ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: I’ve read many tips about red boxes appearing in emails where pictures should be but my problem involves Red X’s appearing within the Windows Vista Home Premium’s Help & Support area.  I’ve looked online and within Dell’s support area to no avail.  I have a new Inspiron 1720 fully loaded again, with Vista as described above.  I’ve included a partial screen shot of how the help & support application presents itself.

– Bill R.
Fort Walton Beach, FL

A:  Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to include Bill’s excellent screenshot here in the column, but it was a picture of a dialog box from the Vista Help and Support Area.  Wherever one would expect to see a graphic, such as a picture of a button or an icon, the infamous Red X appears instead.

Far be it from me to make light of your problem, Bill, but I hope the irony of having trouble with the “Help and Support Area” is not lost on you!  Now, I don’t want to give you a lesson on graphical user interface programming, but suffice it to say that the particular type of dialog used in the Help and Support Area draws its functionality heavily from Internet Explorer.  Remember that lawsuit several years ago, where Microsoft said the browser was too tightly embedded in the operating system to be completely separated?  This is the type of thing they were talking about.  Unfortunately, that also means when something is misconfigured, it can manifest in odd places.

This actually seems to be a fairly common problem in Vista.  It happens when something such as a software installation alters the file associations for the file types used as pictures in the Help and Support Area’s dialog.  You can find a fairly good solution to this, and a couple of other problems with Vista’s Help and Support System by going here: http://tinyurl.com/2gyymv

Q: I’ve been shopping around for a laptop and I notice that some of them say that they have “Wi-Fi” and some of them just say that they have wireless Internet connection capabilities.  When I asked the clerk what the difference was he said that they are all the same.  Can you tell me what the difference is and is Wi-Fi better?

– Judie D.
Navarre, FL

A: The wireless connection that is embedded in modern laptops is not a wireless “Internet” connection – it is a wireless “network” connection.  That may sound like I’m splitting hairs, but although network connections can, and often do include Internet connectivity, there is nothing in the laptop’s hardware that is the equivalent of an Internet Service Provider, so purchasing a laptop with wireless ability will not in and of itself get you online.  I think that’s an important distinction, because many cell phone companies are now marketing a hardware card and service that provides direct Internet connectivity just about anywhere without wires.  This, in my opinion, would more accurately be called “Wireless Internet” and to the best of my knowledge, it’s not available as an option on any laptops commonly sold in the big box stores.  The term “Wi-Fi” is a contraction of the term “Wireless Fidelity” and is a takeoff of the old term “Hi-Fi” used to describe stereo equipment.  Wi-Fi and wireless networking are one and the same, so in that, what your clerk told you is correct, so neither one is better.