Thirteen years and nine months. That's how long this column has been in business. It started in April 1995 with a jape about "Microsoft Sex"--a mythical product that I proposed as a follow-up to the company's amazingly awful Microsoft Bob. Since then, you, I, and my other reader have whiled away the years watching PC hardware, software, and services miraculously evolve from expensive, complex, and buggy to cheap, complex, and buggy.

But with this installment, Full Disclosure is shutting its doors for good. Since everything must go, we're clearing the shelves of material that somehow never saw the light of day, and a fake interview is the easiest way to knit it all together. So here goes:

Seven Wonders of Microsoft 'Innovation'

7. Microsoft Live Search: Isn't it wonderful that they have to pay you to use it?

You've just installed the mostly estimable Firefox 3. Now you proceed to make an online purchase and head straight for the checkout page. The page claims to be secure, but...whoa! Where's the little lock that used to be to the right of the address? Why isn't the entire address yellow, signifying a secure site? Because, in the words of the immortal Dr. John, "Somebody changed the lock."

Oh, it's still around. It just moved to the status bar down in the lower-right corner of the window. You can almost see the justification for the change: Showing the lock there has a long history, particularly with Internet Explorer. You could argue that a lock in that spot is the de facto indicator of a secure page, and that it's simpler to tell users to look there for the icon. But putting the lock beside the address makes so much sense that Microsoft moved it to that spot in Internet Explorer 7. Smart move. Firefox should have stuck to its guns.

Web deals aren't always best: With so many online stores refusing to publish telephone contacts, I had dropped my old habit of picking up the handset to get better deals. This time was different. When I went to configure my new Sony laptop online, I found a "Fresh Start" option that would minimize crapware and save me $25, but the only mention of XP was a little display ad with a phone number.

I briefly considered deserting Windows entirely. But Apple's Macbook Air resembles the original VAIO lightweights, with dongles for important connections and an optical drive that's both outboard and optional. That combination is state of the art--for 1998. And since a charged-up spare battery often saves my bacon, the Air's nonremovable cells make this ultraportable a classic form-kills-function Steve Jobs Vanity Machine.

Troberman said the shows could be tweaked to advertisers' needs, but the first script seems destined for a major overhaul. I can't vouch for its provenance, but the informant who sent it to me claims to have fished it out of a Recycle Bin at an undisclosed location in Redmond, Washington.

Today, voice options run from hollering down the hall to instant-messaging around the world. But force of habit kept me paying an outrageous $102 a month to Qwest, my local telco, for two landlines and services like call waiting that former monopolists still wildly overcharge for.

When Outlook Express began downloading my e-mail a few days ago, Windows popped up the dreaded message, 'Symantec Service Framework has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.'

Right answer: Neither. In the old days of analog tape, when you had to fast-forward and reverse endlessly to find a particular remark in a lengthy interview, transcribing was virtually mandatory. But now, thanks to my digital voice recorder, files replace tapes, and playback software lets me jump around randomly--or even listen at high speed without hearing voices that resemble Alvin and the Chipmunks.

When I heard about plans for this anniversary issue, it occurred to me that Fluegelman's influence, and his program's, amounted to far more than we realized at the time. PC-Talk was clearly a pioneer in helping PCs do something easily that initially was addressed as a clunky afterthought: communicate across vast distances. But I've recently come to understand that Fluegelman's little gem also pointed to a concept that went nameless at the time--open-source software--and to today's cornucopia of free applications and services.

But even a task as apparently straightforward as attaching a peripheral is rarely easy. Plug in a smart phone, and you'll find yourself installing synchronization software and maybe a driver, and babying them into submission. Fire up a new multifunction printer, and several hours of software installation later, some of the functions may actually work.

I've long used Google Toolbar for Firefox to track my search history. When Google's Gmail came on the scene, I signed up. Then somewhere along the line, purely by accident, I happened to notice that when I hadn't bothered to log out of Gmail, Google's search results pages (but not the home page) included an item called "Web History." I quickly discovered that this meant Google was keeping track of my personal surfing--not just my searching.