Month: March 2012

If you own one of these, you should know this..I do because I have one. I bought mine in May of last year and I do like it except for the fact that the cabling to the drives can be a bit of a tight fit when putting the back cover in place. I can live with that. However, there is another bigger problem. When plugging USB devices into the top I/O panel, the computer can suddenly power down without warning. It may not always do it, but it can. Also, passing ones hand across the top of the USB … Continue reading CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced mid tower case

So I needed to re-install an HP DV9000 and the DVD unit would not play ball. Time to set up a bootable Vista flash drive. It’s all so easy and fast too.. Open CMD as admin and type: diskpart select disk 1 or whatever the flash drive disk number is.. clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format fs=fat32 assign exit Next, copy the entire OS DVD to the flash drive and you are ready to go.. Even though I knew that the flash drive was disk #4, I still typed in ‘select disk 1’. Unfortunately for the Windows … Continue reading Windows 8 CP saves the day..

A great advert, this one.. I have always used Internet Explorer, from version 1 onwards. It became a target for every hacker and whiner, but the other browsers have had their ‘less than auspicious’ moments too. Internet Explorer rulz..

The date: Oct. 25, 2001. The event: Microsoft releases XP. The bad points: It took up way more space than it’s Win 9x cousins It required way more memory than it’s Win 9x cousins A fair amount of older programs and hardware were not compatible A few Windows functions and conventions either had a name change or a code change The good points: It would run without crashing out It didn’t suffer the registry problems of Win 9x It didn’t have restrictions re filling up the desktop or running too many fonts It was a huge improvement over Windows 98, … Continue reading That was ELEVEN years ago..

I may have mentioned in the not so distant past that I use a program called ‘Stickies’ for sending network messages across the home network. Well, most of the time it works well, but sometimes one or more names become unreachable. As a consequence, I have been looking for something else and have found this.. LanToucher Network Chat..  http://www.vitalsoundlab.com/lantoucher-network-chat.html Its free too.. So far, it seems to retain its connections well, and the big advantage over Stickies is that it can keep a record of a conversation or just single messages for as long as they are required. What it … Continue reading Network messaging..

SSID: This is the name of your wireless house or apartment, a personal identifier in a street or block of wireless houses or apartments. It has absolutely no security value whatsoever. Just like hiding the street number of your house or apartment doesn’t make it invisible, hiding the SSID does not make the wireless house invisible either. Note also that it is not legal to hide the SSID of your wireless house under the terms of the 802.11 wireless protocol, but nobody will come to arrest you just yet. MAC filtering: This sounds and looks like it means business but … Continue reading Wireless security.. Do’s and Don’ts

.. when my computer boots to the desktop? This is what I see.. The total view is of a 19” widescreen LG monitor connected via a DVI cable. Starting at the top, under the Start button are nine applications and utilities all pinned there for easy access. The area below the ‘pinned’ part is also used for quick access, and I occasionally clear out less used items from it. I have a double height taskbar. I do this to make best use of the QuickLaunch and User Pinned toolbars. These replace the customized start menu I used to have in … Continue reading What do I see..

Do I like Windows 8? Yes and no. I am indifferent to it really. The admin features, easy to install, easy to feed apps into a working image simply don’t apply to what I do and how I do things. While my main machine is the main pivot for what happens across the home network, each user is allowed freedom to run as a standalone unit, and each machine is maintained as a standalone unit. There is no corporate image or Intranet containing trusted applications. At the user end is a dual interface, Metro being the most prominent. The trouble … Continue reading Windows 8 – a parting shot.. for now

I booted into Windows 8 again this morning, and then sat and looked at the Metro UI. The more I looked at it, the more I thought that it would be better without the apps. I like the way some of them show info, but the only time that I ever see a background is the period after the initial boot and before I start all of my stuff up. When sitting at a desk hour after hour and with a screen size which makes everything readable with space to spare, it stands to sense that the ‘free’ space around … Continue reading Why a Rat Rod makes a lousy ambulance..

ViStart A quick note on this one. For sure, it looks like a Start Menu and allows access to all you can see, It also gives search facility. It is better than no official Start Menu. I would like to think that it could be, but thoughts are not enough.. More here.. http://www.lee-soft.com/vistart/