By Jin Nan Goto

The new Ribbon interface and the new Office filetypes are the most notable changes that Microsoft Office 2007 brought, but one minor change was a new default font.  In Microsoft Word 2007 11 point Calibri is the new default font as opposed to 12 point Times New Roman which was the previous default fonts.  Here is how you can change the default font back to Times New Roman or to whatever font that you like.

There are several reasons why you would want to change the default fonts other than nostalgia. You may have older computers still running older versions of Office and you would like to have the fonts consistent on them. You may want to choose a smaller font to save paper when printing, or if you print a lot of documents you can choose a font that is really easy to read.

Here’s how to do it

• On the Home tab, click on the “Expand Styles” icon in the lower right of the styles menu.
• Click on the “Manage Styles” button at the bottom of the menu that expands.  (see figure below)

• Next you need to select the “Set Defaults” tab.
• Choose the new font, font size, and any other options (like font color)
• At the bottom of this menu there two radio buttons that you can choose from.  If you select “Only on this document” the new font will only apply to the current document.  If you choose “New documents based on this template” the new font will apply to all new documents.

By Jin Nan Goto

During today’s NFL games Apples responded to Microsoft’s recent advertising blitz (which featured Jerry Seinfeld ).

I have to say that recently the Get a Mac Ads have been getting more and more childish. I thought that the first Get a Mac ads were very clever and effective in pointing out the advantages of the Apple platform. Now it seems that all they do is snipe at Windows Vista.  They point out that Vista has a lot of problems, which is a claim that people should but don’t challenge.  Lets not forget the launch of apples last few platforms Leopard and the iPhone and they had problems too. Why don’t we hear about those more? For the most part, that is because they have been fixed. Contrary to what Apple is trying to imply in this commercial, Microsoft is actively working to improve Windows Vista (just like Apple did for Leopard).  That is what Vista Service Pack 1 was all about, and it appears there is a Service Pack 2 on the way. 2 years later all the problems with Vista have mostly passed. Microsoft isn’t only investing in advertising, and is also working to improve their products. There is really a fine line between pointing out your competitor flaws and making up stuff that isn’t true. Apple is clearly flaunting this line and their claims are unfair. Really these ads should try to convince people why the Mac is better, and not just about tearing down Vista.

By Jin Nan Goto

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free open source alternative to proprietary email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.  However a feature is missing from Mozilla Thunderbird that is present in other email clients such as Outlook.  Thunderbird does not have a calendar module.  However the great thing about Thunderbird is that it’s functionality can be expanded with plugins.  Thunderbird is incredibly flexible and the lack of a Calendar is fixed by installing a plugin from Mozilla called Lightning.

Thunderbird With Lightning Installed

Installing Lightning

1. Download the lightning.xpi file from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/
2. Open Thunderbird
3. Click “Add-ons” from Thunderbird’s Tools Menu
4. Drag and drop the lightning.xpi file from your desktop (or whatever folder you downloaded it from) onto the add-ons window.  The result will look like this, and you will be prompted you to restart Thunderbird for the add-on to take effect.

If you don’t want to access your calendar from your email client or if you don’t use Thunderbird you can download a stand alone calendar client called Mozilla Sunbird.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

By Jin Nan Goto

The Windows Disk Defragmenter is an extremely useful tool to maintain your computer’s performance.  If you have a badly Fragmented hard drive you will notice that booting Windows and loading programs are extremely slow. Taking these file fragments and combining them and cleaning up all the clutter in the hard disk can speed up load times considerably.  For computers running Windows XP and all older versions of Windows defragmenting the drive is usually the first step in speeding it up.

In Windows Vista the disk defragmenter runs automatically by default.  It only runs when the system is idle and will not effect the computers performance.  My Vista machine runs the defragmenter every Wednesday at 1am. Vista uses the Task Scheduler to schedule the weekly defragmenting and you can schedule XP to defragment automatically using XP’s task scheduler.

These steps are all available at Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 555098
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555098

You can open the task scheduler from the Start Menu –> Accessories –> System Tools.  Or you can access it from the Control Panel under “Scheduled Tasks”.  When you open the Task Scheduler click on “Add Scheduled Task” to open the new task wizard. When you are presented with a list of programs to run automatically, click the “Browse” button and navigate to and open the file C:/Windows/System32/defrag.exe.

Over the next few steps you will select the time and frequency of the new scheduled task.  You don’t need to run it every day but you can schedule it to run late at night every couple of weeks when you are not using the computer.  After you set the schedule be sure that you check “Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish” before you click the finish button.

In order to run the defragmenter automatically you need specify the drive that needs to be defragmented.  Simply type “C:” at the end of the Run field and click “ok”.

By Jin Nan Goto

Licensing is a very complicated aspect of today’s technology.  When you buy software at the store you are not actually buying the software, but rather the license to use the software.  Because of that; the licenses, product keys, and registration codes are actually more important than the physical disks.  But, too often, people are much better at protecting the physical CDs and DVDs than the licenses, and this causes problems if the software key is lost.

Multiple copies is essential when backing up anything. When you buy software from a store you generally get a physical label that contains the key or the license.  For example the product key for windows is often placed on a label on the underside of you laptop or on the back of the computer.  This is the only copy most people have of their product keys.  But what happens if you lose the CD case containing the label with the product key.  Even if you still kept the original CD you wouldn’t be able to reinstall it without either buying  the software again in order to obtain a new license or obtaining an illegitimate cracked version of the software.

For cases like this you should take the time to document all your product keys and what computers are using them and record it somewhere separate from the Original CD  so that if you lose the CD you won’t lose your product key along with it.  Large companies often use special software to keep track of all this license information, but you can use a simple  text file or spreadsheet to store this information. Another idea is that you can use your digital camera to take a picture of the label and archive the image. Also, if you are concerned about keeping this data secure, you can easily encrypt it using free tools such as truecrypt.

Ensuring that you have redundant copies kept separate from your computer will protect you from catastrophic situations. Storing a copy of the data online is a very good solution. Then you won’t have to worry about losing your data if your laptop is stolen or if you have a hardware failure.  Sending a copy of the text file or spreadsheet, containing your license information, to your webmail account (not to your POP mail as this is also stored on your computer) is all you really need to do in order to save a copy on the internet. I use a web service called Evernote to store my license information.  While Evernote is a online notetaking service it is very flexible and is useful because it lets you upload notes by email. I can also archive the various web accounts that I’m subscribed to by forwarding them to my Evernote account.

By Jin Nan Goto

I wasn’t planning on writing another post about the Engineering Windows 7 blog since I already mentioned it last week. But this latest post from the E7 blog is about User Account Control and I couldn’t resist.  Bottom line is UAC is coming to Windows 7.  This is probably disappointing news for many who considered UAC to be too obtrusive and obnoxious (although I don’t think anyone thought UAC wasn’t coming back).  Still, the Windows 7 people are working to improve it and lower its annoyingness.

Now that we have the data and feedback, we can look ahead at how UAC will evolve—we continue to feel the goal we have for UAC is a good one and so it is our job to find a solution that does not abandon this goal. UAC was created with the intention of putting you in control of your system, reducing cost of ownership over time, and improving the software ecosystem. What we’ve learned is that we only got part of the way there in Vista and some folks think we accomplished the opposite.

Based on what we’ve learned from our data and feedback we need to address several key issues in Windows 7:

• Reduce unnecessary or duplicated prompts in Windows and the ecosystem, such that critical prompts can be more easily identified.
• Enable our customers to be more confident that they are in control of their systems.
• Make prompts informative such that people can make more confident choices.
• Provide better and more obvious control over the mechanism.

Excerpt from Engineering Windows 7 Blog

Designed out of a desire to make Vista the “most secure version of Windows ever” UAC has done a lot to change a very destructive aspect of Windows, which is that everyone ran Windows as an Administrator.  UAC has not only helped by warning users when installing software(or malware), it has also helped developers create better software that was more conducive to allowing users to run as a limited user and improve security. Malware is generally not able to install itself without permission when running as a limited user.

The older versions of Windows (Win95, Win98, WinMe) were all single user operating systems. This is where the user had full control over modifying the system.  The newer versions of windows (Windows 2000 and later) were multiuser capable, This allowed the for limited user accounts as well as administrator accounts. The data from Microsoft’s Windows Feedback Program showed that around 75% of computers have only one user account Which defaults to the Administrator account.   In the past many software developers made assumptions that the computer would have full access to be able to modify the system.  The E7 blog admits that even some developers at Microsoft made those assumptions as well.  This really made running Windows XP as a limited user incredibly difficult.

With Vista and UAC, developers had to take a hard look at the programs that required Administrator rights and whether they could (or should) change them to not require elevation.  If they did require elevated privileges the secure desktop popped up and the user had to explicitly allow it.

We also found that there were many cases in previous versions of Windows where we had lumped things together when instead only part of the task really should have required the user to be an administrator.  For example, in Windows XP you had to be an administrator in order to change the time or the time zone of the system. The reason that time functions are usually restricted is that you can do some pretty sneaky things if you can change the system time — like trick system logs or backdate emails.  But as it turns out, changing the time zone of the machine so that a business traveler based on the West Coast goes to their meetings at the right time when they are visiting New York really doesn’t need to be protected — so in Windows Vista, we split that out and now allow a standard user to change the time zone.

Excerpt from Windows Vista Blog

Vista has been incredibly effective in reducing the number of programs that require full administrator privileges, and this is only improving as time passes.

However the implementation of UAC in Vista is far from perfect.  While you want to warn users against doing things that are dangerous (installing un-trusted software or messing with the registry/or device manager) the frequency of prompts runs the risk of the user ignoring them and always approving.  The darkened screen of the secure desktop is somewhat alarming and unfriendly to users.  Also, in Vista even an administrator is not “really” an administrator.  They run as a standard user unless they need to approve an action.  This upsets experienced users who know what they are doing and want full control over their computer.  Still an improved version of UAC is a really important addition to the future Windows 7.

External Links:

Engineering Windows 7 Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-control.aspx

Windows Vista Blog
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/23/security-features-vs-convenience.aspx

By Jin Nan Goto

In a previous post I went over exporting email contacts from a webmail account and importing them into Mozilla Thunderbird.  However, what if you want to add extra contacts directly into the .csv (comma separated value) file that you exported?   What if you have a list of contacts on an Microsoft Excel file that you would like to import into Thunderbird.  Any spreadsheet program, such as outlook (but also openoffice.org and even Google Docs)will be able to read, edit, and save .csv files.  I can easily open the contacts.csv file that I exported from Hotmail and edit it in Excel.

Then I can type in the new contacts.  One limitation of Thunderbird is that they only import the first 36 or so fields of the csv and the Hotmail .csv file has a lot of unnecessary field.  You need to make sure that you eliminate all but 36 of the fields.

If you have an Excel file (.xls) containing contacts that you would like to add to your Thunderbird Address book, No problem.  Open the spreadsheet and click on “save as”.  Then select CSV (Comma Delimited) as the document type and its ready to import into thunderbird.

Lastly, Whenever you are importing your .csv file make sure that all the fields in Thunderbirds Address Book match up with the fields that you are importing.  You may need to move a couple fields up or down to match.

Related Posts:

Part I. Moving your contacts from hotmail to thunderbird

By Jin Nan Goto

Over the past month there has been a very interesting series of post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog written by Microsoft employees who are active in the development of the upcoming Windows 7. Starting September 10 the Engineering Windows 7 blog team started writing posts based on data they had collected through the Windows Feedback Program. While the posts are not unveiling exciting new features, they give a lot of insight into the decisions and considerations being made when designing Windows 7.

The Windows Feedback Program collected data from volunteer users of Windows XP and Windows Vista in order to collect raw data on how these volunteers use their Windows computers. The data was then aggregated and used to improve the features on Windows.

These posts, written by various members of the Windows 7 team, share a lot of the conclusions from the data gathered (complete with graphs and charts). Some of the data is very interesting. One thing they found was that, as display resolution on monitors increased, many users were adjusting the screen resolution down so that text and other elements on the screen would be larger.

“We have found that a large percentage of our program participants lower their display resolution from the highest usable for their display. Looking at the data coming from the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program to compare to, and noticed a similar trend: over 50% of customers with 1600×1200 screen resolution displays are adjusting their resolution down to 1024×768, likely because they find it uncomfortable to read the tiny text on high resolution displays. The negative effect of this resolution change is the loss of fidelity to the point where reading text in editors and web browsers is difficult.”

In this case the data showed the Windows 7 team that they needed to spend time to find a way to accommodate those users who lower their resolution for visibility reasons, while at the same time allow them to make full use of their high resolution monitors.

These posts are quite interesting. Here is a list of all the ones released to date (although it seems like there are more coming).

• Engineering Windows 7 blog
• The Windows Feedback Program
• ­ Follow-up on High DPI resolution
• More Follow up to discussion about High DPI
• User Interface: Starting, Launching, and Switching
• Follow-up: Starting, Launching, and Switching
• User Interface: Managing Windows windows