Month: October 2009

Don’t you just love the way that a new mouse glides across a new mouse mat. For the first few days, the mouse is a pleasure to use. Then one day, you boot up your computer, and the mouse feels like it is wearing DMS boots fitted with ice spikes. The mouse mat suffers too. What was once a low friction plastic surface is now worn to a smooth surface which looks like it should be ok, but actually increases friction. The same stuff that used to accumulate on the ball and spindles of the old style mouse may not … Continue reading New slippers for your mouse..

Upgraders to Windows 7 are not all having an easy time of it. Why? Some seem to be under the belief that upgrading to Windows 7 will make a Vista computer work better. It can, but.. There is a mistaken belief that Windows 7 is more compatible than Vista. Well, there is some truth in the statement, but it is more compatible with hardware and software because so many manufacturers finally produced Vista stuff in the end. Unfortunately, some of the manufacturers coded software and hardware drivers to be OS specific. So, we still have the situation where some Vista … Continue reading Windows 7 – In the forums – Part 2

There are way too many spurious little problems, and on newish hardware too. I have an aging single core AMD 939 motherboard complete with aging peripheral devices, and Windows Vista 32 and 64-bit variants worked well as does Windows 7 64-bit. I have a suspicion that it is down to the way that Windows is installed. I ALWAYS do a clean install, and I always have. I think that a lot of the problems I am seeing in the Microsoft Answers forum are down to users going down the UPGRADE path. One of the 77 tips for Windows 7 as … Continue reading Windows 7 – In the forums..

.. and is now available to the general public finally. This is the Microsoft Canada website.. http://www.microsoft.com/canada/windows/default.aspx There is a link on the web site for the heavily discounted Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack which includes THREE upgrade licenses. If you want to upgrade your home network, now would be a very good time. The Family Pack is a limited offer, and will not be around for too long. Cost is estimated to be cdn$199.99. To buy three individual copies in Canada would cost not far short of cdn$400. Also, take a good look at this.. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows7/products/compare Don’t buy … Continue reading Windows 7 has landed..

Own up now please. Were you a Vista tester? If so, why didn’t you tell Microsoft about the problems? Forgotten what they were already? UAC.. you ask nicely and are still told ‘NO’.. DRM.. Listen to music? On your own MP3 player? Hahahahaha Calculating the time to calculate how long the transfer of a 26k Word file to a flash drive will take Windows Explorer custom settings.. they reset back to factory each time you open Explorer Windows Fax and Scan.. the end of twain drivers HDD partition minimum.. 60 – 80gb? But.. but that’s the whole drive!! There were … Continue reading It’s the fault of the testers..

Q. What kind of stuff is most likely to slow down a computer? A. Malware Do you think that my answer was too short? OK, let’s blame something else. How about we pick on Windows processes When we install Windows, more than a few processes are set in motion, BUT more than a few are just set up and do nothing until we install something which needs them. Why would these processes start to impede progress if they didn’t at the time when the OS was first installed? The most insidious processes are installed by ……………………. MALWARE, and they are … Continue reading Windows Optimizers..

Level – Beginner First, store it somewhere safe. An external hard drive is an excellent choice. Create a folder for it and label it in a way which will remind you NOT to delete it. If you don’t have an external drive, burn it to a DVD and label it ‘name of whatever it is -  Master’. Now store it somewhere very safe. So now what? Place a blank DVD in your DVD drive. Cancel the option window which Windows throws up. Double click your ISO file. It should automatically start the DVD creation process of any of the big … Continue reading You have your downloaded .ISO file. Now what do you do?

When I first downloaded the Win 7 beta, I was disappointed to find that there was no classic menu. In the forums, I made the point that it was missing and that it should be present. As the versions rolled in, there was still no sign of the classic menu, so I upped my protest, and I was not the only one. The RC appeared and I felt sure that there would be a classic menu in there somewhere. Just like Quicklaunch, it was probably hidden, but no, it wasn’t there. It was time for a full scale mutiny and … Continue reading Windows 7 – My protest didn’t last long..

If you haven’t come across CyberSecurity 2009 yet, I can tell you that it looks almost like the Windows Security Center. The two real difference are the name and the fact that you can’t shut it down. It infects Internet Explorer by blocking any website which contains anything which might be used to remove it, and then it reminds you that it is unregistered and that you need to pay up. It also tells you this at boot up, adding text the this effect just underneath the blue torpedo on the initialization screen. It also disables any antispyware or anti-virus … Continue reading Some good news..

In light of the recent password scare re web based Messenger and mail accounts, change your passwords at your earliest convenience. That is another way of saying ‘NOW’.. Please note that you will have to log into your account with your old password initially.. Yahoo http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/id_password/edit-13.html MSN https://account.live.com/changepassworddl.aspx AIM http://help.channels.aol.com/kjump.adp?articleId=218553 ICQ http://www.icq.com/support/security/icqlite/password.html Google http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6567