excel

I can save you $99

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,

Microsoft is willing to install a clean copy of Windows in its retail stores on any PC for a flat fee of $99. (Windows license not included, of course.) They’ll also optionally include Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials programs, the ad-supported starter editions of Word and Excel, Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus, and Zune media player software.
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One in five Macs has malware–but read the fine print

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security, Viruses , , ,

Sophos claimed today that 20% of the people who’ve installed their free Mac antivirus has malware.  That’s not altogether surprising, but it’s also not nearly as big of a problem as it sounds.

One in 36 systems has Mac malware, which means the Mac has an infection that could actually be harming the system itself. That number is low but believable. In my experience, the people who seek out antivirus software are usually the ones who need it the least.
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Apply your monthly patches just as soon as you can

Dave Farquhar security, Windows , , , , , ,

There are only six patches in this month’s edition of Patch Tuesday, and only one of them is critical, but it’s a big one.

The critical patch fixes a flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol, something typically only present in the business-oriented flavors of Windows. But if you don’t know whether you’re affected, it behooves you to let Windows update whatever it wants to update. Read more

How to make persistent headers in Excel

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

My boss and I are compiling a huge Excel spreadsheet that summarizes everything our organization has ever done. It’s as big of a pain as it sounds. What makes it worse is having to scroll all the way back to the beginning to view the headers. The solution: make persistent headers in Excel.

The trick to making a persistent header that shows all the time, even after scrolling, hides in the View tab in Excel 2007.
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And now, Excel 2007 has a few nasty surprises

Dave Farquhar Office, Software ,

I ran into something maddening today. I have a large number of self-study questions in plaintext format that I’ve been using to prepare for my upcoming test. To weed out the large number of duplicates, I massaged the file into a tab-separated format so I could load it into Excel and alphabetize it by the question wording. It worked nicely, especially in Excel 2003.

I got a nasty surprise when I loaded the same file on an Excel 2007-equipped machine.
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Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Microsoft has five updates and Adobe has two for us on this fine Patch Tuesday, in addition to a patch Mozilla pushed out for Firefox last week.

Don’t get too complacent if you run something other than Windows. If you run Microsoft Office on a Mac, or Adobe Reader or Acrobat on a Mac, or Adobe Reader on Unix or Linux, you’re vulnerable. The vulnerabilities in those affected products are more serious than the vulnerabilities for Windows. So keep that in mind. Don’t be smug about security. It’ll bite you.

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Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

Not surprisingly, they find the answer is yes. Specifically, that a PC equipped with an SSD gets about a 30% across-the-board performance increase.

I don’t agree with everything Tom’s Hardware say in the conclusion, namely, that it’s pointless to put an SSD in a netbook. Indeed, when you put an SSD in a netbook, you get several benefits: improved latency, improved battery life, and much faster boot/resume times, all of which are useful.
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Used dual-cores are coming! Used dual-cores are coming!

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,
Used dual-cores are coming! Used dual-cores are coming!

All this talk about new computers got me looking to see what’s out there in the channel. And it looks like the glut of Pentium 4s is finally clearing, making way for the 2-core revolution. Prices are low–I’m seeing dual-core systems, both Intel and AMD, with Windows licenses, for anywhere from $180 to $280 depending on configuration and some other factors that aren’t exactly clear to me.

Sound good? Here’s what to look for in an off-lease/refurbished computer.
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Stress test computer hardware with Prime95

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

Let’s say you’ve just bought a used PC with a short (typically less than 2 weeks) warranty. Or a new PC that’s not the brand you know and trust. Maybe you’ve built a new PC and you want to make sure it’s going to hold up before you start using it every day. Or you have a new server, and you want to make sure it’s going to hold up under heavy loads. What should you do to stress test computer hardware (or burn in computer hardware) like that?

Do what overclockers do.

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Windows, ARM, emulation, misconceptions and misremembered history

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I keep reading stuff about Windows and ARM and, well, I think people just aren’t remembering history.

I’m not saying that Windows 8 on ARM will save the world, or even change it substantially. It probably won’t, since Microsoft tends not to get things right the first time. But will I automatically write off the project? No. It could prove useful for something other than what it was originally intended. That happens a lot.

But I’m more interested in clearing up the misinformation than in trying to predict the future.
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