bruceb news

Microsoft Office 365 has been tremendously successful so far, certainly from a sales perspective (millions of subscriptions, although the exact number is kept under wraps), but more importantly it’s also been successful from a technical perspective. There has been no downtime for the last few months. My clients are ecstatic that I can set passwords not to expire. Smaller businesses are being migrated from the older Microsoft Online Services platform; my clients’ experiences have not been completely smooth but no data has been lost and support for minor glitches has been readily available. Life on Office 365 is good.

So although I’m going to describe a technical issue, it’s a fairly insignificant one that has affected less than a dozen people in my personal experience. […] continued

Previously: HP OfficeJet 8600 Plus

Here’s a reminder to always do a custom install with any program, and watch carefully for unwanted software that may be installed alongside the program you want.

HP has a long history of slow installation routines that sneak unwanted advertising and programs onto your computer. The installation program for the HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus is slightly better than the OfficeJet 8500, but there are still too many chances to wind up assaulted with ads and unwanted bloat.

The opening setup screen presents five pieces of “recommended software.” Only if you read the first sentence carefully does it become clear that none of them are required to use the printer. […] continued

After some research, I settled on HP’s new OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus to replace an aging inkjet printer and defunct flatbed scanner. My early impressions are good. Here are some of the reasons it’s a good fit for me (and might or might not be good for you).

The fundamentals are all there, better than previous generations. In fact, the OfficeJet Pro 8600 Plus looks a lot like HP is making a serious effort to respond to people’s complaints and come up with something new and satisfying.

Printing is surprisingly fast – pages spit out more like what you’d expect from a laser printer than an inkjet. […] continued

These are the rules for being safe using a Windows computer in 2012. Memorize them, forward them to your friends, post them on Facebook, alert the troops, sound the alarm, and walk from door to door passing them out to your neighbors!

If a web site brings something up on your screen that might be malware, turn your computer off with the power button. Get your hands off the mouse and do not click on “OK,” “Cancel,” or the X in the upper right corner! Anything that you click might lower the defenses on the computer and install malware.

Antivirus software & UAC will not always protect you against malware if you click OK at the wrong time. […] continued

A few weeks ago Microsoft released a OneNote app optimized for iPads.

Long-time readers know about my fondness for OneNote, the program you’ve never heard of that’s included with every copy of Microsoft Office 2010, right alongside Word and Excel and Powerpoint. Here’s more information to get you oriented. To repeat: “The concept is simple: OneNote collects information on the fly from any source you can imagine, and helps you find it again later when you need it. That’s any information. OneNote can hold your grocery list as easily as your research or trial preparation.”

OneNote is designed for its notebooks to be stored online in Microsoft’s Skydrive service. […] continued

The ribbons in Office 2007 and 2010 normally look like the picture above, with a row of icons and buttons under the headings across the top (Home / Favorites / Insert / Page Layout, etc.).

It’s disconcerting when the icons and buttons disappear. They reappear when you click one of the headings, then slide out of view again.

The answer is over at Small City Law Firm Tech, which should be on the reading list of anyone who uses Microsoft Office. Here’s Vivian’s description of what happens when the ribbon disappears after a particularly heavy bout of Random Clicking™:

The Office Ribbon hidden looks like this, all shrunken and icon-less:

And if you wonder how yours got to looking that way, you likely did one of two things:

• You either inadvertently clicked the Minimize Ribbon button (or pressed Ctrl F1)

Or

• You double-clicked on the active Ribbon Tab (headings), which has the same effect.

[…] continued

MyPermissions.org does something very simple and very helpful – and it might be an eye-opener for some of you.

The site has gathered shortcuts to the pages that list the permissions you’ve granted to access your information on eight social networking services: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr. The app permission management pages make it possible for you to guard your privacy and control how your information is used.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. If you have a Facebook account, you are asked constantly if you want to link this or that to your Facebook account. Maybe it’s comments on an online forum, or an add-in for a program (like Outlook’s social connector), or apps on your phone. […] continued

Noted science fiction author and Boing Boing curator Cory Doctorow delivered an important speech last month in London, explaining why attempts by copyright owners to lock down computers and web sites inevitably lead to surveillance and censorship, and how the copyright battles presage bigger fights to come over the very future of general-purpose computers. It’s fascinating and convincing – a must-read for anyone interested in the policy arguments about copyrights, Internet freedom, and how poor decisions now might affect us later. It’s been posted as an article here and deserves to be read and discussed and shared.

We don’t know how to build a general-purpose computer that is capable of running any program except for some programs that we don’t like, are prohibited by law, or which loses us money.

[…] continued

A few days before Christmas, Microsoft delivered the “Office 365 Integration Module for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials,” a long awaited add-in that integrates Microsoft’s new server software for very small offices with its hosted Office 365 service.

In some respects this is what SBS 2011 Essentials should have included all along, and the combination is a compelling choice for many very small offices considering their first onsite server or a replacement for an aging Small Business Server 2003 tower. You’ll find a full description of Small Business Server 2011 Essentials here:

• Overview
• Remote Access
• Backups

Separately, the two products are already compelling choices for small businesses. […] continued

In addition to its flagship products, LogMeIn also runs Join.Me, a free service that you can use to share your screen with someone at another location so easily that it will amaze and delight you. I’ve written about Join.Me before but it deserves to be called out again; it should be one of your basic and frequently used tools.

When you go to https://join.me and click the Share button, it will take only seconds to install a small control that will run the session. It’s temporary – no program is installed in the traditional sense and no permanent change is made to your computer. […] continued