User Friendly is one of the three online comic strips I read every day. Set at an imaginary ISP it would be funny to anyone who uses a computer, but it's also full of tech in-jokes, especially Linux and DNS ones. But until I read today's strip I never thought of it as a source of tech information. This was, however, the first I'd heard of XPDE, an open source attempt to create an Windows XP-like desktop environment for (newbie?) linux-users. Just version 0.4 so far (those Linux guys insist on meaningful version numbers…if it were a windows-based product want to bet it would be called 1.1 if not 3.0?), but the screenshots look pretty good.
Today's User Friendly also mentions the slow pop-up of the Start menu under XP. As it happens, I just fixed this problem (I think) on Caroline's computer two days ago. The instructions on how to do so are probably hidden somewhere in the online Microsoft help system, but I don't know where. It involves lowering the value of one registry key, MenuShowDelay. You can find instructions towards the bottom of this useful Windows XP tweaks page. I haven't tried all the listed tweaks yet, but probably will.
