Tech Reflections: Revisiting the Past Year's Reviews

Every Labor Day I write a column revisiting the past year of my reviews. Instead of trying out some new gadget or program, I go through the archive to see what's changed about the products I reviewed -- good or bad reports from readers who've tried them, bug fixes or other software updates from vendors, the introduction of competing products or the appearance of glitches or flaws.

Why now? Why not? It's a slow time of year in late August when few new products arrive in stores. I also think it's fundamentally healthy to go over my old work and see what I might change about it with the benefit of hindsight.

Here's the column from Sunday's paper: "After Launch, These Products Evolved."

Windows Vista Pricing

Microsoft's Windows Vista may still be six months or more away from its release -- but now we know what it's going to cost, courtesy of Amazon.com. The online shopping giant now lists a set of prices for Microsoft's next-generation operating system, currently due to ship in January 2007:

According to Amazon, Vista pricing starts at $100 for an upgrade copy of Vista Home Basic -- the most limited edition of Windows Vista. Basic leaves out the Aero Glass user interface, which will offer nifty 3-D and translucency effects but also require a high-end graphics card. To acquire that fancier front end, you'll need to step up to Vista Home Premium, which will cost $159 as an upgrade or $239 otherwise.

And if you'd also like the ability to connect to your offices network and use every other possible feature in Vista there is a third edition for you -- Vista Ultimate. Ultimate will go for $259 as an upgrade, $399 as a new purchase.

Windows Genuine Advantage Failure Watch

In last week's newsletter I shared a few stories from readers who had to run afoul of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage Notification program. This new software, automatically installed on Windows XP systems by Microsoft's Windows Update system, checks to see if a copy of Windows XP has been installed without a proper license. But as these readers found, it can mistakenly think that a legitimate copy is actually pirated. One reader, for instance, found that Windows Genuine Advantage got confused when the computer's clock was set to the wrong time.

After last week's newsletter, I heard from another reader who had an even more frightening tale. Rather than recount the gory details of his difficulties with Genuine Advantage Notifications, I'll simply point to this article on Microsoft's technical support site, which contains the directions he had to follow to fix the problem.

This may be the scariest knowledge-base article that I have ever seen. It lists no fewer than 10 possible solutions, all possessed with a horrifying degree of complexity. Here's No. 9:

"Method 9: Clear the temporary file and restart the hotfix installation or the service pack installation. To clear the temporary file and restart the hotfix installation or the service pack installation, follow these steps:

1. Move all the tmp*.cat files out of the following folders:

%systemroot%\system32\CatRoot\{127D0A1D-4EF2-11D1-8608-00C04FC295EE}

%systemroot%\system32\CatRoot\{F750E6C3-38EE-11D1-85E5-00C04FC295EE}

2. Type the following at the command prompt, and then press ENTER:

net stop cryptsvc rename the %systemroot%\system32\CatRoot2 %systemroot%\system32\oldcatRoot2 net start cryptsvc

3. Restart the failed hotfix installation or service pack installation."

My workaround for this kind of problem? Back up my data, then nuke the hard drive and start over.

AOL 9 Deemed Harmful

America Online hasn't had the best summer, and it's only getting worse for the online service that once dominated the Internet. Last week the Stop Badware coalition (http://www.stopbadware.org/), an industry group that tries to warn users about software that can disturb or hijack their computer systems without permission, issued a report declaring the AOL 9.0 software "badware."

This report summed up AOL 9.0's infractions by saying: "it installs additional software without telling the user, it forces the user to take certain actions, it adds various components to Internet Explorer and the taskbar without disclosure, it may automatically update without the user's consent, and it fails to uninstall completely."

The report advised users: "We currently recommend that users do not install the version of AOL software that we tested, unless the user is comfortable with the level of risk we identify or until the application is updated consistent with the recommendations in this report."

Also This Week...

In addition to my looking-backward column, Sunday's personal technology pages also included the following stories:

* Veteran Post contributor Daniel Greenberg writes about variety of technologies -- from BTX cases to variable-speed fans -- that you can buy to hush the racket produced by the hardware in most desktop and laptop computers.

* And in Help File, I explain what the term "virtual memory" means and how to cut down on the times that Windows nags you about not having enough of it. I also outline how to change a Firefox setting to make Web links that would open new windows open new tabs in your current browser window instead.

* For Saturday's paper, I worked on this graphic explaining how a lithium-ion battery works.

(No Web Watch this week; Frank Ahrens is away.) -- Rob Pegoraro (robp@washpost.com)