James Kendrick over at JKOnTheRun is reporting that the latest updates from the popular Spybot Search & Destroy anti-spyware application are falsely detecting and removing files that are crucial to the correct functioning of Tablet PCs. The fix appears to require rolling back to a recent system restore point, which to me makes puts this problem in the serious category.

Of course, you're immune if you don't have a Tablet PC, but think of the possibilities had this problem caused bigger problems for more mainstream versions of Windows. I suppose these days there's no real solution that will prevent a buggy update from slipping through for one of the many security based tools we now need to run to keep a Windows installation running in good shape. Heck, Windows Updates are often the worst offenders in terms of introducing problems when they're trying to fix something.

What's a user to do, short of unplugging from the net and never updating?

While Tablet PC software isn't something we typically cover, this particular offer is hard to ignore. EverNote is offering a free license to either EverNote Plus, or ritePen 2.5 (a Tablet handwriting recognition utility) for a sample of your handwriting. And although the offer in and of itself is quite interesting, to me what I found most interesting was the list of sentences that users must submit to meet the qualifications for the free offer. Here's the list:

1. Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives.
2. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs!
3. The July sun caused a fragment of black pine wax to ooze on the velvet quilt.
4. How quickly daft jumping zebras vex?
5. Just keep examining every low bid quoted for zinc etchings...
6. The explorer was frozen in his 'Big Kayak' just after making queer discoveries.
7. Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dogs.
8. Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx Of Quartz!
9. Six Big Juicy Steaks Sizzled In A Pan As Five Workmen Left The Quarry.
10. The Five 'boxing' Wizards Jump Quickly Up.
11. While Making Deep Excavations, We Found Some Quaint Bronze Jewelry.
12. Whenever The "Red Fox" Jumped, The Squirrel Gazed Suspiciously.
13. Quick Zephyrs Blow, Vexing Daft Jim.
14. ~45% #342a $87 €60 <D&G> 7*(2^3) = 56 {27/9}=3
15. Nora@comcast.net; www.slashdot.org; Cecil@hotmail.com; c:\temp
16. [94085] 12:45 +1 (924) 572-3601 © EverNote 2006

Web addresses, email addresses and file paths make the list, which is not surprising, as do currency values and formulas. More surprisingly are some of the regular sentences that are apparently difficult to detect, such as "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs!".

[Via Black Belt Productivity]

Microsoft has unveiled a Vista upgrade matrix, detailing which present versions of Windows are eligible for upgrading to one of the four relevant versions of Vista (Starter and Enterprise are targeted for specific markets and therefore not included in this matrix). To make matters a bit complicated, however, some editions (such as XP Pro or Win2K) are only eligible to upgrade to a "corresponding or better" version of Vista, i.e. - Business or Ultimate. As icing on the cake, some ugprades will require a fresh wipe and install, while others can be upgraded 'in-place', retaining your applications and settings.

To be clear, however: all present versions of Windows listed in this chart are eligible to purchase upgrade editions of Windows Vista. Previous versions, such as Win98 and ME, will have to purchase a full edition of Vista.

37Signals' Basecamp is pretty slick, wouldn't you agree? Tablet PCs, in their own right, have quite the slick factor as well. Wouldn't it be cool if someone, say a small software company called Luckymonk, came up with the idea of combining the two, say with a product called Scout? It sure would!

While Scout isn't quite ready yet, Luckymonk offers a preview screencast of everything that will be possible once it's released. As an added bonus, the company will be releasing their Basecamp API wrapper for .NET 2.0 as well. For now, however, you Tablet PC owners will just have to bookmark Luckymonk's Scout product page under 'ToDo'.

Want to work like Bill Gates? As has been widely circulated around the interweb, the world's most technologically advanced human has walked us all through his workflow. Unfortunately for us mortals, he's using a bunch of bloated, pricey MS-branded tools. So I took his tools, found free alternatives, and reconfigured his workflow to be a little cheaper. There's nothing I can do about hardware though. So if you're looking for a $100 Tablet PC, sorry folks. I couldn't find an OSS version of whiteboard capture tools either, probably because it relies on hardware. I will admit that Bill's three screens improve productivity. Now if I could only afford two at once... But still, his major goals are the same of most managers: reduce paper, increase communications, and share information centrally. So let's look at these, shall we?

Email & Calendars
Obviously Bill's going to use Outlook. He's fortunate enough to have assistants filter his email. Mere mortals will have to depend of their ISP and local softwares. My recommended Outlook replacement is Thunderbird, for its cross-platform goodness. Want to know how to use Thunderbird, and retrain yourself? Check out this series on using Thunderbird, a very thorough walk through from installation to spam filtering. To integrate calendars, you'll want to stick with the iCalendar format, which is supported by Sunbird, Mozilla's standalone calendar application. My preference in calendars is Calendar, also from Mozilla, because it integrates with Thunderbird and Mozilla browsers. iCalendar is also supported in OS X's iCal app, so Mac users can keep their native app if need be. If you need to sync with Palm devices, you can try using PHP iCalendar in conjunction with this Datebook to iCal exporter. If anyone knows of a more elegant solution, I'm all ears. Next up: your document creation and sharing issues solved...

Now that the excitement has died down, software products are starting to appear that are 'tuned' for the UMPC's form factor.  Yes, we know that Microsoft has made is a point to tell everyone who will listen that the UMPC's greatest appeal is that it can run any Windows XP application.  While that may be true, the smallish screen size of the UMPC made us wonder how we'd squeeze some of our favorite applications into such small digs.  While it looks like some applications from Microsoft (namely OneNote) will account for the new screen real estate, an entirely new cadre of applications are being readied to fill the (smaller) void.

One of the first applications to be released that is UMPC sensitive is abletFactory's abletFoodCalc.  FoodCalc is a nutritional calculator for keeping track of your eating habits while on the go.  FoodCalc comes with a large database of nutritional values for foods that will allow you to quickly accumulate your daily consumption habits with your UMPC.  This sounds interesting enough, although we're forced to ask one practical question:  Since input on the UMPC is mostly hand driven, won't our precious UMPC get 'all greased up' if we enter food data all day?  Well, it seems like a sure opening for another UMPC accessory, the UMPC sanitizer.

While the Tablet PC world may still be considered a niche space, there are some really interesting applications that have been developed for tablets that cross boundries into the mundane computing world.  One of these is Agilix's GoBinder.  Agilix has just released a radically updated version of its note-taking, file storing, PIM capable flagship product.  Designed primarily for the college student (it has integration into the Blackboard course system used by many universities), GoBinder is a heck of a tool for all types of packrats and copious note-takers.  GoBinder 2006 takes a very strong inking capability, and expands it by building, from ground up, a totally new architecture.  This new architecture is designed for users to trade notes and forms through a WebDav syncing capability.  That means those of you who are still in college, and may skip a class or two, you can have notes from your friends synched right into your GoBinder.  In addition to that, the Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks capabilities get a major overhaul with this release.  You don't need to own a Tablet PC to take full advantage of this great application, as its features are great for anyone looking for a place to keep all their notes and stuff.  You can download a trial here; it will set a student back $49.95 and for the rest of us, it costs $99.95.