I was going to write about a sheet metal tip this month, but I'm going to save that for next month. Why? I have something more timely to discuss.
Don't be the guinea pig.
This my brother Jeff's mantra, and it is mine, too, but sometimes, the bright, new, shiny software update makes me forget that mantra. Case in point: Internet Explorer 9 was released by Microsoft last week. I had been reading very good things about it so I decided to go ahead and update my laptop. While the update went fine, I was soon noticing some strange behavior on my system.
Every time I clicked on the start button, I got a dialog box that read "Specified module could not be found (msls31.dll)." That began immediately after the reboot after IE9 was installed. Hmm. Annoying, but I'm sure Microsoft will fix this. I mean, look how cool IE 9 is!
A day later, I wanted to look up something in the SolidWorks help. I brought it up and the content pane was blank. Nothing I did would show anything in that pane. What changed? Oh, yeah, that's right, I installed IE 9. Maybe the SolidWorks help is based on Internet Explorer display technology. Ok, that's more annoying.
Yesterday I started to work on my blog for the month. I logged into Typepad and started to upload some images I had captured the week before. I chose my first image to upload as usual. After 10 minutes of waiting, I finally killed it off. (The pic was only a 93 Kb jpeg.) I had a problem; what could it be?
Oh, right. IE 9. I brought up another browser (Safari) and the upload took about 2 seconds.
Doing more searching, I'm finding that IE 9 is causing all kinds of issues. Google Docs don't work with it. Flickr has issues. It also causes problems with SolidWorks EPDM. In fact, a quick Google search on the topic yields all kinds of hits.
I became the guinea pig. I downloaded IE9 the first day it was available. I let my excitement get in the way of my better judgment.
Wasn't it beta tested? Sure it was. But here's the way I look at it: beta testers are people who want to be guinea pigs; in fact, they're eager to do so. They know what they're in for. They want to be part of the testing process.
Early adopters (like me in this case) are also guinea pigs because no beta testing program can test for the same number and combinations of software, drivers, hardware, and uses in the real world. Even if 10,000 people signed up to beta test IE 9, that is only a small subset of the total number of Internet Explorer users, which would have to be in the tens of millions at least.
So, my advice? Don't be the guinea pig. Wait to load IE 9. Let updates come out to fix the early issues.
What if you decide to load it (like I did) and now you want to get rid of it? Well, in Windows 7, IE 9 is classified as a Windows Upgrade in the Control Panel, so here is what you do:
1 .Go to Control Panel.
2. Click on Programs.
3. Under Programs and Features, click Turn Windows features on or off.
4. Scroll down until you find the update to windows for IE9.
5. Select and click "Uninstall" at the top of the window.
When the machine reboots, you'll have the version of Internet Explorer that you had before.
And you won't be the guinea pig.