Barb's Connected World

The number goes up. Consumer choices go down. The consumerist has revised the story originally published. Stores were supposedly told yesterday.

The Consumerist is reporting that nearly half of the 200+ stores in the US are going to close.

Why is it that the quality of computer equipment you can buy at retail continues to spiral ever downward? Pretty soon there will be no choices for retail consumers and prices will climb every skyward. I have yet to see a desktop or laptop at any of the bog box stores I'd want for myself.

One of the new default Vista security policy settings needs to be adjusted

For Vista Ultimate:

Start,Run secpol.msc [enter]

Click on Local Policies then Security Options

Navigate to
Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level
double-click to display Properties.

The default Windows Vista policy is NTVLM2 responses only.
Use the drop-down arrow to change this to

LM and NTLM – use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated

For Vista Home Premium:

Open a cmd prompt "as administrator" and ack the prompt

Type regedit [enter]
Navigate to

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

If it doesn't already exist, create a DWORD value named LmCompatibilityLevel

Set the value to 1 and reboot

About a year ago, I used a beta of Excel 2007 to save a bunch of worksheets in Excel 2003 format to avoid compatibility issues. Never gave it a thought in spite of some warnings later on about not being able to open in later versions of Excel 2007.

This morning, I tried to open several of these in RTM version of Excel 2007. Got a nastigram display box that these xls files were incompatible and I needed to install the beta version of Excel 2007. WTF?

I have Excel 2003 on my corporate laptop. Took a USB flash drive with the files in question over to that laptop. Absolutely no complaints from Excel 2003 and they opened just fine. I resaved them in Excel 2003 and replaced the ones that wouldn't open. Mission accomplished.

Excel 2007 is pretty dumb if you ask me.

Microsoft accepted some paid advertising for banner ads on Windows Live Messenger and MSN that inflicted some harm/pain on some users. This malware is called System Doctor 2006 which inflicts Winfixer and Errorsafe. Sandi's Spyware Sucks site has the details.

My ad blocker of choice is Ad Muncher. It even works on x64 Vista. It kills ads on Windows Live Messenger and IE.

I just saw C|Nets "Top 5 Reasons not to Buy Vista".

This seems to be yet another clueless drone talking head with really no credibility.

So, why don't I trust C|Net reviews?

1. They are unabashedly anti-Microsoft

2. Their reviewers have no technical skills

3. They want to increase hits and their content is editorially slanted to achieve this

4. They are unabashedly anti-Microsoft

5. Do you really want to base your purchases on someone who only gives good reviews to advertisers products?

The folks at i-mate really are a class act. The Momento 70 I've been using is pre-production from the floor at CES 2007. While in a IM conversation with their Sideshow developer, he mentioned that these frames can be updated remotely and that they poll and pull down new firmware. So I asked to see this in action (and to get newer firmware). When I "woke" the frame this morning, a screen displayed advising me that a software update was available and instructed me to press OK on the remote. After only a few seconds, the frame rebooted and came right back up displaying images. I checked through the menu system, and it reported a new version. Take a bow, guys. This is what "transparent ease of use" is all about.

If you want to know if there is a signed WHQL'd driver for your wireless NIC, this page has the list you are looking for. Remember that some of the larger vendors like Atheros, Broadcom, Realtek et al produce the wireless radios in your Netgear, D-Link, Linksys etc. wireless card so if your particular model isn't listed, it doesn't mean no support.

Note that some drivers are on Windows Update only. This means that unless you first connect with a hardwired connection, you will never be able to pull down the driver.

Looks like Velocity Micro is gearing up to sell OCUR/Digital Cable Tuner Vista machines for high definition Cable TV via CableCard.

http://www.velocitymicro.com/wizard.php?iid=89 for AMD

I have this computer here, sans DCT. It's definitely a winner.

http://www.velocitymicro.com/wizard.php?iid=96 for the Intel version.

My friend Muffy is on an extended adventure and shooting incredible photos daily. This was a perfect opportunity for the Momento Live Service.

ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/ferrari_5000/driver/vista/

Now this is REALLY cool. I've registered the Momento 70 and have a trial account set up. I can invite friends to be a part of this, and once they accept, they can send pix directly to the frame via email or SMS via phone or upload using the Momento website. When someone sends me a photo in this manner, the frame displays and alert so that I can accept or not.

Check it out.

The i-mate Momento 70 is sideshow enabled. A talented programmer at i-mate provided me with a pre-release x64 driver so that I could experience the sideshow features (which I'll be showcasing on my MS webcast 3/22 or so). The folks at i-mate seem nimble, co-operative, and I'm hoping that this device takes off like a rocket when it is available to consumers.

I've got the Live Sidebar Stock Quote gadget on my desktop and have enabled it for the Momento in the Windows Sideshow Control Panel applet. I also received a test weather application that is sideshow enabled from the same talented programmer and enabled that as well in the Sideshow Control Panel Applet. This one relies on a weather feed subscription from MSN Weather configured in IE7 on Vista.

Here's a close-up showing the detail: