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Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 137 • 2008-01-17 • Circulation: over 275,000 |
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Contents TOP STORY: MSN drops parental controls for paying customers KNOWN ISSUES: Get still more built-in performance tools WACKY WEB WEEK: A modern-day love story WOODY'S WINDOWS: Super-size your right-click context menus PERIMETER SCAN: Process Monitor logs program activity for you PATCH WATCH: IE 7 and Silverlight downloads planned by MS YOUR SUBSCRIPTION: How to change your address or unsubscribe |
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For links to every topic in this issue, scroll down to the
Index |
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ADS
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TOP STORY MSN drops parental controls for paying customers
E-mail and IM blocking features lost in MSN MSN Premium dropped the ability to block e-mail and instant messages from certain contacts, beginning on Jan. 8. The announcement came from Microsoft in a letter to customers of MSN Premium, many of whom pay $9.95 per month for the service. (An unspecified number of other customers receive MSN Premium as part of a bundle when purchasing Net access from an Internet service provider.) In a boldfaced paragraph, the letter urged customers, "If you want to continue to restrict e-mail or messenger contacts via Parental Controls, we recommend installing Family Safety from Windows Live™ One Care™." The letter goes on to state that Family Safety from Windows Live OneCare is free and that it "will become your new parental control application." The communique also provides installation instructions for installing the Windows Live Family Safety service and concludes, "we apologize for this inconvenience." This is the second time in less than a year that MSN Premium has scaled back features for its paying customers in favor of versions of Windows Live, which are free and have only minor feature differences. Last spring, MSN Hotmail was "upgraded" to Windows Live Hotmail, as Microsoft Product Manager Nick White put it in the official Vista blog. Microsoft continues to charge paying subscribers for MSN Premium, even as the company replaces features in MSN with free Windows Live equivalents. In most cases, features that still exist within MSN Premium are available for free from Windows Live or are built into Windows itself, as I reported in the Jan. 3 issue of Windows Secrets. In response to that article, a Microsoft representative made the following statement, published in a blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
For example, Windows Live provides no precise equivalent for Encarta Premium, but users can search for scholarly articles and academic publications using the free Windows Live Academic Search beta. Microsoft also offers a free version of Encarta online. According to a description of the differences on the Encarta site, MSN Encarta Premium is similar to the free version, except for the omission of advertising and the addition of "literature guides, project planners, and the multimedia center." Neither version can compare in popularity with the free Wikipedia site, which outpulled Encarta 3,400 to 1 in user visits, according to a Hitwise study last year. Microsoft's paid services do carry advertising The Microsoft statement also raises the question of advertising. It's true that free Windows Live accounts display an advertising banner at the top of each Hotmail page, and the online version of Windows Live appends a text ad to the bottom of each e-mail message. However, those who use the free, "desktop" version of Windows Live Mail see no advertisements in the interface. Nor does mail sent from the desktop version include text ads, in my tests. (The desktop version, in one omission, does not support the calendar feature that's found online.) Advertising is also present in Microsoft's instant-messaging service. In the newest version of Messenger (dubbed Windows Live Messenger), both paying MSN Premium users and nonpaying users see banner ads in the main window and text ads in the chat windows. Windows XP users can avoid these ads by continuing to use the free version of Messenger that's built into the operating system. Users of the newer Windows Live Messenger may be able to use third-party software to remove the ads, as explained by the My Digital Life site. Windows Secrets reader Michael D. Hensley points out one benefit that MSN Premium does provide over the no-charge alternatives. The free Outlook Connector, as described on a Microsoft.com page, allows you to receive Hotmail messages in Microsoft Outlook — but only MSN Premium lets you synchronize calendar entries you may create in the two products. If that's worth $9.95 per month to you, I say go for it. A Jan. 4 Softpedia article on the controversy says the advantages of MSN Premium that the Microsoft statement cited are "subtle differences." Conceding that arguments can be made for either MSN Premium or Windows Live, the article, by Softpedia technology news editor Marius Oiaga, concludes:
Readers Don Dewiel and Michael Hensley will each receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for contributing to this story. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page. Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the magazine's Here's How section. |
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KNOWN ISSUES Get still more built-in performance tools By Scott Dunn My Jan. 10 story explained how to assemble within XP most of the same performance tools that are found in Windows Vista. This week, clever readers go the extra mile, pointing out even more free tools for monitoring and improving your system speed. Get a pre-fab aggregation of XP system tools A number of readers recommend third-party applets that make it easy to launch from a single window several somewhat geeky and hard-to-find tools in Windows XP. Of the nominations that were submitted, I find a couple to be particularly interesting for other tweakers out there. Reader Thomas Rose points to the freeware Windows in a Box, whose four menus provides quick access to dozens of Windows built-in system tools and folders. John Harper recommends XP SysPad, which is better-organized and more attractive than Windows in a Box. SysPad, a free tool, divides its functions into eight menus and a number of submenus. SysPad also has a rudimentary process list, like the one in Windows' own Task Manager, and a feature that lets you "roll up" its main window with a simple right-click of the title bar, leaving only the title bar and menus. (See Figure 1.)  Figure 1. XP SysPad organizes hidden and hard-to-find Windows features into a collection of menus. I haven't done an exhaustive test of the two products' hundreds of features. You may find that Windows in a Box actually supports some functions that cause you to prefer it over SysPad. Judge for yourself. Find computer management tools in My Computer Russ Bartels has an interesting observation about giving XP the performance tools found in Vista:
If you want to add Computer Management to your collection of tools, the executable file name to create a shortcut to is compmgmt.msc. Alternatively, you can open the Computer Management window by clicking Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. If you don't see the Administrative Tools option on your Start menu, try this: Right-click the Start button and choose Properties. Click Customize. If you're using the Classic Start menu, check Display Administrative Tools in the list at the bottom and click OK. If you're using the default Start menu, click the Advanced tab, and scroll through the Start menu items list until you see System Administrative Tools. Select whether you want it to appear on the All Programs menu or both the All Programs menu and the Start menu. Then click OK twice. Although the items on the Administrative Tools menu are about system maintenance and configuration, a few of them (like Services and Performance) can also be useful for tweaking system efficiency. Some MS utilities that aren't in Windows Reader Ken McLeod draws attention to a couple of useful Microsoft products that don't come with Windows:
Windows Secrets contributing editor Ryan Russell wrote extensively about Process Explorer in two columns in the paid version of the newsletter on Dec. 6 and Jan. 3. His column today unveils the secrets of a related tool, Process Monitor. How to get our paid content BootVis, a tool designed to help you improve the startup time of Windows XP, was originally developed within Microsoft, but the company no longer offers it at the Microsoft.com site. However, you can get it from the BootVis page of Major Geeks and other software-download sites. Be aware that there is a controversy over whether BootVis is needed to optimize a machine's startup time. Microsoft posted an explanation on Feb. 12, 2004, stating that BootVis is for developers and doesn't improve performance for end users. Windows XP, for example, automatically runs a boot optimization every three days. A 2003 commentary by Eric Vaughn at the TweakHound site indicates that running a command manually can accomplish the same optimization as BootVis. A LangaList article from Sept. 9, 2003, explains that the command for a quick boot optimization is: defrag c: -b Readers Rose, Harper, Bartels, and McLeod will each receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending tips we printed. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page. |
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EDITOR'S BOOKSHELF
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WACKY WEB WEEK A modern-day love story
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YOUR SUBSCRIPTION The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. We skip an issue on the 5th Thursday of any month, plus the week of Thanksgiving and the last two weeks of August and December. Publisher: WindowsSecrets.com LLC, Attn: #120 Editor, 1700 7th Ave., Suite 116, Seattle, WA 98101-1323 USA. Vendors, please send no unsolicited packages to this address (readers' letters are fine). Editorial Director: Brian Livingston. Editor-at-Large: Fred Langa. Associate Editor: Scott Dunn. Contributing Editors: Susan Bradley, Mark Edwards, Woody Leonhard, Ryan Russell. Research Director: Vickie Stevens. Program Director: Brent Scheffler. Trademarks: Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. The Windows Secrets series of books is published by Wiley Publishing Inc. The Windows Secrets Newsletter, WindowsSecrets.com, LangaList, LangaList Plus, WinFind, Security Baseline, Patch Watch, Perimeter Scan, Wacky Web Week, the Logo Design (W, S or road, and Star), and the slogan Everything Microsoft Forgot to Mention all are trademarks and service marks of WindowsSecrets.com LLC. All other marks are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: Anyone may subscribe to this newsletter by visiting our free signup page. WE GUARANTEE YOUR PRIVACY: 1. We will never sell, rent, or give away your address to any outside party, ever. 2. We will never send you any unrequested e-mail, besides newsletter updates. 3. All unsubscribe requests are honored immediately, period. Privacy policy HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: To unsubscribe from the Windows Secrets Newsletter,
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