- Tips and Tricks

When some people shop for computer parts, they purposely look at the ones with the longest warranties, knowing that they are likely to be built to a better specification, as no manufacturer wants to be supporting bad parts – it’s a sure way to bankruptcy.
Some manufacturers have sprung up with that idea in mind, purposely [...]

Due to the fact that updates are becoming a problem for many users, the folks at Avira Antivirus are changing the method and size of the updates, so as to make the system more reliable.
I have noticed the problem with my systems that run Avira in the last couple of weeks, but according to an [...]

To hear the story from Steve Ballmer, Microsoft is selling copies of Windows 7 faster than the copies can be pressed. The people are buying in droves, with adoption so high it beats all previous upgrade cycles.
After examining the previous upgrade cycles, that really is not hard to believe, as most Microsoft upgrade cycles don’t [...]

After hearing my son speak of many Xboxes showing up on Craigslist as “new In box” I started looking around on other places where things are sold, only to find similar results. This might be not that unusual for this time of year, with Christmas approaching, and the economy down, but I was still a [...]

The newest revision of Auslogics Disk Defragmentation utility is gaining functionality that once was the domain of paid programs. Where it once only defragmented files, it now defragments files, consolidates space, and will move system files to the beginning of the drive – essentially most of what Diskeeper revision 6 did a few years back.
For [...]

There are a few case designs that are very nice looking, and accomplish all the things that a case is designed to do. The case is designed to hold all the components, without letting them flex too much, become dusty, or overheat.
That last part is becoming harder all the time, as people try to stuff [...]

The guys at Opera are being very careful this time. There are so few things left that have been changed that perfection is within reach. This is something I haven’t seen before – a Release Candidate 3 for Opera 10.10.
From the Opera site we have the list of things changed -
Core/UI
- Removed Inconsolata.otf and [...]

With the recent announcement of Google Chrome OS, many are wondering what Microsoft should do about it. Though doing nothing might work, it is doubtful that the greater market will see it that way.
As rough and slipshod as Chrome OS might be today, we know that the Google development cycle never stops, unlike the fitful [...]

It has not been a good time for makers of custom PCs, as the economy makes all but the most mundane of purchases look extravagant. Also, there hasn’t been lots of talk about the cottage industry of high performance computers since the purchase of Alienware by Dell. Though Alienware still survives (barely), Dell seems to [...]

Because that looks to be the logical home for it. Now that the operating system cat is out of the bag, it is clear that Microsoft has nothing to fear on any other platform.
So unless Microsoft has something under wraps that no one else has seen, or spoken of, it looks as though the free [...]

That does not sound quite right, does it? How can a change that makes an operating system lighter be a bad thing for the individual user? However, that certainly is the way it is described in an article on Ars Technica.
The article gives us some history of the bloat of Windows, and why today it [...]

They’ve borrowed many other concepts from Unix, why stop now? Also putting up the word that you simply copied from possibly the most secure operating system around would give the worriers the faith to hold their worry to a minimum, and keep the conspiracy theorists away from an entirely new campaign.
On the other hand, it [...]

At the PDC today in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 9 was about 3 weeks into production, and that it will use DirectX to accelerate rendering.
While at once the idea seems a natural, I wonder what will be the outcome, because IE7 and IE8 did little to answer the gains of other browsers. [...]

Robin Harris, an infrequent, but important, contributor to ZDNet put up a piece today that clarifies for many some things that I learned long ago, and make use of each time I set up a computer.
Yet, for many, I must justify my actions, and give them a quick class in things I feel they should [...]

Did you ever think ATi would ever wrest that title from nVidia? I certainly did not, simply because I tend to believe in the superiority of nVidia. Oh, sure, ATi has had good designs, but as I have stated here before, ATi for many years could not produce a competent driver to save their collective [...]