RandallS's blog

Early versions of Microsoft Office used a multi-document interface. That is, if you had multiple documents open in Word, Excel, or Powerpoint you could switch between them using a tab bar within the Microsoft Office Application. Microsoft research apparently found that this confused new users who looked to their taskbar to switch between documents, so starting with Office 2003 Microsoft changed things so each document opened in a separate instance of the application and you switched between documents using the taskbar.

Dexpot is a deceptively simple virtual desktop program with many powerful features "hidden" beneath its surface for power uses. At its most basic, it creates up to twenty virtual desktops and allows you to move open programs between them and switch between desktops. This lets you, say have work projects open on one desktop, email on another, and your web browser and instant messenger programs on a third and switch between them based on what you are doing at the moment (or whether your boss is in the room).

Jumplists are one of the most useful new features in the Windows 7 taskbar. Programs with well designed jumplists allow you to do all sorts of useful things by right-clicking on the taskbar button. Unfortunately, older programs do not know about jumplists and even many new programs do not take full advantage of jumplists. Jumplist Extender is a free program that allows you to add new items to a program's jumplist -- even older program that are not aware of jumplists.

Windows 7 Home Premium does not include file level encryption. This is limited to the more expensive (Professional and up) versions of Windows 7. While there are a number of freeware file encryption programs, I wanted one that worked as an Explorer extension for convenience and had both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. After looking around a bit, I discovered that Windows 7 and 64-bit support was still fairly rare. Fortunately, one of the better file encryption program, AxCrypt, had a beta version with Windows 7 and 64-bit support.

Ages ago back in the days of DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 9x, I used a shareware replacement for the DOS command line (command.com) called 4dos (from JP Software). When I moved to XP, I briefly played with the 32-bit version (4nt), but decided that I did not use the command line enough to justify buying it.

I've used Winamp or Windows Media Player on my PC since the Dark Ages simply because they were familiar and were good enough. My wife is a bit more picky about sound quality (and has far better speakers to be picky with) and has recently changed to foobar2000 as the very nice-sounding application that came with her sound card has not been updated in years. foobar2000 recently released a version 1.0 and my wife thought it sounded better on her system than any other audio player she tried, including a number of commercial players.

As I find the Windows Start Menu too crowded for easy use, I've been using True Launch Bar and Powerpro on Windows XP to modify the taskbar to start programs the way I like. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 task bar works much differently than in any other version of windows and my old reliables just don't work very well on my new Windows 7 box. After looking around, I found a freeware program that both looks nice and does the basic job I need done, even if it does not have all the bells and whistles I'm used to: 7stacks.

My 2002 era XP machine died last week: the motherboard failed after years of 12-18 hour a day use. I decided not to replace the motherboard as even new P4 motherboards do not provide much support for "ancient" technology like IDE drives, AGP 4x video cards, etc. -- buying a new motherboard would mean replacing most of my peripherals as well. I finally decided to go with an Emachines ET1331G-03w.

If you are like me, you have a huge collection of bookmarks in Firefox. I have some that I bookmarked years ago. I really need to go through my 1500+ bookmarks, look at each one, and decide if I still need it. However, I know this is something I will probably never have time to do. With CheckPlaces, I can at least let Firefox check each bookmark to be sure the web site still exists.

While extra spaces usually aren't a problem when you are entering data by hand in Microsoft Excel, they often worm their way into data that import from other formats. Once in your spreadsheet they can be hard to find and they will often foul up your spreadsheet to the point it doesn't print -- or even work -- correctly. Manually finding these extra spaces at the beginning and/or end of items is a time-consuming and error-prone process.