Mar 072013
 

I’d previously blogged about my disappointment with the Microsoft Office 2013 license restrictions:

Well, the good news today is that Microsoft have revised the licensing terms so that users can now, at last, move Office 2013 to a different machine:

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2013

Feb 222013
 

Damn!

If Microsoft had said about a year ago that Office 2013 could only ever be installed on one computer then that would have been fair warning and placated a lot of people especially with the Office 365 offer. But by making the draconian Office 2013 licensing terms public only recently, Microsoft have angered a lot of people. Count me as one of those angry people as I purchased Office 2013 just a few days ago. Luckily I didn’t get around to installing it on my machine especially as I was thinking of getting a new machine in a few months time. I’m going to have to sell my copy of Office 2013; it’s pretty much useless to me.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2013

Oct 302012
 

Well, after my post on the abysmal colour management support built into IE9, I’ve now got Windows 8 and have tested IE10. Unfortunately it seems that IE10 is just as broken as IE9. Perhaps Microsoft don’t care about the “beautiful web”? More here:

Firefox browser and now Google Chrome browser on Windows 7 and on Windows 8 can be configured to be fully colour managed. These are a much better alternative to IE9 and IE10.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012

Jan 312012
 

google-chrome-icon

Just when I thought that those annoying Google popups telling me to install Google Chrome had gone way, those evil things made their return yesterday to IE7, IE9, Firefox 9 and 10, and Safari. Strangely that damn popup did not appear in Opera.

What does it take to destroy that annoying Google popup? Clearly Google are in-you-face about getting you to switch to their browser. Seems to be an abuse of their dominate position.

Dye Google Chrome popup, die!

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012

Jan 222012
 

Further to what I think of as Google abusing its dominant position in constantly targeting Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browsers and asking the user to switch to Google’s Chrome browser, there appears to be a change now. My previous rants on this:

Well, today I noticed that the annoying “Install Google Chrome” popup message appeared in Firefox 9 for the first time:

Sun-22-01-12-09-59-32

This popup also appeared in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 (as expected) and also in Apple’s Safari 5 but, strangely, not in Opera 11. I was able to close these Google popups in each of the affected browsers without the popups returning when I revisited Google’s search homepage. I have not checked any other browsers yet.

So, let’s just hope that those annoying Google popups don’t come back again. Although I’m not sure how Mozilla and Apple feel that Google are trying to be a bit more aggressive in trying to wean users onto Google Chrome!

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2012

Dec 212011
 

speed-wheelI recently bought a Microsoft Wireless Speed Wheel for the Xbox360 and have used it with “Forza 4”. It looks great and feels great. The Speed Wheel does pretty well as a casual gaming racing wheel controller and in that role it certainly allows good steering, braking and acceleration control; it is not, though, for the hard core racer who wants force feedback and much finer control. The Speed Wheel’s main advantage is that its small size allows the device to be easily stored and be more accessible compared to, say, the old Microsoft Wireless Wheel and pedals. To stop my (weakling!) arms from getting tired I mostly use the Speed Wheel by resting it on my lap or on my knees and only occasionally raise it mid-air.

The Speed Wheel has no ports for a headset which I can live with but, most bizarrely, the wheel lacks the Right Bumper (RB) button and Left Bumper (LB) button. These omissions markedly hamper gaming experience (at least in Forza 4); there are workarounds but these are very unsatisfactory.  The Microsoft does say this at their website:

Take the wheel for easy motion-controlled racing. With the Xbox 360 Wireless Speed Wheel, experience realistic, accurate steering, and feel every bump in the road with rumble feedback. The Xbox 360 Wireless Speed Wheel is compatible with all your favorite racing games* on Xbox 360, and puts you in total control with intuitive buttons and triggers.

  • Intuitive steering with motion sensors
  • Trigger buttons for gas and brake
  • Buttons for game-specific functions
    A,B,X,Y for interactions
    D-pad for navigation
    Guide including ring of light, start and back
  • Rumble feedback

* — Does not contain shoulder buttons which may limit functionality in some games.

Really, what were Microsoft thinking by not including the RB and LB buttons? A flawed product.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011

Dec 162011
 

I had previously blogged about Google abusing its position. They’re still are it; spot the odd one out:

Fri-16-12-11-09-07-35

Google, please don’t tell me what browser to use. And why is it that your annoying message is not shown in Opera, Safari and Firefox? There’s something not quite right in Google.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011

Nov 072011
 

Google has been irritating me of late. And increasingly so. I have tried to “just get along” with one aggressive form of product-push from Google but it’s now reached the stage where I need to say something and get it off my chest.

I use Firefox as my default web browser but, now and again, I use one of the other web browsers installed on my system. These other browsers are IE9, Chrome, Safari and Opera. I have noticed, if I use IE9 (or IE7 from work) and go to www.google.com, that the Google Search homepage adds the following notification within the top right of the browser’s window:

google notification

This notification window does not appear when I use the other browsers on my system. Why is that? Is Google actively targeting the users of Microsoft’s browsers? Is Google abusing its dominate position? To me the evidence is pretty clear.

The message to Google: “Stop it. Now. Thanks.”

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011

Jul 112011
 

I recently posted about a particular Service Pack 1 improvement for Outlook 2010 at:

I can confirm that the other issue of “Your IMAP server closed the connection” messages is still there. Therefore I have reactivated the following AutoHotkey scrip:

#NoEnv ; standard AutoHotkey header

SendMode Input ; standard AutoHotkey header

SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; standard AutoHotkey header

Loop

{

sleep 50

IfWinExist Microsoft Outlook, Your IMAP server closed the connection

{

WinClose

}

}

I wish Microsoft could handle this error message in a more graceful manner than just putting up the error message and sitting there not doing anything except waiting for user input. Outlook should retry the connection and perhaps also put a message in the status area at the bottom of the Outlook window.

System config: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Outlook 2010 (32-bit)

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011

Jun 302011
 

I recently installed Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010. I immediately noticed something different In Outlook 2010 when IMAP e-mails arrive….

The previous version of Outlook 2010 did not provide proper notification of new e-mails arriving via IMAP. I wrote an AutoHotkey script to get around this problem:

Outlook 2010 with Service Pack 1 now seems to provide proper notification in the Notification Area in Windows 7 and also changes the display of the Outlook icon on the Taskbar; the way it is supposed to work as per arrival of e-mails via POP3.

So I’ve now retired that particular AutoHotKey script; it was brilliant.

As descried in the link above, the other issue I had with the previous version of Outlook 2010 was that it would occasionally throw-up “Your IMAP server closed the connection” error messages. I haven’t seen this error with Outlook 2010 Service Pack 1 but it’s still early days. I’m monitoring the situation.

System config: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Microsoft Office 2010 (32-bit) Service Pack 1.

Article by Kulvinder Singh Matharu – 2011