Internet Explorer 11 broke my PC

I don't usually use IE, except for doing my taxes, because it is incredibly slow. Fortunately IE11 doesn't work on Windows Vista, or I would be wasting a lot of time reinstalling everything again. But my FRAGG PC gets used for all kinds of miscellaneous tasks, such as developing web sites, playing music or audio books, and so on. Until Wednesday.
That was when the Windows Update facility broke my PC by installing an "important" update: IE11. One of the important functions of a browser is to view web pages, yet IE11 has failed dismally in this task, for reasons I cannot fathom. It won't open a single online web page, not even the "What's New in Internet Explorer" page.
Perhaps IE11 doesn't run on Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit with 4GB RAM. Perhaps there is some driver or legacy software that is causing an incompatibility. I don't know. What I do know is that I restored a full image backup dated 31 May 2013, and ran all the updates again, except for IE 11. Everything works fine. Until I install IE11. Then it breaks my Audible player, Visual Studio 2012 debug mode, and anything that needs a web site, like DropBox, Google Drive, Last.fm, etc.
If you haven't installed IE11 yet, make sure you have a complete system backup before you do. Like me, you may be needing one. I tried some suggestions at fixing the problem, but neither method worked.
Update Wednesday 20th: Penny's Acer computer runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, and when she shut her laptop down to take it to the shop, it tried for 3 hours to install IE11, and still had not shut down. She left for the shop without her laptop, and I eventually just switched it off. Fortunately the IE 10 installation was still intact, and I was able to hide the IE11 update option.
Penny has asked me to uninstall IE10 altogether, and we'll use Chrome, and Firefox where needed.

New Typefaces for Windows 8

I have been fiddling with the Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview, looking at the new fonts. Bear in mind it is only a preview, so there could be more on the way, but probably not.
The biggest surprise is that the infamous Comic Sans finally gets a legitimate italic and bold italic, instead of having to rely on slanted letters for an oblique version. In the book "Just My Type" there is this joke:

Comic Sans goes into a bar, and the barman says: "We don't serve your type".

Above is the new Windows 8 version. Note the "b" and "t" in the italic. Below is how XP, Vista and Windows 7 treat the same font family:

Given all the hoopla about the new "Metro" interface I was expecting a new Metro font. It's called Segoe UI Semilight, and it joins the rest of the Segoe UI family, which first appeared in Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Segoe UI now has the 4 standard variations, plus Light, Semilight and Semibold. Gadugi (Regular, Bold); Myanmar Text; and Nirmala UI (Regular, Bold) appear to be new variations of Segoe UI for other languages, probably Cherokee, Burmese, and various Indian and regional Asian languages. Aldhabi has arabic characters and some interesting swirls, as well as Latin characters. It looks like a small letter version of Times New Roman or Calisto MT.
I have also been having fun with Typograf, a wonderful font utility and font manager. I plan to buy it at the end of the month.

Windows 7: An Inconvenient Truth

Amid all the hoopla of Windows 7 there are a few things that were left unsaid because they could put you off. It may be the "best version of Windows ever" but that doesn't make it perfect. There is the DRM cost, the hardware cost, and the download cost.
You would think that an Acer laptop with Windows Home Basic 7 64-bit and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 pre-installed would be ready to run without much updating. Wrong. So far the download bill is 560MB in updates and service packs.
So what's wrong with half a GB of downloads? Nothing much (R150) if you have a DSL connection, but a lot more if you have a 3G card plugged in. That could have wiped out your entire month's bandwidth, or cost you R190, R250 or R1120, depending on your contract and how much you have already used. Bandwidth costs in South Africa are non-trivial.
The downloads included Microsoft Security Essentials, their new antivirus package, and some of Windows Live Essentials because Office Home and Student 2007 doesn't include Outlook.
Then there is the additional hardware bill. This is because there are plenty of printers and other devices that don't have 64-bit drivers. In addition to the new laptop, Penny's aunt has to buy a new printer, a printer cable and a mouse. So a R5000 bargain became a R6000 bargain. There are more drivers available than at the launch of Windows Vista, but don't hold your breath.
If you are going to upgrade with a clean install, or if you plan to retire your old PC, what happens to all the WMA files with DRM protection? I have 5 audio books from Simply Audiobooks that are not available in MP3 format, as well as 2 from Clear Audiobooks. Fortunately I haven't bought any music this way. The total replacement cost is around $150, because the DRM doesn't transfer from one machine to another, or back to the same machine if you do a clean install. I'm glad I used Total Recorder to convert these files to MP3. It costs $17.95 which is a bargain considering how much more the DRM replacement cost is.
Isn't it wonderful how one Microsoft technology is used to destroy another? The sooner we get rid of WMA DRM the better.
Update: It seems that my audio books from Audible.com and Borders are unaffected, because their DRM is different. But I have 4 Borders books in WMA format so who knows? Time will tell.
Update 22 December: I just purchased AllMusicConverter Platinum for $20, to convert the .WMA audiobooks that I have bought. It is pretty nifty, and quite quick, given the length of the books to be converted. It claims to work on .aa files, but doesn't. And my emails to their support address have bounced. The WMA conversion works perfectly, although it insists on converting mono files to stereo.

Windows 7: "hidden" wallpaper

I have spent most of the weekend tweaking a new Acer Aspire 5332 for Penny's aunt, and it's got Windows 7 Home Basic on it. For some incomprehensible reason it's the 64-bit version, even though the laptop only has 2GB RAM. "Windows Home Basic 64" just sounds wrong.
I noticed that there were only a few pictures for the desktop wallpaper, but on closer inspection found around 100 more pictures hidden away in the
c:\windows\Globalization\MCT
folder. Some installs only have a few country locations there, such as AU, GB, CA, US and ZA, while others have a lot more. The MCT folder is hidden in some way.
A workaround is to create a c:\temp folder and then using the command prompt you can change to the c:\windows folder and type
xcopy *.jpg c:\temp /s
and explore through the files you find. Some of the pictures are quite good. I use the "Fun Desktop Wallpaper Changer" program to get a new desktop wallpaper every day. It works on Vista and Windows 7, as well as older versions of Windows.
Of course, if you want a whole load more images, you could visit the Bing Image Archive. Some of the images have been doctored to have a darker area where the Bing search box goes, but many of them are quite passable.
Update: I have posted the pictures I found here, since my installation of Windows 7 Home Premium doesn't seem to have them.