Re: file searching/vista help

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia, WGA is annoying, but I gave into. However, there are two
alternatives for you. One, I can email the installer to you -- it's
only 600K. Alternatively, the download is available here:


http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows-vista/vistahelper-security.html

and you don't have to do this annoying WGA thing. Why MS should allow
an external website to access its files without this WGA nonsense is
utterly, utterly beyond me.


One of the reasons why it's worthwhile to spend the extra money and
get a Mac is that if you go to Apple's website and try to get help
with a technical problem, you're bound to find the answer quickly and
it's bound to be easy to understand. By contrast, everything at MS is
a struggle. Look at the unbelievably bad documentation for the new SyncToy.


Speaking of SyncToy and its file comparison capabilities, I have been
using a Windows utility called BeyondCompare for a few years now --
not just in Windows but in Windows/Mac networked setups -- and it
really works as advertised.


At 4/15/2008 10:01 PM, you wrote:
> Bill Troop wrote:
> > oh dear - and I believe I have Vista auto-updating on.
>
> Then you've probably already gotten WGA rammed down your throat,
> will-ye, nill-ye. So you probably can let it go on. It's WGA (a
> piece of spyware, pure and simple) that really riles me.
>
> > And on the subject of WINHELP from Patricia's Nasty Vista post, MS
> > now _does_ allow Winhelp to be installed.
> > http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6EBCFAD9-D3F5-4365-8070-334CD175D4BB&displaylang=en
> Thanks, that looked promising, but on investigating I found it
> requires "validation"--that is, letting WGA be installed. Apart from
> its being spyware, I furiously resent the implication that I'm a
> crook. (It takes one to know one, as we used to say at St.
> Trinian's.) But I wonder if I couldn't download it on the office box
> (where I _had_ to let WGA be installed or not have anti-virus--not
> to be thought of with the ninnies we have sending us heaven knows
> what), then copy it to the laptop? Probably not.
> > I must say, on balance, that Vista seems to be an awfully amateurish system.
>
> In spades! There are _some_ good things, like letting you chose
> to overwrite, not copy, or keep both versions when copying files
> by drag and drop from the GUI. Of course, that can leave one (as
> I just discovered when consolidating some backup archives at the
> office) with 20 files with the same name, distinguished only by a
> number at the end (and a real mess if you need to access the
> short file name from a DOS app).
>
>
> --
> Patricia M. Godfrey
> priscamg@xxxxxxxx