Today I got so frustrated with Microsoft’s love child, Vista, and it has caused me to start to move back to an old friend, Windows XP. Before I get into the story I am not a Windows basher by any means. I love their products, I have a Zune, Xbox 360, and and I would never trade either, so please don’t comment saying “Oh he hates Windows, he must be a Mac Fanboy, or “He doesn’t know how to use a computer(look at my Vista made me speechless articles comments. So without any delay here is my Scary Vista school story.

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Yesterday I went through the “family” Windows XP machine looking to clean it out and to defrag it, when I noticed several Internet pop ups and what looked like a machine filled with viruses. I asked my Mom if she had a antivirus program and she said she was told to use Winidows Defender. Now I have used it before and it didn’t find anything on my machine so I uninstalled it and never looked back so I decided to do a small test. I kept Defender on the computer and did a test of the machine, the results?

your computer is running normally

Strange huh? So I downloaded Free AVG to do a test of the computer, and what where those results?

Your computer has 112 infections

It was also nice enough to delete them, and after a restart the PC was working like a charm.

So does Microsoft even give a hoot about Defender? Is it a joke? I mean it couldn’t find simple spyware. I hope it is just me who has had a problem with it. So have you ever used Defender? Did it work?

Tags: microsoft, windows, windows defender, antivirus

Hulu.com is a new video site created by TV rivals NBC and FOX in which their most popular shows are shown for free. Hulu just started beta testing yesterday and you can sign up for the beta service but there is no guarantee that you will be chosen. All of the shows on the service are shown in their entirety with limited ads, like Joost, and you can expect to see all of NBC and FOX’s most popular shows like Heroes and The Simpsons.

Here is a confirmed list of shows:

• The Office
• King of the Hill
• Arrested Development (there is a God!)
• The Simpsons
• Scrubs
• Kville
• House
• Heroes
• Chuck
• Vanished
• Saturday Night Live
• My Name is Earl
• Journey Man
• Monk
• 30 Days
• Damages
• also the movie SideWays (such a good movie)

To get a sneak peak at some of the videos go to the blog and scroll down until you see The Office video, which you can see in its entirety, then you can click on the menu button that gives you more videos to sample. Included in these is Family Guy,The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and more The Office episodes. I have signed up for the beta and have not been accepted yet but I hope I am, I must say I am really excited about this web site.

*Update

Go to this great web site for an article about Hulu and it has some episodes and a surprise movie at the end.

Tags: internet tv, hulu, watch live tv

Many of us today have beautiful LCD monitors capable of showing HD games and movies, but where do you find this content at? I have found several great sites that have a good bit of HD quality videos on their site, my favorite is Stage 6. Stage 6 is done by DivX and the videos are uploaded by the community. Many of the videos on their are movie trailers are just beautiful, many of which are shown in gorgeous 1080p. Also on their you can find home movies done in HD and sometimes a full length movie or two. The website of course works great with both Windows and Vista.

The next place to find movie trailers is Apple. There you can find various videos from music videos to movie trailers. The videos on here are just stunning on a the right display, if your monitor shows 720p then this is your site. One problem I have with this site is that the videos take a good while to load, granted they are in HD.

The third site to go is ABC. While most ABC shows stink these days you can still watch full episodes of their most popular shows in stunning HD. You could watch Desperate Housewives in HD but why would you? The main attraction of this site is of course Lost. So if you like ABC then you must go to this site.

So this should hold you over until we get a full HD movie and TV service onto the internet, ,or untill HD DVD and Blu-Ray drives are a little cheaper to purchase. There is also a way to use your Xbox 360 HD DVD Player on your PC or Mac

Tags: hd movies, hd content, blu-ray, hd-dvd

So Microsoft has the 100 Reasons You’ll Be Speechless in a good way, so I have compiled the top 5 reasons Vista made me Speechless in a bad way.

5. For some lovely reason it drains my laptop battery more so then XP. It seems that on a good 3 hour battery I can only squeeze out 1 1/2 hours worth. I have done some tweaks so improve the battery life but is still isn’t any thing to be proud of.

4. Vista loves to delete my system restores. I have had on occasion where I have saved a system restore just to find that Vista felt the need to delete the file. This has called me to reinstall Vista once and wasted a lovely Saturday.

3. CHKDSK runs on every boot up. There is nothing from with my hard disk but on every boot the CHKDSK runs. I have changed the settings in the registry to change this but it still does it. This causes me not to be able to use Disk Fragmenter.

2. Upon my first install of Vista, a upgrade from XP, the Hard Drive had no space to save files. I have a 80gig HD on my laptop and I was unable to do anything because it said the disk was completely full. Also I was unable to check and see what was on the disk. So I ultimately had to reinstall Vista.

1. I hate the thousands of stupid pop ups, “Windows needs your permission to continue”. Yes Vista I under stand that I clicked on System Restore, you don’t have to ask me several times to see if I really want to open it. If I clicked I want to open the file!
While I do not think Vista is terrible its just the little things that annoy me , so what about Vista makes you speechless?

Tags: microsoft, vista, windows

I am going to show you how to turn your now outdated version of Tiger into a Leopard look alike, kind of like a Liger, granted you won’t be able to do all of the cool stuff as you can in Leopard like Stacks and Time Machine, but you can still get the look and feel of Leopard down.

First you need a program called ShapeShifter. Think of this as Windows Blinds for OS X. Once you install this program you will need a theme to skin your system into Leopard. I recommend a theme called Liger, so far it has been my personal favorite. It makes the dock look 3D like the actual Leopard dock. Next we are going to have to give the menu transparency. The program of choice here is MenuShade.

So there you go now your Tiger looks more like a Leopard, once again Liger. So now all you need is the new wallpapers, which you can find here at this forum.

Tags: os x leopard, apple computers, os x, os x tiger

One thing I have noticed over my time of being both a Windows and Apple user is that I rarely ever use Microsoft made software, which is the complete opposite of my Mac. When ever I am using my Mac I use Safari, Dashboard, iLife, iWork, and even Mail, so what do I use for that on my Windows PC? I use Firefox/Safari, Picaso, Diskeeper, OpenOffice, and iTunes, so what do these programs have in common? They are all non-Microsoft. Could these possibly be the reason are pulling away from Windows Camp and entering the Apple side?

I am not saying that Microsoft makes bad software — Calender is a real joke though — but Apple software is starting to get so much better than the competition. I cannot think of one suite that works so greatly together then iLife. The name explains it all, life, every I do when with digital media goes through a piece of software that comes with the suite. So does Microsoft have an answer for this? The answer is no. All of their software just doesn’t blend well together. I don’t know maybe I am going crazy or just a little bored but I think that Microsoft is loosing its lead in the software game.

So do you use any Microsoft Software any more these days?

Tags: apple, microsoft, os x leopard, windows vista

Chris Pirillo found a way to upgrade any version of XP into Vista for FREE!

Hey shows you how in this video! I can’t believe it works, Microsoft was stupid for doing this.

Please Digg this story here.

Tags: vista, xp, windows, microsoft

Thats right tomorrow thousands of Geeks are lining up to get a copy of what could be the greatest Operating System of all time , what else could I be talking about other then OS X Leopard, and i won’t be getting a copy. This geek is completely broke and did something completely stupid last week, I bought an iPod Touch with the last of my money. Don’t get me wrong I mean I love the Touch but I completely forgot that Leopard was just around the corner, so now I have to wait until the end of this month before I receive my next check.

So if you would like to donate to the “Matt needs Leopard fund” please contact me at theofactor2066@gmail.com

So any of you guys going to get a copy of Leopard tomorrow? What excites you as a user about OS X Leopard?

(I am kidding about the donation)

Tags: os x leopard, apple, guy that wants os x leopard and has to wait until the end of the month

I have a rather large .IMG file that needs to be converted into a good ol fashioned ISO file for the program VMWare. I have tried several programs like MagicISO and Alcohol 120% but they say the file is too large; it is 6 gigs. So if you know some way of doing this it would be much appreciated.

Tags: iso, file converter, vmware