Microsoft is making it a little less expensive for college students to get the right software at the right price to make both the college years and the transition to the working world a success. For only $59 you can get, direct from Microsoft, the full Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate package. This package includes all of the Office 2007 components, including Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Business Contact Manager, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, and Groove. To qualify, the student needs to have a valid US college email address and be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request.

Don’t blow your budget on expensive software - take advantage of this great offer from Microsoft!

Sometimes in Outlook 2003, a red X will appear in your signature if you have an inline jpg embedded there. You carefully re-insert the image in your signature and it seems to work for awhile, displaying your singature properly, and then eventually it stops working correctly and then the red X comes back. If this is happening to you, this fix may help.

In this situation Outlook 2003 is storing images in emails in a temporary security folder. If you have an image called, say, image.jpg, Outlook will store this image temporarily in a folder. When Outlook saves this image, a filename such as image01.jpg, image02.jpg, image03.jpg, is used. The bug happens after 99 repetitions, when Outlook goes past image99.jpg. It cannot save the file, so it displays a red X. This little autoit script will clear the folder so that Outlook can start displaying the inline images in your signature properly. I have had good success in placing this program in the startup folder so it runs each time the user logs on to their computer. This program should not be run while Outlook is running.

The source code can be found here. Compile it and enjoy!

The default location of the icons on a Blackberry are not to my liking. I prefer to change my Blackberry icons by relocating them so that the handful of functions I access most often are on the top row of the home screen. This puts them right at my fingertips. To see how easy this is, here is a walkthrough on a Blackberry Pearl in which we move the Address Book icon to the top row.

1. First, browsing around with the trackball, locate the Address Book icon. In this example it is one of the last icons. After you find it, the icon should appear highlighted.

2. Now, click on the menu button. On this Blackberry, it is the little “paw prints” button to the left of the trackball. This will bring up a context menu. With the trackball, scroll up or down to select the Move option and clik the trackball.

3. The context menu goes away and now we see that the Address Book icon is surrounded by a little box indicating it is under our control.

4. Use the trackball to slide the Address Book icon around until it is in the desired location. If you mess up, just hit the menu button and select Move again.

5. After you have the icon where you want it, click on the trackball and it will stop moving. In my case, I like putting the Address Book as the third icon on the top row.

You can now pre-order Mac OS X Snow Leopard online. The pre-order price is $29 for a single Mac, or $49 for a family five-pack. Many people expect the software to ship in September of 2009, but no official date has yet been announced.

This upgrade version is only available for Macs currently running Leopard. It will only install on Intel-based Macs.

Congratulations!  You’re headed to college.  Many colleges have specific requirements for incoming students.  Georgia Tech, for instance, requires every student to have a laptop and gives very specific requirements. Some schools have no requirements but suggest that you check with the individual department within your college.

Check with your college to see if they have arrangements with Dell, Apple, IBM, etc. to purchase computers at a discount. Wherever you buy a computer, buy the computer and software separately. MS Office Student/Teacher edition comes in a 3 computer version — so it can be loaded onto 3 machines and not tied to a specific computer. Anti-virus products by Symantec and others also come in multi-user packs. You should check to see which anti-virus/anti-spyware software your school requires. Use their suggestions. Trying to substitute another anti-virus software will waste time and money. Some colleges sell third-party “computer service warranties”. On the surface these may seem like a good idea but read the fine print carefully. Most warranties only cover hardware problems and frequently exclude printers. Most computer problems are caused by software, viruses, and spyware which are usually excluded. Dropping the laptop or spilling liquid on the keyboard also usually voids the warranty.
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Recently a customer had an issue with travelling back and forth between two networks with his laptop. One network (his home) used dynamic IP, the other (his office) used static IP. The constant messing about with the control panel and network connections was causing him grief, and sometimes he would forget the numbers to key in. So, I wrote two scripts and placed them on his desktop.
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Some nasty viruses or other malware like to disable task manager. Most of the time, you can repair task manager by editing the registry. Please do not edit the registry unless you know what you are doing! With that warning - to try this fix just follow these steps:

Click on the Windows key and the R key at the same time. A little “Run” dialog box pops up.
Type REGEDIT, hit ENTER. If you’re running Vista, press CONTINUE.
Browse to the key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
In the right pane, look for the value: DisableTaskMgr
Right click DisableTaskMgr and select Delete.
Then browse to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
In the right pane, look for the value: DisableTaskMgr
Right click DisableTaskMgr and select Delete.
Close the Registry by clicking on its big red X.

The change should take effect immediately. If not, reboot and see if Task Manager is now repaired.

The other day I was reconfiguring a network with multiple PCs, wireless access points, bridges, and the like. In the midst of this, I noticed that one of the PCs had a “page could not be displayed” message instead of the site being visited, which was amazon.com. Google’s site came up fine, but not amazon. I went to another PC - same issue. There is a great resource for this situation - www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com. I tried it and sure enough - www.amazon.com was not reachable! The outage only lasted a brief while, I saved this screenshot for posterity. Next time you have trouble reaching a site, why not see if others are having the same problem?

On July 19, 2009, Stewart Cink won his first major title at the 138th Open Championship at Turnberry, Scotland, defeating 59 year-old Tom Watson in a playoff. Cink had birdied the 72nd hole while Watson bogeyed, forcing the playoff. This is the sign that greeted Stewart at the entrance to his neighborhood when he returned home. Stewart likes to twitter - check out his tweets.

Microsoft has made the upgrade version of the next version of Windows, Windows 7, available for pre-order at a reduced price. The response has been terrific - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade is now the #1-selling software item on Amazon. During the promotional period it is available for only $49. The Windows 7 upgrade advisor from Microsoft is a free download which can tell you if your PC has what it takes to run Windows 7.

Update: the promotional price has expired.