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Microsoft Fix it Center

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, story, fix it center, how-to, windows 7, problem solving

Microsoft has released a beta version of a new tool called Microsoft Fix it Center. This tool provides one single point you can go to in order to run several different troubleshooters to solve the different issues you are having with your computer. Although currently in beta it already provides a multitude of automatic troubleshooters to you. If you are having problems not addressed by the tool, you can report your issue through the tools online center and hopefully Microsoft will follow up on it. The tool looks promising, especially for those of us that falls into the category of being the family and friends it-guy! Just make sure you have this installed on their machines – and you can easily guide them through its use.

Installing Microsoft Fix it Center

Head over to Microsoft Fix it Center Online’s website and download the software.

When running the installer you will be greeted with this window;

After the installation finishes you will be asked to set it up and personalize it for your computer

Based on your hardware and software it will suggest additional troubleshooters it can download

In my case it found the two you see suggested in this screenshot

You are then requested to create and account at Microsoft Fix it Center Online

You can use your Windows Live ID for this

Microsoft then asks for your permission to share some information about your system with the online service

After having completed that step you have finished installing Microsoft Fix it Center on your computer

Using the Fix it Center

When running the program for the first time you are greeted by the following pop-up

Running the troubleshooters is easy. You just pick the one that most resembles your problem and click on the Run button

In this screenshot I have run the Performance troubleshooter and are asked whether I want the tool to apply fixes automatically or just present them for me so that I can select which ones to apply.

After diagnosing the machine you are then presented with the result of the diagnosis (I chose to select which fixes to apply in this instance)

After I ran the System Configuration tool I was then asked whether this fixed my problem or not.

After I submitted my response I was then taken to the Microsoft Fix it Center Online service where I could see a summary of the problems and fixes for my machine.

Conclusion?

It is really too early to tell how useful this will be. It definitely looks promising and especially easy for the average user to utilize. I will be using it going forward, as well as install on it all the machines I might be asked to support (ie all of my immediate family). When I will be asked to fix a problem this tool will be my first stop in the troubleshooting and fixing process. Hopefully it will deliver on its promise and make my day easier.

For now: I recommend you try it out. Having real world experience in using it? Let me know in the comments section underneath.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Microsoft Office Labs Ribbon Hero

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, story, windows 7, office 2007, office 2010, review, how-to, ribbon, ribbon-hero

Today I found a brilliant tool for learning the new ribbon interface by sheer chance. I was visiting the official Office site and noticed an ad for a social game that would help you master the ribbon; Ribbon Hero.

What is it?

In Microsoft Office Labs own words;

Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel 2007 and 2010, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka "challenges"), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office. As a concept test, this add-in is not supported, but is an opportunity for you to try out an idea we are working on and let us know what you think. For additional challenges and the opportunity to earn more points, download Office 2010 Beta.

Microsoft Office Labs have made some videos on the product that can be found on their product page. I recommend giving them a look. (Tried to embed one of them here – no success…)

How does it work?

I downloaded the game, which is an add-in (COM) for Word, PowerPoint and Excel (2007 and 2010) and installed it. Using it adds some time to opening each application but not too much. After installing it there is an added button in the top right corner of the Home tab in the Ribbon of all three applications.

The Word Ribbon Hero button

The Excel Ribbon Hero button

The PowerPoint Ribbon Hero button

You can connect the game with Facebook and thus compete with your friends and co-workers that also have installed the game.

In use you will see that as you utilize different ribbon tools in your writing and editing your points in the Ribbon Hero button accumulate. You will get more points for more difficult tasks than you would for lets say changing selected text into bold. All fine and dandy, but the tool really gets interesting when you click on the Ribbon Hero button and enter the so-called challenge mode. In Word you are greeted by this screen;

Here you can see your Word achievements, and where you have gotten them, as well as play new challenges in order to get more points. This part of the game is also the most interesting to me as it is here that you can actually learn new things. So lets go ahead and play the challenge shown in the screenshot above;

The task at hand is written in bold red letters, and there is a before and after screenshot underneath showing what it is you should try to achieve. In case you have no clue how to do this you can hit the Hint! button in the right pane and be presented with the solution – if you do this you will of course get fewer points than you would have if you achieved it all on your own. The faster you do things also gains you more points. To me – the whole points thing is not that interesting – what I like is the way I am led through a process where I can learn something new on how Word, Excel and PowerPoint works.

In the task above I selected all the text and hit the Clear formatting button on the Home tab which gave me the following feedback;

By connecting Ribbon Hero with Facebook through Facebook Connect I am able to publish my results on my Facebook page as well as challenge friends that also use this add-in.

Although it has only been available for a couple of months, and are still in the development face, I have no problem in recommending Ribbon Hero for everyone using either Office 2007 or Office 2010. Go grab your copy here. And to you guys at Office Labs; I want this for my Outlook 2010 as well!

Popularity: 7% [?]

TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop

This last week the competition for best Twitter desktop application tightened. As far as I was concerned TweetDeck was my favorite with its multiple columns and configurability. Then Seesmic, makers of Twhirl released a beta (of course) of their Seesmic Desktop application and the picture was not as clear cut any longer. And then TweetDeck released a newer version of their app claiming to have fixed some of the previous bugs. Time to test…

Seesmic Desktop

User Interface

Seesmic Desktop is in many ways an upgrade of the excellent Twhirl application. For many the beauty of Twhirl lays in its simplicity and an obvious concern would then be that a multiple column desktop app would be too busy. Well, no worries. As you can see from the screenshot below Seesmic Desktop is not too busy and a nice looking application. Personally, I like the rather colorful application as opposed to the rather dark default TweetDeck theme.

When you open the Seesmic Desktop the first time you only have the Home column open. To add more columns you will have to either choose some of the other immediately available options like Replies and Private, or make your own Userlists or Searches. After having done that you move the new column you have opened to the right by clicking the icon in the upper right corner of the column. After you have moved the column from the “home” position you can close it by clicking the new button appearing in the same place.

As in most twitter applications you have the choice of adding URLs or picture from within Seesmic Desktop.

When you choose to add a URL you are offered a dropdown menu with three URL shorteners; bit.ly, digg.com and is.gd.

If you want to add a picture Seesmic Desktop offers multiple choices. You can browse your computer for a picture, you can drag and drop a picture onto the dialogue box or you can take a picture with your webcam.

The resulting image is just stunning, eh?

As in TweetDeck the user Avatar hides multiple choices; Reply, DM, Retweet and special choices.

In the special choices menu you can then choose to Favor an item, add to a userlist or to block a user.

The option to add a user to a userlist is the only way to add users to such lists, which in my opinion is one of the weakest points of this application. There is no way to add multiple users to userlists in an easy way, like it is in TweetDeck. After having made such a list, I should in all fairness add that Seesmic Desktop offers a much easier way than TweetDeck to remove users from a userlist; Just choose the option Users and click the remove button to the right of the username; brilliant in its simplicity.

Configurability

There aren’t too many options for a user to configure in Seesmic Desktop. You can add multiple twitter accounts, you can adjust the twitter API usage and you can make some adjustment to how and if notifications are displayed. Under the language tab you can choose between English and… er… just English (more are probably coming?) and under the Advanced tab you can opt in for automatic updates. That’s pretty much it.

Interaction with other services

Well this should be easy to cover; there really are no other services than Twitter that can be used with Seesmic Desktop as I am writing, although I believe that more services will be added in the future considering Seesmics track record when it comes to Twhirl.

TweetDeck

User Interface

TweetDeck has reached version 0.25b and has been my choice of twitter desktop application for a while now. The UI hasn’t really changed in this version, although it has gotten a new application icon with a yellow background as opposed to the transparent background they used to have.

As before you have the multiple columns with they grey/black interface. One new feature is the ability to post status updates to your Facebook account and of course being able to see your Facebook friends updates as well.

The top button row now looks like this, with the following choices; Tweet, All Friends, Replies, Direct Messages, Favorites, Groups, Search, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwit and Facebook Friends. Clicking on one of these buttons will open the corresponding column.

If you choose to Tweet the input box opens and from there you can tweet or update your Facebook status, as well as shorten and add URLs or pictures already on your PC/Mac.

When it comes to URL shorteners TweetDeck offers more options than Seesmic Desktop, you can choose from bit.ly, digg, is.gd, tinyurl, tr.im and twurl.

Where Seesmic has its userlists TweetDeck has its groups. TweetDecks way of choosing who goes into each group is far superior to that of Seesmics. You get a scrollable list of everyone you follow and can tick off the ones you want.

As I mentioned above each persons avatar also offers choices; as with Seesmic you have Retweet, Reply, Direct Message and Other actions. Other choices in TweetDeck offers more choices than Seesmic does; The User choice gives you the ability to Add to Group, Follow, Unfollow, View Profile and Search, while the Tweet choice offers the following; Favorite, Email Tweet, Translate, Untranslate, Mark as Read and Delete.

Configurability

TweetDeck offers a lot of options in their Settings panel as the following screenshot clearly shows and are thus much more configurable than Seesmic Desktop is at the time of writing.

Interaction with other services

As mentioned above TweetDeck now offers the possibility through Facebook Connect to show your Facebook friends status updates as well as posting new updates for your own Facebook account as well. Furthermore you can now post short videos directly from TweetDeck through the 12seconds service.

Conclusion

Before I get to my conclusion on which of these two applications will be my choice as I continue twittering I have to get a little into the memory use of each of them. TweetDeck claims to have fixed its problems of memory leaks in this version and are also claiming to have limited its memory usage to around 100Mb. As you can see from the following screenshot that is not exactly the case; TweetDeck consumes approximately 160Mb while Seesmic only consumes half at roughly 85Mb. While it differentiates the two applications this is hardly a problem on modern systems with 2 GB RAM or more…

So…

What do I think?

I actually like both of them. Seesmics UI is more pleasing to my eyes, while TweetDecks configurability and more ease of use appeals as well. When it comes down to it, I think that a silly little thing like the way you can add people to userlists in Seesmic will cause me to continue to use TweetDeck in the future. But, and this is a big BUT;

I highly recommend both applications for active twitterers.

You can get TweetDeck here, and Seesmic Desktop here.

Popularity: 16% [?]