The wireless mouse is less than a year old, and I always treat my computer equipment with great care, so I called Microsoft to see if they would do anything about what I consider a defective product. The person I spoke to there was very polite and sounded sympathetic, but he said that my mouse has now been discontinued, and it is not Microsoft’s policy to replace a discontinued item — and that was the end of the matter for them, even though I emphasized that I have had the mouse for less than a year. I am not pleased about their response. I think that mouse was defective and that Microsoft should have replaced it with an equivalent newer model. (Also, when Microsoft moves from the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 to the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0A, I don’t call it “discontinued,” I call it “updated.”)

I miss that wireless mouse already. Its shape fit my hand perfectly, and it was wonderful to never have to open it up and use tweezers to pry fuzz off the rollers (as I always have to do with my non-optical mice). I also appreciated the wireless mouse’s higher resolution and the handy thumb buttons along the left side of the unit.

My first impulse was to essentially buy the same mouse again, but this is actually my second Microsoft wireless optical mouse that has failed in exactly the same way, so now I’m wondering if this is a weakness in the product line. If I buy another Microsoft model, will it too last for less than a year? Should I buy a Logitech mouse instead?

Tags: Microsoft Mouse, Wireless Mouse, Optical Mouse

For me, recent anti-spam measures seem like more of a problem than the spam itself. For example, an Earthlink customer recently sent me an e-mail message requesting a response. I wrote back, and within the hour this arrived in my inbox from his Earthlink address:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

… and then there was an embedded URL for me to click on.

This annoyed me for three reasons:

1. What I wrote was a solicited e-mail message, but the Earthlink customer never added me to his whitelist when he asked me to get back to him. That was rude. This can’t have been the first time his spam filter has kicked out a legitimate message.

2. Earthlink’s idea of spam control is to subject non-Earthlink customers to a “one-time inconvenience”? My anti-spam regimen should never inconvenience you, and your anti-spam regimen should never inconvenience me.

3. Shouldn’t the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” apply to e-mail messages? Isn’t it always better to let a few spam messages through the filters than to keep legitimate messages from being delivered?

Tags: Anti-Spam

Tags: Microprocessors, Environmental Protection

the top left corner of my old Start menu

You would think that the Start menu name and image could be changed by opening the Start menu, right-clicking next to Compaq_Owner at the top, and clicking on “Properties” — but that isn’t how you do it. Clicking on “Properties” allows you to customize many aspects of the Start menu, such as its visual style or what system components appear there, but the name and image have to be changed somewhere else. Here’s what I did:

• I opened the Start menu and clicked on Control Panel.
• I scrolled to the bottom of the Control Panel and clicked on User Accounts.
• In the bottom half of the User Accounts window, under the heading “or pick an account to change,” I clicked on Compaq_Owner and was presented with a list of options.
• I clicked on Change my name to change the name to Mark, and then I clicked on Change my picture to change the image to the picture of a sunset.

the top left corner of my new Start menu

The first step is to create the image itself. This may be the hardest part of the process, because although the icon can be any image you want, you only have a size of 16 pixels by 16 pixels to work with, with 256 colors maximum (see the grid below to see how TechHelpBasics shortcut icon was created). Use your favorite paint program to create the image. If you magnify the image to make it easier to edit, be sure to preview it frequently at actual size to see what it will look like in the browser. Too much detail in an image won’t show up in such a small size, so keep your icon simple.

the TechHelpBasics shortcut icon in a 16 x 16 grid

When you have a finished image, it will need to be converted into the proper icon format before you can use it on your web page. You can download or buy programs to do that, but an easier way to convert your icon is to use an online icon generator, such as the Favicon Generator and Gallery. Follow their instructions — upload your image, preview the conversion, and download the finished icon when you’re satisfied.

After you have an icon in the proper format, you need to upload it to your web server and tell web browsers to use it as a shortcut icon. There are two ways to do this:

1. Name your icon favicon.ico and upload it to the root directory of your web site. This is the simplest method but it assumes you have permission to upload to your web site’s root directory. It also means that every page on your web site will use the same shortcut icon.
2. Or — name your icon anything you want, upload it anywhere on your web site, and include a line similar to the following in the HEAD section of your web pages:

   <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/path/iconname.ico">

   Of course, replace the path and iconname in the above example with the real path and name of your icon file. This method gives you greater flexibility and even means that different pages on your site can have different shortcut icons. If you don’t want a particular page to have a shortcut icon, just leave out the link.

Creating a shortcut icon is a small project that doesn’t take much time or effort but can make your web site look much more professional and eye-catching. Try it and see how much more impressive your URL looks at the top of the browser!