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February, 2008:

Clicking Links In Outlook 2007 Using Vista And Firefox Generates Error

Feb 10th, 2008
by David.
3 comments

When clicking a website link in Outlook 2007 do you get the following error message? General failure. The URL was: “http://www.somewebsite.com.”. The system cannot find the file specified.

If you get this error, then try this fix. Please note these instruction are only for Vista.

  1. Click Start
  2. Type regedit and press enter
  3. Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTP\shell\open\ddeexec
  4. Delete the ddeexec registry key
  5. Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTPS\shell\open\ddeexec
  6. Delete the ddeexec registry key
  7. Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\shell\open\ddeexec
  8. Delete the ddeexec registry key
  9. Drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML\shell\open\ddeexec
  10. Delete the ddeexec registry key
  11. Close out of regedit
  12. No reboot required

Now try clicking the link again in Outlook 2007. Problem should now be fixed.

Microsoft Announces Windows Vista SP1 RTM

Feb 4th, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

Microsoft have today released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Vista to manufacturing (RTM). They are claiming great progress in performance, compatibility and reliability.

I certainly hope this will be the customer experience. Whilst I haven’t personally had any issues with the “Gold” release of Vista, there are some performance aspects that I hope have been sorted in SP1. In particular file copying seems to be very slow in the Gold version. The comment from Microsoft is once SP1 has been installed on your system, copying or moving files should now be much faster, up to 50% faster. Let’s see if that holds true.

Microsoft says that 98 out of the top 100 software applications have versions that are Vista compatible. This along with support for more that 78,000 devices, which is up from 34,000 in November 2006 should make most people quite comfortable making the move to Vista.

Vista SP1 is scheduled for availability via Windows Update and the Microsoft download center around mid March 2008.

Microsoft Takeover Bid For Yahoo US$44.6 Billion

Feb 3rd, 2008
by David.
No comments yet

Microsoft has for many years been buying up smaller companies, typically software vendors. But this one’s a big fish. In what would be one of the biggest internet buyout deals, Microsoft announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo board of directors for US$44.6 billion. Let’s see, that’s US$44,600,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros.

Why would Microsoft be interested in buying out Yahoo. Could it be that Yahoo has had more success in the search engine business over the years? That’s one very likely reason. Microsoft would surely like to get more market share in the very lucrative online advertising space.

Should this takeover take place, it will be interesting to see how the two companies overlapping products pan out over time. Both companies offer free email, web search, paid web advertising. Will both companies biggest competitor in those markets, Google, need to change their business model? Or will they simply continue leading the pack as they currently are?

Time will tell whether Yahoo really can say no to this bid which is 62% higher than Yahoo’s current share trading price. 62%, now that’s some sort of carrot to dangle.

The Yahoo board now has to consider whether to sell to one of their rival companies or risk further falling revenues.

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