Let me be upfront about this: I’m a Windows utility junkie. I’ve written books about them, I’ve written hundreds of columns about them, I’ve run a big Web site devoted to them, and I’ve probably tried thousands of them over the years, starting way back in the days of Windows 3.1.

So when a new version of an old-favorite comes along, I have to download it quickly. When it’s a great improvement over its previous version, I have to tell the world about it. And when there are potential clouds on the horizon, I have to weigh in as well.

That’s where WinZip 9.0 comes in. I’ve always thought WinZip was the best compression tool of all time, and 9.0 continues to prove it. New in 9.0 is 128- and 256-bit AES encryption for more powerful security than the old Zip 2.0 encryption. The new version also supports 64-bit extensions to the Zip format, so you can now create Zip archives of virtually any size; you’re not stuck with the previous 4-gigabyte limit.

The program still includes all the old goodies, such as easily dividing archives into pieces, tight integration into Windows, and special XP support, such as taking advantage of fast user switching so that a user can log on and use WinZip, while a lengthy WinZip operation is being performed in the background by another user.

That’s all good news. But not everything is rosy in Zip-land. One of the best things about the Zip standard is that, well, it’s a standard. Create a file in one Zip program, and you can unzip it in another, and vice versa.

But WinZip and competitor PKWare, creator of PKZip for Windows, have been squabbling for some time like the Hatfields and McCoys and things aren’t quite that simple anymore. It has to do with AES encryption. WinZip and PKWare had created incompatible implementations of the encryption, so that a file encrypted with one program couldn’t be decrypted with another. That’s since been fixed; WinZip can decrypt PKZip AES-encrypted files, and a PKWare program called the PKZip Reader can decrypt WinZip-created encrypted files.

But the acrimony lingers, with PKWare applying for a patent related to the Zip standard, and some saying that Phil Katz, the now-deceased creator of the Zip standard and founder of PKWare, had always wanted Zip to remain an open standard.

I’m hoping that the patent doesn’t get granted; I spoke on occasion with Phil Katz and I don’t think that he’d have wanted any patent applied to any part of Zip. I’m also hoping that PKWare and WinZip can learn to play nice together - if not, we’re all losers.

Are you a fan of WinZip? What do you think about the squabbling between WinZip and PKWare? Let me know.

Around my house, my 14-year-old son Gabe has to take out the trash. So why can’t Microsoft do the same? I just upgraded to Office 2003 and I was stunned by all the junk the software left behind.

The upgrade went smoothly, but about a day afterwards, I ran one of my favorite pieces of shareware, Registry First Aid. It’s a great piece of software that fine-tunes your Registry by finding bad and outdated Registry entries, and then fixing or deleting them. It helps keep your system running at top speed, and in tip-top shape.

You might imagine my surprise when I found dozens and dozens of bad Registry entries left behind by the Office upgrade. For example, in my copy of Office 2003, the new path to Word is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE 11\Winword.exe. For some inexplicable reason, the upgrade didn’t bother to get rid of the old, outdated Registry entries that point to the previous Word installation. There were similar Registry entries left behind for old versions of other Office applications, like Excel and Outlook.

There’s no need to bore you with the details of other Registry problems, but trust me, there were others as well.

Now, this may not be earth-shaking stuff. After all, my computer still functioned, even with the outdated and incorrect Registry entries. But over time, as your Registry fills with this kind of useless junk, your system slows down, and it’s more likely that you’ll encounter problems and crashes. That’s why I run Registry First Aid once a week.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still glad that I upgraded. If you’re an email junkie like me, Outlook 2003 by itself is worth the upgrade.

But is it really too much to ask Microsoft to do some basic housekeeping when it comes to installing software? If an adolescent boy can remember to take out the trash, why can’t Microsoft?

Have you encountered similar junk left behind by Microsoft? What should be done about it? Let me know.

What does the Iraq War have to do with Windows privacy? Plenty, as it turns out. And there’s a lesson there to be learned for all of us.

To understand that lesson, come with me in the wayback machine to one year ago, when Colin Powell, in front of the United Nations, cited a British government’s high-level intelligence dossier about Iraq as providing one of the reasons why the world should go to war against Iraq.

Not long after the dossier was publicly released, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University did a little bit of sleuthing and found out that the dossier was little more than a cut-and-paste job, and rather than containing high-level intelligence as the government claimed, was primarily copied directly from three publicly available articles, one of which had been written by a postgraduate student in the U.S. In fact, the dossier even had the same typographical errors found in the student’s original article.

So what does this have to do with Windows privacy? It’s how the lecturer did part of his sleuthing. The dossier was a Word .doc file. So the lecturer opened the file (which used to be publicly available, but has since been pulled by the British government), and with the help of U.S. privacy expert Richard Smith was able to extract the history of the last 10 edits to the file, including the names of the people who had edited it. So in addition to revealing the cut-and-paste job, he outed who in the British government had their hands on the original dossier, and when they made changes to it.

This revision history is normally hidden, but Smith was able to uncover it, using a small utility that he wrote. For details, see here. And even apart from the normally hidden revision history, there’s a lot of private information out in plain sight in Word documents, including the names and possibly personal information about reviewers of the file, and similar data. How you find out this information varies from version to version of Word. In Word 2002, for example, you choose File–>Properties, and then nose around the various tabs for information.

If you work on a file with others, and trade edits and track your changes, Word gathers metadata about your work, and this information can be snooped on by anyone who opens the document. Even if you work by yourself, it tracks your edits. And if you think that revealing that information doesn’t have consequences, just think back to the British intelligence dossier, and how it’s caused world-wide embarrassment for several governments.

There’s something you can do about protecting your privacy, though. If you use Word 2002 or 2003, Excel 2002 or 2003, or PowerPoint 2002 or 2003, you can get a free Microsoft tool that zaps hidden data and collaboration data, such as comments and edit-tracking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Download Office 2003/XP Add-in: Remove Hidden Data and you’ll be able to delete all the information in a snap.

As for the British and U.S. governments, we should consider ourselves lucky that this tool wasn’t available a year ago. Full disclosure in democracies are best for all. In fact, it would be nice to see this tool banished from government bureaucracies the world over.

What do you think about how the cooked-up dossier was uncovered? What are the implications for your privacy? Will you use the privacy tool? Let me know.

Welcome to WindowsDevCenter.com, O’Reilly’s new site for Windows developers, power users, system administrators, and IT folks. It’s here to help you get the most out of today’s versions of Windows, as well as prepare for the future - and so you’ll get in-depth articles about Windows technologies including .NET, VBScript, SQL, system administration, wireless, and more. In addition to articles for developers and system administrators, we’ll also feature plenty of tips, tricks, and reviews for all Windows users. Our daily news section will keep you up to date with the latest stories in the Windows world. And the site gives you a forum to interact with like-minded others.

We felt this was the ideal time to launch WindowsDevCenter: Windows XP will be getting its biggest overhaul yet with the release of SP-2 in the middle of this year, and Longhorn will dramatically transform the entire Windows architecture and interface.

I’m a long-time Windows-watcher, author of Windows XP Hacks among many other books, and have been kicking the tires of Windows technologies for longer than I care to mention. I’m the editor in charge of the site, and will be weblogging here regularly, so let me know what you think of the site, what you’d like to see here, and what you wouldn’t like to see here. And send along your tip and tricks as well.

One last note: We’re also launching a weekly newsletter to help keep you up to date with everything going on at the site. It’s free, so to keep informed, click here.

What would you like to see us cover in WindowsDevCenter.com - and what do you think of what we’ve already done? Let me know.