Windows Vista Annoyances

Closing Documents

You close a document window just as you’d close any window, as described in Chapter 3: by clicking the close box (marked by an X) in the upper-right corner of the window, by double-clicking the Control menu spot just to the left of the File menu, or by pressing Alt+F4. If you’ve done any work to the document since the last time you saved it, Windows offers a “Save changes?” dialog box as a reminder.

UP TO SPEED: Sending an Error Report to Microsoft

Whenever Windows detects that a program has exited, shall we say, eccentrically—for example, it froze and you had to terminate it—your PC quietly sends a report back to Microsoft, the mother ship, via the Internet. It provides the company with the technical details about whatever was going on at the moment of the freeze, crash, or premature termination.

The information includes the name and version number of the program, the date and time, and other details. Microsoft swears that it doesn’t collect any information about you.

Microsoft says that it has two interests in getting this information. First, it collates the data into gigantic electronic databases, which it then analyzes using special software tools. The idea, of course, is to find trends that emerge from studying hundreds of thousands of such reports. “Oh, my goodness, it looks like people who own both Speak-it Pro 5 and Beekeeper Plus who right-click a document that’s currently being printed experience a system lockup,” an engineer might announce one day. By analyzing ...