Getting  Along With Your Computer Column Archive

Answering Your Questions

By Cate Eales
Appeared February 28, 2008 on castanet.net

This week, more answers to readers' questions. Updates vs upgrades; change Vista Power button settings; eliminate rogue characters. Please keep the questions coming!


What is the difference between a software update and a software upgrade?
Confusingly enough, "Update" and "Upgrade" are two different things! An update to a program usually contains fixes, and/or minor improvements, and/or device drivers. Updates are typically free, even if you paid for a program.

Upgrades are new versions of a program, usually with major changes. If you paid for a program, and then you upgrade it to a newer version, you will generally pay for the upgrade.


How can I get Vista to shut down when I click on the red "power button"? I just want things to be the way they were last century!
What bright light at Microsoft decided that the default action for clicking on the Power button in the Vista Start menu should be "sleep"? instead of "shut down"?

Well, these are the same people who brought us "press Enter to exit" so I guess I shouldn't be so bitter. Luckily, there is a way to change the settings.

Why do I sometimes get weird text when I try to search for something on Google?
Assuming you have an up-to-date anti-virus program running, and that you have recently run malware scans, the only time I've found this kind of behaviour (random characters in search boxes or documents) is when XP's speech recognition feature is enabled and a microphone is left on inadvertently.

In fact, most of the time, people don't know they have the speech recognition feature enabled at all, so the random typing thing is pretty disconcerting!

If you have a microphone in a headset, a microphone in a webcam, or just a microphone plain and simple, try turning that off for awhile and see if the problem goes away.

Alternately, you can turn off the speech recognition if you want to, but it's a complicated click path:

Really....the best way is to turn off or at least mute the microphone!

There is more information about speech recognition here, and here, and finally, here. If you believe you will never in a million years need this feature, follow the instructions at the end of that third article to uninstall it completely.

Thank you everyone who sent questions, comments, suggestions, and general feedback from the past column. I appreciate all of that. Send more to cate@rlis.com! You can also browse the column archives at any time by pointing your browser here.  If you'd like to subscribe to this column by email, please visit this link.  It's easy, and free. If you'd prefer the RSS Feed, click here.

Links
Speech Recognition http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306901
Speech Recognition http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326526
Disabling and Uninstalling Speech Recognition http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-text-services.html
Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm
Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=20618
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Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric, and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions, helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware eradication; personal computer training and management; digital image management; music transfer; and website design, hosting and management. Email Cate at cate@rlis.com with your comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit the Real Life Internet Solutions website at www.rlis.com.

© Cate Eales 2008 – All Rights Reserved
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