If you don't have Windows Updates turned on, today's the day to visit Microsoft (using Internet Explorer) and check for updates. There are a number of Office patches being pushed out, as well as the usual monthly update to the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.
Brian Krebs has a nice write-up with details and handy links. Among the highlights:
- Some of the patches apply to the various viewers for Office files, as well, so even if you don't have, say, PowerPoint, be sure to check, in case you downloaded PowerPoint Viewer some time in the past and forgot about it.
- Mac users: Office for Mac also has updates. I don't know whether Software Update handles this for you or not. Sorry.
- Office 2000 users: The regular Windows Update procedure won't work for you (and me). Instead visit the Office downloads page, again using IE, and click the link in the sidebar labeled "Office Update." Annoyingly, you'll need to have your Office 2000 installation CD available to perform the updates.
That last bit really irks me. Microsoft's site requires you first to download and run an Active X plugin to make sure your copy of Office is "genuine." Mine is, and even the trolls of Redmond are forced to admit that. However, my CD vanished two moves ago, and there is no way to get around the requirement. I looked around Microsoft's site for as long as I could stand the corporate-speak on their help pages, and as far as I can tell, the CD requirement has only to do with reducing the download size of the updates. Or so they claim. Even though their own tool tells them that I have a legit copy of Office, the only way to deal with the problem of the missing CD, they suggest, is to "contact the vendor" who originally sold me the CD.
To be fair about it, I'm really grumbling about a non-issue. I long ago quit using any Office product, and have been happily using OpenOffice.org for years. You should, too. You get a fully featured word processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint clone, Visio clone, and equation editor. The look and feel is familiar. You also get the ability to read, edit, and save-as Office docs. If you're on a slow connection, you can get a CD, cheap, to do the initial installation, but you won't ever need to have the CD, certainly not to do updates. And it's free and open source. And no Clippy.
End of rant. End of sermon.
(pic. source, some minor hacking by me)
3 comments:
My current personal computer is in hard-drive crash limbo (got the blue screen of death... it might be salvageable but it would take some time and money). All of the important stuff is backed up, mostly upset about the 40 gigs of porn and music on the data drive (which I'm sure is OK it was C: that is f'd) that I am going to have to steal again.
At any rate, I used this opportunity to buy a new machine. And as always, when buying a new machine, I make myself some promises that I never follow through on: I'm going to dual boot Linux and use Windows as little as possible... I'm going to get an external hard drive and put everything on that...
But there is one resolution I do intend to keep which is I'm not going to buy Office. I saw it there as an option on the customizing page and I finally resisted. So it looks like I'm going to be forced to switch to OpenOffice. The one thing I regret is that I'm not going to be able to transfer my expired version of MATLAB from college onto the new computer, even though I had to set my system date back to 2006 to use it. Is there a good open source equivalent to that that uses the same syntax? Somehow I'd think that their look and feel would be hard to mimic closely without violating a lot of copyrights.
Adam:
I have no personal experience with MatLab or anything like it, but Octave seems promising.
Sorry to hear about the death of your hard drive, but good on you for kicking the Office habit. I'll be interested to hear how you make out with OO.o.
And, cheese 'n' rice, don't keep porn on your personal computer. Have you learned nothing from your political leaders? I know, I know, you say you have no plans to run for office, but that could change.
Ha... if I decided to run for office I'd have to have about 500 people secretly assassinated before worrying about the contents of my hard-drive.
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