Author: M3 Sweatt

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It’s Time To Fall Back An Hour in the US and Canada: Daylight Saving Time Ends This Sunday

Microsoft Office Clip ArtYes, it’s that time again if you’ll pardon the pun, to fall back in much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Daylight saving time ends at 2:00AM local time on Sunday, November 7, 2010, in much of the U.S and Canada, except in parts of the countries (including Hawaii and Arizona). You can read more than you’ll ever want to know about DST here and on our official Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center at http://www.microsoft.com/time.

This year, DST in much of the US and Canada ends in accordance with the US Department of Energy’s Energy Policy Act of 2005 that was passed into law. DST will end later than it did prior to 2007, on the first Sunday of November (in 2010, November 7); more details on the new DST start and end times can be found here). This results in a new DST period that is approximately three to four weeks longer than in previous years.

The switch to daylight saving time also means the time zone suffix changes, now using Daylight Time: for example, Pacific Standard Time is now Pacific Daylight Time (aka PDT). The other time zones move to Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), Central Daylight Time (CDT), and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

As I noted in this article, Microsoft strongly recommends that DST and time zone updates be installed on all affected systems, devices and applications to ensure consistency with current DST rules and time zone settings worldwide. Customers should review the product updates available and posted on this site and at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_prodlist for the latest and updated information of Microsoft products affected by daylight saving time.

Fox News offers this commentary on DST, for your viewing pleasure.

More info

of interest from Bing:

Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time,DST:

References to DST on Bing: 15,400,000 (up several million items); 15,500,000; 2,890,000.

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Problem with an app uninstall leads to a Microsoft Support’s FixIt

Today I received an email from my old friend, Steve, who said that he was having an issue after he had installed and then uninstalled Google Chrome… and then found that his hyperlinks didn’t work for various Office applications.

Well, there’s an app for that. Or at least a FixIt.

I found that Google’s acknowledges this issue here on their support forum for Chrome, and provides information to a fix which takes a few steps. Apparently. some registry keys are changed on installation that is not resolved when uninstalling the product.

Steve followed Google’s recommended solution and all was well. But when I attempted again, I received the message, "This operation has been cancelled due to restriction in effect on this computer. Please contact your administrator."

He followed the potential solutions suggested (as noted in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 310049) and Microsoft Fix It was offered as a potential solution for this issue:

image

All’s well that ends well. 😉

Tags: Microsoft, how to, customer support, Microsoft Product List 2010, feedback, customer service, FAST, enterprise search.

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Remember: October 31 is Halloween, and the Office 2010 beta expires, too

As noted on the Office.com official blog, the Office 2010 beta expires Sunday, Oct 31, which means it’s time to upgrade to the full version or roll back to a previous version you have licensed…

Didn’t it seem like only yesterday when we made the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta available? Actually, it’s been nearly a year! Since then, Office 2010 has experienced over 9 million downloads — more than 6 times the size of the Office 2007 Beta.

With so many folks out there using the Office 2010 Beta, this is our gentle reminder that the Beta is set to expire on Halloween. For those of you who live outside of North America, that’s Sunday, October 31, 2010.

If you’ve been busy putting all of the new programs through their paces, you’ve already experienced many of the cool new features that can make your life easier. Personally, I’ve decided that I can no longer live without the Ignore Conversation button in Outlook 2010, linked notes in OneNote 2010, photo editing in Word 2010, using video in my PowerPoint 2010 presentations, or making walls of numbers come alive with Sparklines in Excel 2010. You get the picture.

If you’re currently using the expiring Beta, you  can simply uninstall.  More on uninstalling is available here.

For more info, see this FAQ from the Microsoft Support team, with Common Questions (and Answers!) about the Expiration of Office 2010 Beta.

Try Microsoft Office 2010

 

 

 

Tags: Microsoft, how to, customer support, Microsoft Product List 2010, feedback, customer service, Learning Essentials, Microsoft Office.

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Up for auction: Halo’s Master Chief costume for the Microsoft Giving Campaign 2010

clip_image001The Giving Campaign Auction is in full swing, and I’ve posted an item in time for Halloween: a kid’s Master Chief costume! (folks at Microsoft should search for auction item 3365.)

Last year I offered a number of cool items that netted quite a bit for the Giving Campaign. (http://bit.ly/2Wh2Gw) This year I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time to wrangle up a bunch of items, (tsk, tsk) but I’m hopeful for this one. It’s the well-worn and “as seen on TV” costume from the Halo series. Folks at the company might’ve seen this Spartan wandering the halls at Microsoft in the past, filling a large pillow case with candy. Sadly, the boys have outgrown this trusted costume so up it goes on the auction block for charity (auction ends 10/27).

This costume features a full suit, gloves, custom-fabricated Spartan helmet and (where allowed 😉 foam battle rifle. The helmet is hand-made and fiberglass coated, as is the rifle (it was a quick assemble).  Our son made the local and national news in this getup. Sizing is for a 7-9 year old.

BTW, I’ll match dollar for dollar the winning bid. So, Microsofties: bid high to see your bid turn into a 4X donation!

(Please note that the large retail package and child pictured are not included in the auction. 😉

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The Little BIG Things: 163 ways to pursue excellence by Tom Peters

I count myself among the many Tom Peters fans out in the business world, and just started his new book “The Little BIG Things”.

I noticed on his blog that Mr. Peters has released a summary PDF version of the book available for free download – I highly recommend it. What you’ll likely find (as I did) is that you’ll end up ordering the book or checking it out at your library to get more detail on the ideas he covers.

And if you want to ask the man himself questions about the book or his work, you’ll find him on Twitter and — if you have something interesting to say — probably very responsive!

Tags: Books, customer satisfaction, twitter, satisfaction, Tom Peters.

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