The other day I mentioned what happens when you don’t pay attention to potentially embarrassing data that might be buried in Word documents. So I was especially amused to find an example on Microsoft’s own site.

Microsoft UK offers a FAQ on licensing, which in turn contains a link to a “Virtual-machine environment brief” (link leads to a file in Word .doc format). When I opened the document in Word 2007, I saw a slew of proofreading and editing changes, plus this comment:

Oops.

Let me reiterate a point I made in the earlier post. The programs in Office 2007 automatically expose this sort of hidden data by default every time you open or save a document. The idea is to make it impossible for you not to notice that your draft document contains artifacts from the editing process. If the person who posted this document had been using Word 2007, they might have been spared this embarrassment.

I thought it was just George W. Bush who called the world’s biggest search company “the Google.”

But apparently everyone in Washington does it. Witness this report from today’s Washington Post:

I’m updating my style guide now.

No, not the robot from 2001. I’m talking about the Hardware Abstraction Layer in the Windows NT family. This week, I was using the Microsoft System Information tool (Msinfo32.exe) to gather some details about three systems here in my office. I was surprised to see that all three machines reported different HAL versions. Checking in with my Windows Vista Inside Out co-authors, I learned that they’re all seeing the same number:

6.00.6000.16386

That’s on a total of seven systems, including one here. But on two systems, both Dells, I’m seeing later build numbers:

6.00.6000.16407
6.00.6000.20500

A quick search turns up nothing to explain the differences.

If you’re running Vista, do me a favor and check the HAL version on your system. Run Msinfo32 from the Run box (Windows logo key+R) of from Search box on the Start menu. Look about two-thirds of the way down the System Summary page, above the user name and time zone fields. If you see a number other than 16386, leave a comment here with more details about your system (especially mfr and OEM/retail status)

Update: Microsoft’s John Gray posts a comment that explains it all. Executive summary: these are fixes described in KB 929777 and 930261, delivered via Windows Update or preinstalled by some OEMs. During and after beta testing, I remember hearing many complaints from testers with Nvidia chipsets about performance problems, crashes, and general instability, especially in configurations with lots of RAM (3GB or more). This is the fix, apparently. Read John’s entire comment for more details and some interesting links about the differences between XP and Vista dual-branch development.

Last week, a company I worked with e-mailed me a contract and a cover memo explaining the contract’s terms in plain English. Both documents were in Word document (.doc) format. What the sender didn’t know was that the cover memo contained some comments, written by various people as the document went through the approval process. When I opened it in Word 2007, the comments appeared in the margin, giving me an insight the sender never intended for me to have. (The default settings for all Office 2007 programs automatically display hidden comments and tracked changes whenever you open or save a document.)

In this case, the damage was minimal. In fact, I worked with the folks involved to get the document scrubbed so that they wouldn’t be embarrassed the next time they sent it to a potential contractor. But with a more sensitive negotiation or a less friendly relationship, the consequences could have been catastrophic. So I thought it might be useful to share the details with you so you can avoid potentially embarrassing or incriminating yourself with a document you create.

Continue reading “What’s hidden in your Word documents?” →

Kent Newsome is doing an interesting experiment, asking some of his favorite bloggers to help him rebuild his reading list. I’m in Group 3 (with some pretty good company, I might add). Kent wants me to recommend 5 of my favorite blogs. Happy to oblige.

1. Scott Hanselman is the rare programmer who can write and think and chew gum and sling code at the same time. His writing is always entertaining, generally useful, and often inspired (far more often than pure chance would explain). I look forward to reading anything he posts.

2. Jon Udell went to Microsoft and appears to have negotiated a contract that allowed him to keep his soul and his sense of humor. Well done! He writes about big-picture topics with genuine insight and has given me all sorts of good ideas on how to work smarter.

3. Long Zheng is a whip-smart, funny kid from Australia who will someday work for Microsoft, who will have to figure out how to harness his creativity. After this spoof of The Matrix, he’ll have to tiptoe past Steve Sinofsky’s office or risk being vaporized.

4. Wondermark is David Malki’s brilliant cartoon, which frequently makes me burst out laughing. There’s very little technology in it (although his strip on a world ruled by Wikipedia is spot on, as is #285, which explores the creative potential of “pirated software and zero social life”):

His perspective is, shall we say, a bit warped; in fact, most of the characters appear to be drawn from Victorian days. If you’re over 40, check out these musings on aging:

• #280; In which Jamie feels Old
• #301; In which Hair Growth is noted

5. And finally, there’s John Walkenbach, proprietor of the J-Walk Blog, whose tag line is “Stuff that may or may not interest you” and is far more often the former than the latter. John is an Excel MVP and author of some authoritative books on Excel. His blog typically has no content on Excel. Which is fine by me.

I’m fascinated with the list Kent has come up with so far. I don’t believe a single one of those sites is on my current reading list. Clicking around turns up several interesting candidates. (Like I need more things to read. Sheesh. However, I was able to immediately reject one site based on a post entitled “I Feel Old,” which begins: “As I mentioned in a previous post, I turned 30 last week…”)

I have a few new PCs in the house and was wondering what it would cost to upgrade them. As it turns out, not much.

Crucial.com normally charges a premium for its memory – a premium they well deserve for consistently delivering a great product with world-class service. So what’s the “premium” price for 2GB of RAM (two 1GB DDR2 modules), the kind that goes in top-of-the-line Dell machines today??

How does $79.99 sound?

Oh, and high-quality 500GB drives are just about ready to cross the $100 price point.

I better quit before I start sounding like Grandpa Simpson.

The weather widget says we’re into the 80s to stay here, with the possibility of crossing into the 90s by the end of this week. That’s a far cry from the 100+ temperatures that were par for the course in Scottsdale, but it’s still hot. And that’s especially bad news for PCs. Overheating can cause all sorts of problems, from unexplained crashes to premature parts failures, which is why I pass along this reminder every year at this time.

I’ve got a half-dozen computers in this office, and I try to pay close attention to fans, airflow, and the overall ambient temperature in the office. PCs that are in cramped quarters where they don’t get enough ventilation are especially vulnerable. I periodically clean dust and dust bunnies out of fans, too. This year, I’m using power management to keep computers idle, reducing heat and using less power, when I’m not using them.

Ever had any heat-related hardware failures? How hot is it in your part of the world right now, and what are you doing (or planning) to keep cool?

I’m not sure whether anyone told Dwight Silverman that it’s customary for a first-time author to buy drinks for all his fellow computer book authors when his first book is finally printed. (Co-author Larry Magid is exempt, of course, seeing as how this is not his first.) It’s going to be a big bar bill.

Everybody go over to Dwight’s place and congratulate him and Larry.

Over the weekend I did some housekeeping here, including a long-overdue upgrade to the underlying software that runs this site. The upgrade to WordPress 2.2 went smoothly. If you notice any problems, leave a comment or drop me an e-mail (ed-blog AT edbott DOT com).

Also, I’ve closed comments on every post before May 1 of this year, and my new comment policy will be to close comments within 30-60 days unless there’s a compelling reason to keep them open. Spam isn’t a problem anymore, thanks to some very good plug-ins for WordPress, but the work of maintaining old comment threads is nontrivial. I get good questions and feedback from the comments, but most of that comes when a post is fresh. After a month or two the noise ratio gets fairly high.

I realize from looking around this site that my e-mail address isn’t easy to find. I’m working on finding a way to encourage direct feedback without opening the floodgates for random comments.

After 24 hours of travel and eight time zones, I figure it’ll be a couple days before I’m ready to string together two coherent thoughts in a row.

So, enjoy the holiday weekend…

PS: If enough people are interested, I might post some photos and descriptions of our trip. If I do, I’ll put them on a separate page and post a link here.