Category: Windows

A brief complaint about Microsoft Windows Media Player!

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A colleague at work needed to know how to turn on captions in Windows Media Player. I started to write her a note explaining it, but needed to check exactly how to get to the setting since I knew how to do it in older versions but not 11.

This turned out to be just another opportunity to experience Microsoft’s creative approach to usability.

Here’s a snapshot of the the player. Note, there is no "File" menu, no Open command, nothing that appears useful unless you are purchasing music from their store or ripping from an old CD. And really, aren’t "Rip" and "Burn" SO 2006? Who even cares about ripping CD’s anymore?

ifLooksLikethis.jpg

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Dialogs too big in Vista to fit on small laptop screen

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My first attempts to work with Vista have definitely been an “experience”. I’m trying to get a Lenovo ThinkPad set up for use primarily for Qwizdom and Powerpoint, which would seem to be well within the limits of what Microsoft intended, but you almost have to wonder if they ever tried Vista on a laptop before releasing it! What a mess!

The default size of windows is often just a little too big for the screen. I’ve double and triple checked the screen resolution – it is set to maximum. We did set the default font size larger than the minimum because it is too hard to see otherwise.

Yet the windows are all over the place in sizing – sometimes they are correct, sometimes obviously wrong, with title bars above the top of the screen or dialogs with Accept/Cancel buttons below the bottom of the screen.

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Installing Adobe Reader on Vista

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The case of the missing confirmation dialog
A problem I’ve encountered several times on Vista: dialogs will open, then refuse to disappear, and the Windows Task Manager simply tells you they are “expecting a response”. They are “expecting a response” from a confirmation dialog that has completely disappeared.

This seems to happen when another window pops up and steals focus unexpectedly. The confirmation dialog is not hidden behind any other windows, nor minimized, but simply vanished. This can be very confusing even when you know what you are looking for. This happened while I was installing Adobe Reader. Here’s what it looked like when it got stuck:

adobeReaderInstaller.JPG

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Connecting to wireless networks on Vista

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We were having trouble connecting a ThinkPad to a local wireless network. It would first say there were no networks available, then when I would locate one, it kept requesting Username, Password and Domain, as if there were an authentication server involved. The wireless network is simply set up with a WEP key, so there are no individual users associated with it – anyone with the WEP key can log on.

It turned out that previous efforts to connect had set up a “wireless network” entry in a list somewhere which needed to be deleted and set up again correctly.

  1. IMPORTANT: be sure to check that the wireless switch on the front of the laptop is turned on. It is difficult to see and it must be turned on or all your other efforts to connect will be unsuccessful.
  2. First, select Start Menu > Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center. Under “Tasks”, click Manage wireless networks.
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Exporting high resolution Graphics from Microsoft Word 2003

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In Word 2003, it is not immediately obvious how to export pictures that have been inserted into a Word document. Even if you select “File: Save As…” and select the format “Web Page” in the “Save As” dialog, the images that get saved along with the web page are usually low resolution.

The solution to this is a menu selection “Compress Pictures” which is hidden in the “Tools” menu in the “Save As” dialog.

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