Technogearophilia

Despite the long-running complaints, Microsoft’s Windows operating systems are quite good. They are, however, complex and you have to configure them properly.

Windows Hidden Settings

Of course a lot of the settings are hidden, which makes good sense but makes things a bit harder to configure.

To many people’s minds the war between the various web browsers looks like a schoolyard brawl between two rambunctious boys, with a quiet – possibly special needs – kids sitting off to one side utterly unconcerned and oblivious to the fight raging beside him.

Mmmmmmmm…Glue Good

Yessir; that’s old Internet Explorer off to side eating glue while the other browsers get rowdy, trying to figure out who’ll be king of the internet playground – or so it’s really easy to think.

The thing is though that the “glue” IE is munching on is business critical Microsoft applications such as Office and SharePoint, and a plethora of other critical web-based or web-enabled systems that were designed to work natively with IE but which either do not function correctly with Firefox or Chrome or which require modifications to those browsers’ settings – Firefox users, think about:config – in order to work correctly.

Firefox, Chrome, and all the lesser contenders can fight between themselves for the recreational market all they want. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t need to be the playground’s biggest bully; it’s busy at work – more like the nerdy straight-A student than the special needs kid.

I know that this isn’t 100% true, in the sense that not all issues reported to Microsoft follow this pattern. Yet on most days it certainly feels true.

Sending An Error Report To Microsoft

Most times when you send and error report to Microsoft it seems like they’re using a much older definition for ethernet – as in your error report is lost in the ether.