On the official "engineering windows 7" blog, there is a really interesting post.

That post is about the handwriting recognition. Widely available from many years, it was not accurate nor user friendly enough to be really useful.

With Windows 7, they want to get radical change to the common idea of handwriting recognition! A video is better than 100 words:

Really impressing, it isn't true?

This technlogy also works for asian languages!

And you can also write complicated math equations! 

They also revamped the UI, making it more "finger friendly", and with "multi-touch" support. Also, the on-screen keyboard, is not as useless as the XP or Vista OSK and has been refined in the looking and in functionalities! It has an adaptive dictionary that will learn from the user documents.

So promising, right? I wanna buy a tablet pc!

Recently, is appeared on Windows Update an Excel hotfix, the KB959995 update

But, on some computers, it is impossible to install... it simply fails, without any information

One of that computers, unfortunately, was my computer.... searching on Google, everybody was saying "you must reinstall office again".

But, i found a solution by myself:

First, download the patch from the Microsoft Website.

Run the patch and wait several minutes; after some time, you will get an error similar to "Impossible to find the installation files in E:"
Why? When I installed Office 2003 several years ago, I told him to save the installation files on E:
Over time, i added a new hdd, swapped partitions, and E: has become M:
E: has become an "unused space", so the patch is not able to find the installation files and it will fail

What to do? The easiest solution is making M: become E: again (I will write an howto on this, if requested)
If you managed to restore the original drive legger, you can go at the end of tutorial

If is not possible, you have to use the listool, downloading it from here.

After unzipping it, click on "move local installation source":

And then select a drive that can accept the setup files:

Now you are ready to install the patch. Run again the patch that you downloaded from the Microsoft website, wait several minutes, and you are done! 

Hi, i am a PC, so this post should be biased... but it can't be that.

Today, on the official Microsoft Windows blog, there is a strange post:

You can save $3367 if you choose a PC instead of a Mac

What??? Ok, Macs are expensive, but, is possible that there can be a such difference? I can't believe, even if i am a Windows-fanboy

Let's see what comparison they have done:

Ok, Macs are more expensive, but just a few hundred dollars...

What's wrong:

1. You cannot compare a normal Pc with a Mac Pro (will you compare a Chevrolet Aveo with a Dodge RAM??)
2. The 5-years MobileMe subscription (why do that without an iPhone???)
3. Mac users are buying Office for $149, Pc users does not buy Office for $680 (source)
4. Mac users chooses all kinds of protection plans, PC users just a basic one

This is like comparing "apples" with oranges!

Why Microsoft did not add to the Mac expenses also an iPhone with a biennal AT&T contract, and an iPod, and other accessories?

Even if the much touted massive 1st april virus infection was not so massive, Conficker continues to spread itself.

Conficker is an auto-installing virus if you didn't installed the MS08-067 patch; knowing if you have been infected is a bit hard, because the virus does its best to hide itself.

Luckily, the Conficker Working Group, has found a simple but smart way to know if you have been infected.

In fact, the virus blocks all the connections to the antivirus company websites. In this page, we can see a table, that contains some images, hosted on "generic" websites, and antivirus company websites:

• If you can see all the images: YAY! You are not infected
• If you cannot see the three images at top: you have Conficker C (or higher version)
• If you cannot see F-secure and Trend-micro logos: you have Conficker A or B
• If you cannot see any image... your browser is set to don't show any images

 Have you ever seen a strange folder, where the file name is not shown? Like here:

And them you asked yourself: "How i can show file names in explorer?"

A piece of cake! This is a Windows "feature" to "have more space". What a...! You have to click on the change view icon while holding the shift key.

Et voila!

In the previous post, it was supposed that, it was possible, in theory, "brute-forcely change" the wallpaper by changing the file %windir%\web\wallpaper\windows\img0.jpg while in safe-mode.

Unfortunately, you can't! Rafael Riviera, the man behind the uxtheme patch, for customize the Windows user interface, has demonstrated that the wallpaper image will ONLY be displayed if its hash will be BDB1C7176946A5013E57E28B46911BF04AB6DBB9402FA37464F563F502A11677. (an hash is a code that univocally identify a file)

So, if you buy a PC with this operating system, BEWARE! You will be forced to like this desktop wallpaper"!

PS: IT IS NOT A LATE APRIL'S FOOL!

Do you remember Conflicker? The virus that in December has started to spread automatically exploiting a Windows Bug.

According to experts, that virus is designed to activate itself on today, 1st april 2009!

What will happen?

1. Data loss?
2. Massive spam sending?
3. Massive distributed attack to other computers?
4. Sending of sensible data to evil servers? (like: password, credit card numbers)
5. April's Fool

In my opinion is the option #2... but i hope in an April's Fool!

Update: how to detect if your computer has been infected

Windows Starter Edition, is a very cheap version created for developing countries, or for ultracheap PCs, like netbooks. This version is without many features, and it has many limitations, like, for example, according to the Microsoft Website Windows XP Starter edition, supports maximum 512mb ram, doesn't work on newer dual-core CPUs, etc etc...

Moreover, there are other weird limitations, like a limit of three maximum concurrent open programs at once

      
Click to enlarge

Maybe, for an average user, this is acceptable... Internet explorer + MSN + Word = 3 (but... what about an antivirus?)

But... with the latest version of the Windows 7 beta, we can see that they introduced a new limitation! This is MADNESS!

Look at this:

There is no menu to change the wallpaper! This wonderful monochrome fish, is hardcoded to %windir%\web\wallpaper\windows\img0.jpg so you cannot change it! There is  who has tried to use the feature of "use as a wallpaper" of some image editing software, and it doesn't work! Weird!!

Imagine to buy a PC with this version of Windows. The manufactures can put a terrific wallpaper, maybe an advertising on online betting and how to earn money on internet, and you cannot change it...