Lenovo skewers the Macbook Air ads.

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I confess: I love the Office 2007 Ribbon. But I know it’s a source of pain for some people. And truth to tell, even I sometimes have trouble finding a command. Which is why I was so pleased to see the new Office Search Commands add-in:

The add-in downloads and installs quickly and unobtrusively. To use it, click the newly added Search Commands tab at the far right of the Ribbon and then type a keyword in the search box. Results appear immediately to the right of the search box. You can click to execute the command or right-click to add the command to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Now, if they could come up with an add-in that makes the icons on the Quick Acxcess Toolbar just a wee bit bigger…

Update: For you x64 users out there, don’t be fooled by the system requirements. I had no trouble installing and running the add-in on a system running Vista Ultimate x64.

(via Ina Fried)

David Hunter makes an interesting observation in his remarks about MSN Music’s decision to shut down its licensing servers in August:

DRM schemes for failed download services are like any other failed audio/video format such as 8-track audio tapes or Beta videotapes or HD high-def DVDs – the purchaser is at the mercy of the technology providers and if the business goes south, so does your media collection.

I got rid of my Betamax video tapes decades ago, and thankfully never got into 8-tracks. But the observation is equally true for technologies that are still around today. I have a large collection of cassettes, many with rare and even irreplaceable music on them, but no easy way to play them back. Likewise, I got rid of most of my vinyl LPs years ago. I still have a few boxes out in the garage, but haven’t actually played them in nearly 10 years and can’t imagine the hassles of setting up a turntable today.

What I do find interesting, though, is how digital technology (even with DRM) has improved the longevity of a music collection. In the old days, if an LP got warped or scratched, your only recourse was to buy a new copy. That’s also true of CDs and DVD, which can be rendered worthless if they’re scratched, cracked, lost, or stolen.

Digital media aren’t inherently immune from sudden loss. Keeping a single copy of a digital media file makes it possible to lose that file (or an entire collection) in the time it takes for a hard disk to crash or a stray Delete command to run. On the flip side, though, keeping multiple digital copies in separate physical locations makes it easier to restore all or part of a media collection if it’s lost.

As I noted last week at ZDNet, Microsoft was unbelievably insensitive in its handling of this transition:

So why not make a gesture in the direction of those customers, one that doesn’t involve the middle finger? … How much goodwill and good news coverage could the company buy for 10 or 20 million dollars? Even at Microsoft that’s more than chump change, but it’s a bargain compared to the amount of ill will they managed to generate in one day by offering nothing. Nada. Zero, zip, zilch.

Rob Bennett, Microsoft’s general manager of entertainment, video, and sports for MSN, talked with Greg Sandoval of CNET News.com:

Bennett said that continuing to support the DRM keys was impractical, that the issue only affects a "small number" of people and that focusing exclusively on Zune was the best way to go. He also noted that it wasn’t Microsoft’s decision to wrap music into digital rights management.

[…]

"No one ever foresaw being in this situation," Bennett said. "It’s not something we like to do. We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what’s best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune."

If the MSN Music customer base was truly a "small number" of people and Microsoft wants them to move to the Zune store, then that’s all the more reason for the company to give those customers some sort of compensation.

Microsoft has released Windows XP Service Pack 3 to manufacturing. If you have a TechNet Plus or MSDN account, you can download it now; but don’t even think about it if you have a slow account, because the download file is 544MB! [See update below…] If you’re willing to wait a week or so (and you’ve waited for nearly four years, so what’s another week?) it will appear in Windows Update beginning April 29.

This Windows XP Service Pack 3 information page is worth bookmarking.

Despite what you might have read, don’t expect any noticeable performance improvements from this release. The major advantages are twofold:

• You won’t have to download nearly a hundred individual updates after installing XP with Service Pack 2.
• Using Windows XP media with SP3 integrated, you can install Windows without using a product key. (You’ll still have to activate within 30 days, of course.)

I just refurbished a two-year-old Dell notebook, reinstalling XP SP2 and then installing SP3 from CD. Very fast and easy, a major improvement compared to the tedious process I would have had to do just last week.

Update: The 544MB file I mentioned above is on Technet as an ISO image, burnable to CD. It contains a handsome installer wizard, updated deployment and support tools, updates to the .NET Framework, and so on. The standalone SP3 installer is 316MB in size. That’s still very large, especially for those with limited download speeds. We’ll see what the Windows Update package looks like when it arrives next week.

I’m setting up a new system here and trying out Word … sorry, Microsoft Office Word 2007 … as a blogging tool. The following is a test of Word’s picture uploading capabilities:

Katy is a heat-seeking missile and has learned that an open, running notebook computer is a wonderful place to curl up for a nap.

Update: Well, that seems to have worked just fine…

It took me a while to warm to the Windows Vista Sidebar, but it’s now won me over and I have it running pretty much full time. Here’s a list of the gadgets I’m using right now:

Clock (standard system gadget)

Notes (standard system gadget)

iWeather – this is a tweaked version of the standard weather gadget, the main difference being that it allows you to click the city name to open a full forecast

Remote Desktop Gadget 2.0 – connect to another system over the network using Remote Desktop Connection without having to open the Remote Desktop client

App Launcher v3 – customizable collection of icons to launch favorite programs

Windows Search Indexer Gadget – from Brandon Paddock, this is an awesome way to keep tabs on the Windows Search service

What are your favorite gadgets?

A few weeks back my buddy the PC Doctor went off in search of a fingerprint reader that would work on Vista 64-bit. He found Eikon’s Digital Privacy Manager, which I bought, based on his recommendation, for $50 from MyGearStore through Amazon.

Verdict: It works great. I really like the convenience of being able to log on to websites and secure applications (like Outlook) with a swipe of the finger rather than having to enter complex, hard to memorize passwords.

And here’s a scoop: UPEK has a new version of its Protector Suite QL control program with a few noticeable improvements over the one that came on the CD with the device itself. The download page for Protector Suite version 5.8 is well hidden; I found it via a pop-up bulletin, which appeared in response to a problem report I sent off using Microsoft’s Problem Reports and Solutions application. It promised to solve that issue and also offered "security and stability improvements." No problems, so far. And the latest driver has really improved performance and accuracy for me.

Highly recommended.

I’ve just received an invite to a conference call this Friday with a couple of senior folks from the National Cable Television Association to discuss the impact of SDV on CableCARD technology. I’ve been asked this question a lot in comments lately, so I’m looking forward to this one. Anyone have any specific questions they want me to ask?

I’m on the waiting list, but surely someone out there can move me to the front of the rope line. Anyone?

Update: Wow, that was fast. Thanks, Benjamin.

Looks like I will have a few invites to pass along shortly but want to look around first. If you’re interested in getting an invite, leave a comment.

Update 1-May: I’m all out of invites. Sorry. If I get any more, I’ll contact people who left comments below. Meanwhile, I’m closing comments to avoid disappointing anyone new.

Dave Murdock is shocked – shocked! – that no one is outraged over Microsoft’s attempts to push Silverlight via Microsoft.com. Surely, he insists, this "horrendous user experience"  should make us all "cry out in agony." And oh, by the way, it means that this behavior by Microsoft is just as bad as Apple’s attempt to shove the buggy, insecure Safari browser onto Windows PCs even when the users didn’t ask for it.

Here’s the crux of Dave’s complaint:

It is unavoidable. Think Emperor Palpatine’s voice from Return of the Jedi. No matter where on Microsoft’s site you go to, MSDN, Mactopia, Sysinternals, you are going to get prompted to install Silverlight.

You can’t ignore it. No matter how many times you click the X on the prompt, go back to the Microsoft site later, you are going to get prompted again. Over and over and over again.

Uh, Dave? One word: cookies.

The reason I’m not outraged is because I allow Microsoft’s website to set a single cookie that tells it I said no to the Silverlight prompt. Here, see for yourself, using the cookie viewer in Firefox:

With that cookie set, you won’t be prompted again. I just tried it. One click on the X ("No, thanks, I don’t want Silverlight right now.") and I don’t see that dialog box again.

Sounds like someone has their security software set a little too tight. Meanwhile, Apple just offered the latest version of Safari to me along with yet another iTunes+QuickTime update, even after I specifically excluded Safari the last time I ran Apple Software Update. Now, that’s outrageous.