By Brian Livingston We don’t usually publish articles on the 5th Thursday of the month, thinking that that would be a chance to take a much-needed break from our weekly schedule.
A newly announced vulnerability in Windows, however, impelled us to publish a rare news update on Oct. 24, and we’re following with today’s special content to bring you contributing editor Susan Bradley’s latest findings on protecting yourself.
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Susan’s regular column, Patch Watch, ordinarily appears in Windows Secrets’ paid content. We opened up her Oct. 24 call-to-arms to all readers, however. It garnered the third-highest poll rating of any article this year: 4.43 out of 5, as you can see on our poll results page.
The only articles scoring higher were editor-at-large Fred Langa’s May 1 recap of 30 years of computer writing and contributing editor Woody Leonhard’s Oct. 23 exposé of the risks of Flash cookies (paid content).
Microsoft’s unexpected patch release, and our news update less than 12 hours later, elicited this response from a subscriber named Will Cool, which was typical of our readers’ reactions:
- “Wow! My system had restarted itself overnight and I was informed that it had just installed updates (?), but even a closer inspection of the updates told me little about why. Then I open my inbox, and — What’d'y’know? — question answered! You guys are impressive.“
While Susan’s poll numbers were setting records, our esteemed associate editor Scott Dunn flamed out with his Oct. 23 top story. That article, “The best way to merge your contacts with iPhone,” received the lowest rating in history: a “fair” 2.32.
Apparently, not all of our readers who own a BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or other handheld were able to figure out from the article how to solve merge problems on their non-iPhone device. Hey, that’s why we ask for feedback!
We’ll publish an update to that article, with instructions for every major kind of handheld, on Nov. 6.
As long as we were bringing out Susan’s new info today, we thought we’d publish an entire newsletter’s worth of new, paid content, too. This week, you’ll find Fred recommending fixes for XP SP3, Scott Spanbauer testing the leading replacement for MS Office, and Becky Waring reporting on the best software for a home or small-business network.
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Brian Livingston is editorial director of WindowsSecrets.com and co-author of Windows Vista Secrets and 10 other books.
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