pro Home

I’ve also looked at the storage space controversy in what my friend Harry McCracken calls an “extreme, borderline obsessive-compulsive level of detail,” which I gladly cop to.

Here’s that post: Surface Pro versus MacBook Air: Who’s being dishonest with storage space?

So after all that, I want to know: Are you planning to buy a Surface Pro?

[poll id=”4″]

Here’s a link I found incredibly useful today, so I decided to share it.

A little background: My main work notebook came with a trial version of Office 2010 that I never uninstalled. I installed Office 2010 Pro Plus, and then later I installed the Preview version of Office 365 Small Business Premium.

Amazingly, everything seemed to work just fine. But today I wanted to clean up all the gunk in preparation for the coming release of the final versions of the Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise products.

To start, I did exactly what you probably would do: visit Control Panel, click Programs and Features, choose the various Office entries, and uninstall them one at a time. It all seemed to go well, but after restarting I discovered that Windows Update was prompting me to install the Office 2010 Service Pack and several updates for individual apps.

Hmmm, that doesn’t seem right.

Although Control Panel no longer had any Office-related entries, the prompts for updates wouldn’t go away.

So I visited this page:

How to uninstall or remove Microsoft Office 2010 suites

If you find yourself in a similar situation, one of the tools here is almost certain to help you. The second item on the list is a Fix It tool you can download and run. That one didn’t work for me. But the third option on the list, the Office 2010 Program and Uninstall Troubleshooter, did the trick. After running it, I went back to Windows Update, clicked Check For Updates, and watched with pleasure as the Office updates vanished from the list.

This shouldn’t be something you need to use often. My situation, with two released versions and a beta, is (I hope) unusual. But it’s good to know the option is there.

Note that this page includes links to similar uninstallers for Office 2007, Office 2003, Office for Mac 2011, and Office for Mac 2008. I’m sure the “How to uninstall Office 2013” article is just around the corner.

And here it is: Uninstall Microsoft Office 2013 or Office 365