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The Knowledge Base is one of the technological marvels of modern society.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Free and easy way to keep up with Microsoft's Knowledge Base


June 19, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   I spend a lot of time on my computers, on both sides of the operating-system aisle. A lot of that time is spent chasing down solutions to problems with Windows and other Microsoft software.
   The best place to find help is Microsoft's Knowledge Base, a gigantic collection of articles the company opened to the public many years ago. The Knowledge Base is used by Microsoft's own software engineers to find answers to problems they are having, and all of us are able to use it with the same access permissions as the company's own software experts.
   The Knowledge Base is one of the technological marvels of modern society. To Microsoft's credit, Knowledge Base articles tend to be very straightforward, without a hint of the toadying often found in Microsoft press releases and advertising. KB articles tell it like it is, sometimes to an annoying extent. (I wrote a few years ago about a Knowledge Base article that warned users about a "Choco-Banana Shake Hang." If you hadn't seen that article, take a break and enjoy some of the fun. Go to my site and use CHOCO as the search term. The address is twcny.rr.com/technofile.)
   Keeping up with new KB articles was a pain in the byte. I usually figured on spending two hours a week looking through the Microsoft archive.
   But my life has been spared. I've got my hours back. A new e-mail service I subscribed to a few weeks ago sends me notices of all new Knowledge Base articles in the topics I select. The service is totally free and easy to deal with.
   Best of all, the alert service lets me choose from about 300 possible topics. They cover all sorts of Microsoft Windows-based programs, of course, but what you might find interesting is the fact that they include non-Windows items, too. I'm getting alerts about Microsoft Office for Apple's OS X operating system ("Office X"), DOS problems, Microsoft cordless phones, Microsoft's PC and Apple line of mice and many other non-Windows topics.
   The site that does this is www.kbalertz.com, run by Dave Wanta, a network administrator who dreamed up the idea of the notification service and decided to give it a try. His site is easy to navigate and has none of the trap-you-in-place accoutrements such as pop-up windows that many other sites employ. It's just a well designed site, period.